a late Thanksgiving note (not a grateful list!)
I have an annoying incident to relate... Thanksgiving sucked because we had to have lunch with this Chinese family. (Also, I still had painfully swollen ankles and a bad cold, but that's beside the point of this story.)
The wife of my dad's colleague was so irritating. She asked my sister why she doesn't just go to med school and said that pharmacy wasn't good enough because it was boring and not sufficiently challenging. Reading between the lines, that's just her snotty way of saying that pharmacy is not prestigious enough...like it's "only" pharmacy school and all you do is hand out pills. Forgive me, but I wanted to smack her! It's bad enough when that kind of hypercompetitive elitist attitude is directed toward me, but I get even angrier when it's directed at either of my sisters. (How dare they tear down my siblings?!)
This lady's husband is a doctor, but she's "only" a lab technology person with probably an undergrad science degree. How would she like it if I told her she was an uncultured hack who wasn't even good enough at science to make it to med school? (I call her uncultured not because she's "fresh off the boat" but because a lot of Chinese are very snobby and judgmental about any studies or careers not related to science, medicine, law, or business.) I hope she ends up having to go through the "pain" of having one of her kids want to study liberal arts rather than some other, more lucrative field. Then she can deal with the horrible, horrible shame. *laughs evilly* And the stupidly thoughtless, nosy questions people like to ask whenever they discover that your little Chinese wunderkind isn't going to be a medical doctor or computer scientist.
And why yes, I AM wary of questions about law school. In fact, the annoying Chinese couple did ask me if I planned to go. I bluntly said I wasn't interested. Then they laughed this grating, condescending laugh and said to my parents, "Oh my, one of them doesn't want to go to medical school and the other doesn't want to go to law school!" And something along the lines of, "You have quite a dilemma!" followed by more of their irritating laughter.
Kiss. My. Yellow. Underachieving (nevermind that I was accepted into a decently-ranked graduate program). Humanities and social science-appreciating. Independently left-leaning. ASS.
It's attitudes like those people's that make me doubt the likelihood of my ever marrying an Asian. No one will think I'm "good enough" for their intelligent, successful son because I am a lowly liberal arts person and I don't care to obtain an advanced degree (at the moment). I have no patience for such snobbery anyhow so it's probably for the better. No, I'm not really a believer in "Love will find a way." Not for myself anyway.
Hmm, unless I somehow find an equally average Asian...
Sorry about the rant. I hope we don't have to see them again...their kids weren't even that friendly or polite, as they visibly were quite bored and even attempted to escape the table several times. (The boy is about 16 and the girl is in grade school. I understand the girl's shyness because she' so young, but once again there's the double standard of boys never having to make nice at family outings -- they're more allowed to sulk and be stand-offish.) Their escapes were thwarted by their mother, who surprisingly had some modicum of manners in regards to that.