“Start making money, student!”

Peer Pressure in Disguise

How do you define “peer pressure”? I looked up on Google and found that Dictionary.com defines peer pressure as:

social pressure by members of one’s peer group to take a certain action, adopt certain values, or otherwise conform in order to be accepted.

Most culture interprets peer pressure as a negative force that makes teenagers doing things—like free sex or drugs—simply for the sake of social acceptance. But what if, something that we often consider as a positive action can give the same negative effect of peer pressure to certain people?

Let me tell my story.

I started my third year in college with a vision that I should stop joining club and focus instead on how to make more money. Inside my circle of friends, most of my peers have been earning money since their freshmen or sophomore year. They take teaching jobs or several paid side projects.

One of them once told me, “You can’t forever do things for free. People will take you for granted. What’s the point of always doing things voluntarily?”

My friend’s statement kind of smacked me awake, so I thought it was time to get real. I started to look for part time jobs on Internet. I found a writing job that required me to write 5 — 8 content articles per day. I decided to give it a try so I sent my portfolio to the employer.

Several days later, I got a phone call from the employer. She was just a college student like me, and she have like this kind of “agency” that provides contents for various websites. She told me she likes my writing and she would like to offer me the job. She then gave me one last test: writing two content articles in 5 hours with specific keywords she gave.

But things don’t really work out the way I planned them to be. Turned out, writing articles—which topics are not aligned with my interest—are not that easy. I really wanted the money, but somehow I did not want to sacrifice my so-called “comfort zone”: the zone where I simply have to do my college assignments, join clubs, read and write anything I want.

I ended up turning the job down but I was afraid I couldn’t cope up with it.

That night I called my best friend, in a state of mind and heart where I almost cried. I told her that I really wanted to take a job, but I ended up turning it down because I felt like I don’t want to lose my spare times. She gave a really good advice. She told me that I was experiencing peer pressure (something I thought was only related to negative things). My best friend, who knows me so well, figured out that I wanted to make more money, partly because I looked up to my college peers who already had jobs.

She didn’t blame me for wanting to have more money. It’s just that the way I make money doesn’t have to be by doing things I’m not really into. On the phone at that time of tiring evening, she said, “Every job must have its tiring, no-fun part. But there’s a difference between ‘tiring’ and ‘torturing’. I’m sure you’re capable enough to tell and feel the differences.”

My conversation with her convinced me that it was the right decision to turn down that part-time job. Happiness is the key of life. And my happiness comes from my quality time of writing and reading fiction and watching TV series. Other people sacrifice those things for money, but things work out differently for me. “You can not adjust your lifestyle to others’,” my friend said.

So at the end I do what I always love to do: taking part in clubs. I took part in a student club as the content writer for its marketing activities. I feel that I can learn from the process and I can learn from the people. Maybe it’s not yet the time to make money. Maybe I still gotta learn, while figuring out how to pursue my initial vision.

At the end, we can not deny our nature, the exact thing that keeps us alive. Working, together with that feeling of contributing and taking part of something important, is always what makes me feel worthy of my existence. Besides, in order to write and craft some words, I need to feel alive. That’s what I’m currently pursuing: things that make me feel alive.

Things work out well, and even better, although are not in a way I planned it to be.