How I Broke My Parents’ Hearts By Following My Own
Once, my dream was to make my parents proud.
I don’t think I ever knew what that meant because parents are complicated, even more so when they’re not your average South Indian immigrants raising a child in the United States. To be fair, Mom isn’t as complicated as Dad; Mom’s been proud and supportive of me since the day I was born, so at least I had one parent down.
To give you a sense of how important this was to me, there’s a Sanskrit phrase that I heard over and over again while growing up: Mata, pita, guru, deivam. Mother, Father, teacher, God. That was the order in which Hindus are taught to show obedience and respect.
For much of my childhood, the best way I knew how to be respectful was by being obedient. That meant turning down sleepover invitations, skipping out on school dances and not wearing dresses or shorts because my parents thought it was inappropriate.
There was that, and of course Dad wanted me to do well in school, but his expectations didn’t go too far past wanting me to make straight A’s (which I never did). While my peers juggled school, performed in color guard and marching band, danced Bharatnatyam and sang carnatic music, I stayed home and felt overwhelmingly average.
Back in 12th grade, I once offhandedly mentioned that I might be interested in becoming a doctor. Dad shut me down: “We don’t have the money to send you to medical school in the United States.”
So I bit my tongue and went to a university that I was indifferent about and lived with my parents for the four years it took me to complete my degree in molecular biology. I quietly loathed all pre-med students.
Around my sophomore year, I announced to my family that I would be working in a lab as a research assistant. I’d met a fantastic molecular genetics professor who was willing to mentor me. I liked science but I’d never entertained the idea of being an actual research scientist; considering how small the research community was at my university, this was an opportunity that I’d be stupid to turn down.
But Dad was skeptical. “Won’t it get in the way of your classes?” he asked. “What if your GPA slips? Won’t it delay your graduation? How will this help you become more marketable?” He hinted heavily that I should major in computer science. CS graduates got jobs right out of college with six-figure starting salaries. The world would be eating out of the hands of computer engineers.
It became clear that parents’ “dream” for me never went beyond “please get a job right out of college and then get married.” And not just any job — the kind of job that would allow me to be financially secure as fast as possible. Obviously, that was a prerequisite I had to fulfill before they could look for a husband for me.
I didn’t get it. Why didn’t they encourage me to try for bigger, better opportunities? It was totally at odds with the immigrant dream. Didn’t my family come to the U.S. because it was the land of opportunities?
I was disconcerted but luckily I could do what I wanted without too much trouble. I had a full merit scholarship to pursue the degree and research that interested me and a mentor who urged me to dream bigger than the cut-and-dry life my parents envisioned for me. I started to get a little ambitious. I presented my research and student conferences and won prizes. I taught Chemistry as a student instructor and earned my first real paycheck.
“Aim higher, Archana,” my research mentor urged. “You could graduate from an Ivy League school with a PhD.” So I dreamt of being a scientist. I’d be a charismatic professor at a top-tier university, a leader in the STEM field! A positive role model and mentor to women all over the nation! I’d revolutionize science education!
Dad was aghast. Five-to-seven more years of school? “Are you sure you’d even be accepted into a PhD program?” That stung, but what rankled me even more was his suggestion that I would be less marriageable because I’d be more educated than most men.
Let me pause to say that at this point in my life, I was having serious doubts about how much I should be following my parents’ wishes. Mata, pita, guru, deivam. It was terribly, terribly difficult to rebel. It went against all the ideals of duty to the family that I had grown up with. And I loved my parents, of course. Every time they expressed displeasure or worry, I felt like I was being stabbed. And in retrospect, my parents’ dream for me — a job after college (financial security) and marriage (familial stability) — wasn’t at all trivial. Dad never missed an opportunity to tell me about how he didn’t have enough money to buy new shoes or how my uncle studied for his university exams by the light of one candle. Dad wanted me to have not “just enough,” but “more than enough” for the rest of my life. The best way he knew how to make this happen was to get me a good job and get me married to a good man.
The problem was, listening to my parents no longer meant simply dressing the way they wanted me to dress or staying home when I wanted to go out. My actions now would lay the foundations of the rest of my life.
So, in an act of profound defiance, I paid for my GREs and graduate school applications out of my pocket. I applied to schools that Dad wouldn’t have believed I had the ability to be invited to interview at, let alone be accepted into.
Funnily enough, when I told Dad that I was accepted into the Biosciences PhD program at Stanford and fully funded by a grant from the National Institutes of Health, I saw it as an act of rebellion. Far from getting upset, Dad’s fears and doubts about my future vanished practically overnight. I became the golden child of the family. He started introducing me to friends and colleagues and distant relatives as “my daughter Archana, the one doing her PhD at Stanford.” My family — who once would’ve never entertained the thought of my living independently, unmarried — bragged to extended family about how incredible it was that I was living by myself! And doing research! At Stanford!
I wish I could stop now and tell you that I graduated from Stanford with my PhD, continued being my family’s pride and joy and fell in love with a man my parents set me up with. Fulfilling two dreams with one stone, so to speak. But in the three years that I spent at Stanford, slowly but surely, something dark ate away at me. Research wasn’t as I thought it would be. I started skipping classes and fell behind in my research, nearly failing two classes because I didn’t turn in assignments. Everything about my life in Palo Alto felt gray and flavorless. In the three years I spent there, I subsisted on little else than the praises of my parents, extended family and family friends. In my second year of graduate school, I was already certain that I didn’t want to pursue academic science as a career; staying in the PhD program at Stanford started feeling more and more like being forced to wear a very attractive shoe that didn’t quite fit. Life become unbelievably painful, and as I struggled to appear cheerful and hardworking to my parents, I slipped further and further into depression.
And then I knew: I wanted to achieve just one dream in my life — not making my parents proud, not becoming a scientist, or pursuing anything other specific profession. I wanted to be happy. In retrospect, even my decision to apply to graduate school was driven by happiness; I truly believed that I would be happier pursuing the path of an academic, rather than following my parents’ alternative of getting a ho-hum job and a husband. But as it happened, I was very, very unhappy in graduate school and didn’t see myself becoming any happier in the future.
So, I left. Without once talking to my parents about it. It was the first time in my life I made a major decision by myself. Dad may have conveniently overlooked my applying and getting accepted into Stanford behind his back, but my quitting? He was stunned almost beyond belief and… well, a lot of not-so-great things transpired as a result. I lost my parents’ trust; they lost their bragging rights. I was accused of being selfish, for not thinking of what the rest of my extended family might say when they found out. The most crushing thing? Hearing Dad say that my pursuit of happiness wasn’t a good enough reason for to quit.
Mata, pita, guru, deivam. Part of me will always want to make my parents proud, but I need to do what makes me happy, even if it breaks them to pieces. Or else I won’t be cherishing the life they gave me. Maybe one day Mom and Dad will understand that and be proud of me anyway.
