18F Chinese Girl Stuck Between Her Mom’s Expectations and Figuring Out Her Own Life

This will be a LONG (Like a 15-minute read) rant/need advice post, so you could just skip to my TLDR too.

For background context:

I am an 18F Chinese high school senior. I’m in my 2nd year of the IB diploma (kind of important detail later). My mother is very much a “you have to go to an Ivy League or a similar ranked college” kind of stereotypical Asian-American parent, and it has been engraved into me since middle school. In a way, I kind of hoped to be able to attend a T15 school as well because my mother does fund everything in my life. Because she has a restaurant, I also work there for around 20-30 hours/week during the school year and 30-40 hours/week during the summer. I’m also a heavy introvert, so I struggle with maintaining quality lasting friendships outside of school. I barely have any friends that I hang out with outside of school.

Anyways, because of how much my mother has talked about Ivy schools, I did a lot of things in high school that I thought would be good for college applications instead of what I want to do (I did a lot of research going into high school on what I should do). This led to me participating in around 7-8 clubs/activities and obtaining mid-level results/awards (maybe 2-3 state-level, but that’s it). Even though I participated and did a lot, I didn’t do a lot of quality ecs. So, in a way, I know I’ll probably be rejected from the ivies because I didn’t go too in-depth with my ecs. My leadership roles were also a mess since I struggled a lot with taking action a lot up until senior year (which sounds contradictive, but I’ll explain).

So, in a way, I kind of knew I probably didn’t want to go to an Ivy League. However, because my mother does fund everything that I do in school and life, it makes me feel like I owe her this one thing. I.e. She’s paid for a study abroad program. She’s also been a naturally gifted person since she was young, so I naturally got some of that from her which led to me putting in less effort than others and getting better grades sometimes (I’m not trying to brag). This has led me to become a highly procrastinated person because, internally, I’ve realized that I could push everything until the day it’s due to get it done and still get a really good grade. This also influenced my ecs because I don’t think I was particularly passionate about anything. I think I forced many of my ambitions because I did somewhat well in all my competition-based clubs and wanted to make my mom proud. However, my desire for that did not entirely match up either. From my freshman year until the summer after sophomore year, I was heavily addicted to mobile video games or reading manhuas/webtoons. I.e. Mobile Legends (not trying to be funny & my mom wouldn’t allow Xbox or PlayStation). I probably spent over 600 hours between those two activities in those years whenever I wasn’t at work or school. This further fueled my confused identity because they weren’t things I wholeheartedly enjoyed. They were my escape from reality.

Current Situation:

Since the start of summer, I’ve become highly conflicted with my future considering it is my last year in high school. I don’t want to graduate high school without a plan (it doesn’t have to be restrictive, just a broad idea). I want to do what I want to do this year, but I’m not sure what I want to do. I can’t even articulate what feels fulfilling anymore or even what did feel fulfilling in the past. After some intensive reflection, I realized that I need to get clear with my life pretty soon. Yet, my IB diploma program forces me to take specific hard-level classes & activities which is taking up more than 85% of my time outside of school now which doesn’t help with being able to become clear.

I don’t want to talk to a therapist because I’ve already tried that. The only therapist available near me didn’t click with me very well. I don’t like doing video conferencing because I like being able to talk face-to-face about my issues.

Furthermore, it’s college application season right now, and I’m only applying to my state flagship school and a handful of T15 colleges. Usually, this wouldn’t be a smart idea, but I found out last year about Wisconsin’s direct admit program. Therefore, I’m technically already accepted to UW-Madison because I am within the top 5% of my class. However, because of my mother’s heavy insistence on T15 schools, it’s affecting me mentally if I’m doing something wrong for not being able to attend these schools. MANY (more than 20) of my mom’s classmates’ kids and friends’ kids were accepted/going or aspire (around 15 accepted/going) to attend a T15 school. My cousins are also like that.

Personally, I don’t care where I go. I just want to live a fulfilling life. I’ve already spent so many years putting in effort towards achieving my mom’s dream, and I’ve realized that stress has caused me to become someone that I don’t want to be currently. I’ve thought about taking a gap year, but I want to attend college. I want to experience the college life. I can’t attend community college because my mom won’t let me. It was already hard enough to convince her to let me attend Madison if I chose to. I want to graduate college ASAP (I’m planning to graduate within 3 years debt-free, applying to several scholarships and working jobs/freelances along with some of my mom’s financial assistance too).

My goals for my senior year were to try to discover what I want to do, my real interests and passions, and develop healthier habits before college. However, it’s been difficult to put action towards these goals because of IB and school. I’m not even sure why I’m in the IB program if I was already accepted over the summer technically. If I chose to go to Madison, I feel like I wasted all my efforts to try to get into an Ivy, but if I get rejected from my T15 schools, I feel like I would disappoint my mother. I also feel like I’m wasting my time in all these difficult classes if I go to Madison because I could’ve taken easier classes (I have 7 classes, and they are ALL year-long classes, so I literally can’t change anything).

I understand that this is just a passing year in my life, and I understand that it really doesn’t matter where I go in the future. A lot of companies hire based on networking and competency compared to school prestige. Even though I understand this, it doesn’t make any of this easy or clear.

I guess my biggest ask for you reading this is to respond to one of the three questions/statements below for me or comment on any part of my post:

1. Am I on the right track?
   1. I understand that many of you will say, “You don’t have to figure this out now, you still have college.” However, I want to figure this out now. I want to go through college on track of who I want to become.
2. How can I become more aware of who I am?
   1. I’ve already done so many journal prompts, but it’s difficult to find a lot of time for this and I struggle with answering a lot of them because I don’t know myself.
3. What do you suggest I should do?
4. Anything you want to say

TLDR:

18-year-old Chinese IB high school senior student struggling with balancing her mother’s Ivy League school expectations with her own confused identity. She’s worked extensively in her mom’s restaurant while juggling school, but her ECs lack depth. She feels her efforts were more about meeting her mom’s standards than her passions (however she also doesn’t understand her passions). Already accepted to UW-Madison, she’s applying to only T15 schools under pressure, though she doesn’t care about prestige and wants to live a fulfilling life. Overwhelmed by IB's demands, she’s frustrated by a lack of clarity about her future and feels stuck between disappointing her mom and staying true to herself. She asks for you to comment on her situation or answer of the prompts above. There’s a lot more to this description than this (in terms of reasoning & understanding whys), but this pretty much sums it up.