I sympathize that your parents are not more supportive. There are plenty of people outside the home that set the bar high, e.g. Teachers, bosses. One is fortunate to feel their parents are their best cheerleaders.
Culturally, sometimes it IS the parents with the highest standards, and kids do,survive.
You know which group your parents fall into.
Don’t bring up what you overheard with your parents. It seems to me you have much to lose and little to gain. Instead, go back to school and prove their fears wrong. Get good grades–it’s clear you can do it, since you already have. Do exercise so that you don’t continue to gain weight and watch the snacking. I don’t think you are overweight at all (and I tend to think many people are) but this is something that is easier to prevent than reverse. Anyhow exercise is a good study break. If you return home at Xmas with more good grades and not much weight gained and they start talking like this to your face, then a family discussion might be in order but for now I think it would likely just antagonize them and the last thing you want is for them to refuse to pay for your school. The longer you keep up your grades, the less they have to be concerned about.
I sounds like your parents are not well-informed.
Are there financial pressures behind your parents’ conversation? If so, the CC class could just be the excuse your Dad has been waiting for, but it is a flimsy excuse indeed.
If I were you, I would get support from a counselor and perhaps your parents could come to a meeting and be invited to be open about any concerns they have about you- and the above points could be covered somehow. I think these conversations can be safer with a neutral professional involved and the power balance will be better between your parents and you with the therapist there.
Your dad is clueless. There is no such thing as a “secretary IT job”.
Yes, many businesses have some administrative assistants, and maybe one that also serves as a receptionist, but true secretaries just don’t exist any more.
Threaten your dad you will get a job at McDonalds where you can get more than $15 an hour. I’ll bet you he wants you to keep the IT job. Ok, I was kidding about the threatening part.
Thanks for the advice everyone. Funny you should say my mom caught on real quick why I was acting strange and pretty much guessed what happened. Here’s the thing and I don’t know if it’s normal, but a majority of the time I feel stressed out by my parents although then they do something to make me not think they are not demanding for a second.
So did you have a conversation with your mom that resolved your feelings? Are you going back to Purdue?
OP- the feeling of stress a majority of the time signifies something deeper than any of us strangers on the Internet can help you through. The prolonged unhappiness that you have indicated throughout your college life is not normal. If you can be more open with your mom, let her know. Maybe they just don’t understand that you are perhaps more sensitive to this not uncommon Indian style of “parenting” than other kids, who probably just shrug it off .
To give you some context -the educated Indian community in the US seems to have produced a lot of kids who are superpeople, and parents start to think this is a norm. Even the kids start to feel this way, and think they are lesser beings if they can’t hit the highest notes. I have stopped discussing college etc.with people who are not close family, and I encourage our kids to do their best, and not compare themselves to the superpeople in our family and friend circle.
One could say the same about College Confidential!
This is not restricted to any particular ethnic or national origin – take a look at these forums, where parents and students (of any ethnic or national origin) think that any HS GPA under 3.8 or any SAT score under 2000 or any ACT score under 30 is “low” after reading the “where should I [4.0 HS GPA, 2200 SAT, 34 ACT] apply?” threads.
Not to add to a tangent here, but I think College Confidential deals with quite a range of kids and experiences and often advice is sought and given for students and families dealing with a variety of challenges. And those “superpeople” on Ivy League campuses are making ample use of counseling/mental health resources. There are no superpeople.
Hey OP, regarding your last post - just so you know, parenting can be the most difficult and challenging thing we’ve all done. At the end of the day, we all just want the best for our children, and we also want our children to be the best that they can be. Sometimes to adolescent and young adult children, those motives do not come out clearly, and sometimes we overreact or say/do things that seem counter to such motives - none of us are perfect either.
My wife and I have had many conversations over his past senior year about whether our S is ready for college, and having doubts whether we should send him. Never had we been close to actually pulling the opportunity from him, we just need to discuss our concerns openly with each other.
Like many others have suggested, you are doing just fine, actually you’re doing great in a difficult program at a rigorous, nationally-known university. Go back to school in a few weeks, and just keep doing what you are doing and you will be fine. And your parents will be proud of you.
Talk to your parents. Show them this Times ranking of top tech and engineering schools in the World:
Purdue is ranked #45 in the world, ahead of all the Ivies except Princeton, Cornell and barely behind Columbia. Yes it’s ahead of Harvard and Yale! Don’t worry you won’t have any problem getting a job with a 3.5 in CS from Purdue, it’s a well known engineering school across the country. Tell them you are happy and doing well there, and that will only help with your grades.
It seems I will be going back, but all of you are right. I feel as though I will just shut my parents away from my studies. The only issue I see is how they nag me to show me my grades to them. I guess its only fair since they are paying for the degree. See in college I am happy with my social life as I have lots of friends, in many clubs and greek life, and try to make them most of my time. One time at ohio state my friend from china saw a very angry text message from my dad and said “you father is like dictator”. For the past few years my parents have tried to keep me from hanging out with people. The only thing that will keep me going is that I have only 2 more years til I can leave the house and live a good distance away from my parents. Ideally I’ll go into consulting so I am always on travel
Well, I’m also 5’11" and in my entire adult life, the least I’ve ever weighed was 179 and at that point I looked emaciated.
Tell your dad to shove it.
If one is worried about obesity related health problems, a 5’11" person should consider whether his/her waist circumference is under 35.5" (half his/her height) or if it has been increasing or decreasing. Height and weight alone are not a perfect indicator of whether an individual is obese, because there may be people of the same height and weight where one is lean and muscular, and the other is high body fat (even in the “normal weight range”, such people are prone to obesity related health problems, called “normal weight obesity”).