Overprotective Asian parents

FreshmenInPhilly
Sat, 20 Nov 2010 16:16:54 +0000

Hello everyone, I’m new to College Confidential. You can call me Mike (not giving out my real name), I’m 18 and a freshmen in college, and I’ve come here to ask for advice for a very long and serious topic, so if you do not want to read about my teenage problems that have to do with strict asian parents, being a first generation child to the USA in my family, my relationship with my girlfriend, my parents’ upcoming divorce and how it affects everything, my college decisions, and how all of this affects my 12 year old brother, you might not want to read any further. Yes, I know this is more of a personal matter than the process of transferring, but someone here has to have been involved with some kind of hard situation relating to mine. Any advice will be helpful and sorry for the long wall of text.
This is a really long and I mean long story and I will try to condense it for those (if any) that are still reading. My parents are from India. They have an arranged marriage (no love for each other) and moved to the USA in 1990. I was born in 1992. My dad worked his way up from being a mailman to buying his own beer business. Even though I had white friends and saw how they lived, my parents still lived in an Indian lifestyle. As I grew up, I learned that it was understandable why they lived in that kind of lifestyle even when in a different country, I get it; Fine, whatever. Highschool came around and I was still livin the goody-two shoes super strict lifestyle that was forced on me. Again, whatever, fine. My dad started making trips to India without my mom and she later found out he was cheating on her with his high school girlfriend. That is why they are going through some type of seperation agreement divorce thing in JANUARY, which comes into play later. It took my mom ALL 4 years of my highschool to finally talk about divorce to my dad.
So yeah, once junior year comes around, all these colleges start giving me scholarship offers, the catch being none of the schools being close to home. My grades were pretty good, but not good enough to get me a scholarship anywhere close to where I live (Philadelphia). I asked my mom and dad about going to these far as **** schools and immediately they say no. I get that going somewhere far as **** is a difficult thing for some people, but for someone who has been kept inside for 4 years of their life and has done nothing wrong besides trying out alcohol like every other person in the world has in highschool. So, my parents start sending me to all these schools near home and going to a lot of open houses and what not and I’m still in the idea of going away for once because in all seriousness, I was getting depressed by the kind of stuff I had to go through. I’m a guy and I had to deal with stuff that overprotective parents of teenage girls do. So after months of my dad bringing me into his store and convincing me and convincing me of staying close to home, and drawing diagrams and **** of how far each school is from home, and the benefits of staying at home would be and the “risks” of college dorming, I finally gave in to going to a school 30 minutes away. Senior year of high school, I meet a girl and start a relationship. It’s my first girlfriend ever and I knew my parents would not take it well at all, so I kept it secret until the day I graduated high school because my dad said “you can do whatever you want in college”. So I took her home and they disliked the idea but I didnt have to lie about where I was anymore. So this relationship has gone on long enough and my girlfriend went off to college which is about 7 hours away but in the same state. It was horrible, so horrible that I decided to apply to the same college and a lot of colleges far enough that I wouldn’t have to live at home. I got accepted to all of them, even though it cost so much to apply to each school and send documents and such. I did this all in secrecy. My parents filed for some court hearing for divorce, and that date is set somewhere in January, which is when one semester ends and another begins in college. I’ve been set to transfer for so long now, that when I told my dad that I was leaving and needed him to sign my college loans, he freaked out and said if I were to go to college and try to dorm anywhere else, I would not be allowed back in the house and be disowned and all that *****. My dad is the controlling one and my mom is the weakling that hides behind anything he says. She has known for so long that I have been applying and getting ready to transfer and she said whether or not the divorce happens, I would be allowed to go. When my dad found out, the whole story changed. I have no credit, I have no job, I have no car, I have no relatives that can sign for me because I dont want to involve them in my family troubles. My parents think my girlfriend is in a different state. I’ve talked to counselors from my school and they have suggested screaming at him, and dorming at the school I go to, but I’m not allowed to leave my house “Until i’m 22 and have a bachelors degree” and the fact that I will pay Nine thousand dollars to live 30 minutes away sounds stupid to me. My mom has secretly offered to put $15,000 into my personal bank account and she said she will let me go next fall after the divorce. This sounds like a good idea considering my dad offered me a job at his store and I would be able to make enough money for a car by next fall and a line of credit to build a credit store and get a loan without a cosigner, but I dont know. My orientation for school is set for december 3 and it is so far away that I would have to leave the night before. I dont know what to do. My girlfriend and I think I’m just being naive and believing everything my parents say because they have lied so many times before to get me to do what they want. My parents go through my * and do everything you can think of that overprotective and radically strict parents would do. My question is, what should I do? Should I stick it out another couple months or should I find an uncle or something to sign a loan for me and get the hell out now?