Looming pressure hanging over you all your life is no way to live. However, I go through it everyday and it is not by choice. At no point in my life have I ever attended a public school and my parents never planned on me attending one either. I had the so called luxury of attending Hebron Academy and I thought it was a great opportunity for me to get away from my parents and their constant nagging. It did not take long for me to realize that even though I am away at school the pressure to do well still hung over me. As I got my first report card as a freshman I took one glance at it and knew my life was over. A couple of A’s and B’s and one C+. The C+ stood out and it seemed as if it was the only thing I could see on the page. I got a text from my mom about an hour later telling me to give her a call. I prepared for the worse and I wouldn’t have been surprised if she drove up to Hebron just to murder me. I told my roommate Chen that if I went missing in the next couple days, tell the cops it was my mom.
As the phone rung I prayed that it would go to voicemail. Sure enough she picked up last second greeting me calmly and asked how I was doing. We talked about the next time I was going home and she somehow slipped in a question about my grades. I told her I got A’s and B’s, but she knew I was lying. She said I forgot to mention that I got a C+. After about 10 minutes of her constantly yelling at me I could only make out a few words. She kept repeating the phrase “Why am I paying all this money if you could go to school at home for free”. This phrase could sum up my whole high school career up to now because I hear it six times a year and this is exactly how many report cards come out a year.
The pressure is a constant but it comes in different sizes. The pressure usually doesn’t come into full effect until after midterms. That’s usually when I have to work my hardest to get my grades up to my parents expectations. They always tell me that public school is looking better and better everyday. This pushes me, but not as much as it should. I’ve always set my standard to be a little better than average but not great. This way I could get away with doing the bare minimum while still maintaining average grades. I always found excuses but as soon as my sister got to school they were no longer there. My sister set the bar way too high so I lost that drive.
The public school threats could also be known as fear because the concept would be so new to me. I feel like I would be out of place and it would be a step back in my life. This caused me to try and a little bit harder in my classes over the past two terms. All my friends back home call me Hebron and the thought of walking in there would be embarrassing. Even the fear of future pressure has an affect on how I live my life in regard to my parents.
This essay relates to the novel The Things They Carried. It talks about the endless amounts of pressure my parents put on me in terms of how I do in school. This piece if filled with humor. I did not end this essay the way I would have liked but if I had included a better ending it would have been one of my favorite pieces.
This piece is really funny in a passive aggressive, ironic way. You tell the story in detail but also subtly which makes the reader think about what you are trying to convey. Maybe if you worked harder on showing instead of telling in some spots you could enhance the overall point of your story.
This is a really great essay and I specifically can relate to this. I once had to face the the fears of public school for my freshmans year. I feel like if you added more dialogue on the phone call with your mother, that paragraph could’ve been even stronger and funnier. Overall, great paper and good job with the assignment.
It was one of the most interesting essays I listened to all year. I like the way you spoke about the expectations your parents had for you and the impact it has had on your life. It is so real and we see this in the world today. Society places a lot of expectations on us by disregarding our individual capabilities.
This was really funny. I wrote my own piece on the thing that I carry about something far more personal and I wish that I had written in a more funny nature. Hope that the pressure keeps up! Great Job!
Daniel, I agree with your assessment that you lose some of the momentum of this piece in the conclusion. I also think you edited the final draft you you shared with the class a little more carefully than the version you’ve included here. That said, your classmates are very receptive to your work here and they’ve given you lots of constructive and thoughtful feedback.