Pressure. There's peer pressure, family pressure, and pressure from other areas. Today, let's talk about family pressure. From when I was a child I was never really pressured to do anything by my parents as I generally did well in my studies and was responsible for the most part. However, many friends that I have met in school receive immense pressure from their parents, especially when it comes to studying and grades. It is well known that Asian parents tend to have high expectations of their children to get the best grades and go to the best university to then hopefully get a great job so they would be successful. Due to this, many Asian children undergo a lot of stress to perform well. Well, here is why my Asian parents don't pressure me and my siblings a lot. My dad said, 'Personally, it's nice to hear our children mention that we, as parents, don't pressure them a lot. But, I'm not sure if that's the absolute truth or if they're pressured to just say so. However, we do our best to influence them to become the best version of themselves and I'm sure at times that comes off as pressure. It's never an easy journey but it's worth every bit of effort. When I was young, I don't remember being pressured very much too and that probably influenced how I want to treat our children. I remember the pressure came from myself more because I wanted to make my parents feel proud of me in areas of education, sports, and other achievements. When parents want us to do something like sleep early, we resist but we didn't have many distractions like mobile phones, music, games and etc. It's a different environment nowadays, so, parents need to be more vigilant and creative.' I don't know if this applies to my siblings, but most of the pressure I have is from myself. I have expectations for myself and get upset at myself if I don't meet them. And I have come to realize that this is also because I want recognition that I am doing well and to make my parents proud. However, sometimes maybe I just set the bar too high. I often end up sleeping past midnight to work extra hard on certain assignments to top the class and push myself to my limits sometimes. Just recently, I worked on an assignment from 8pm to 2am and accidentally fell asleep because I was exhausted. It would've paid off if I got the grade I wanted, but when I received my results, I wasn't satisfied. I realized that even though I worked so hard, it didn't pay off and was not worth it. My dad said, 'If you meet someone's expectations, it's expected. And if you don't, it is seen as a bad thing. However, what if you repeatedly not meeting the expectations is not because of your personal capabilities but because the expectations set are too high?' The takeaway from my past experiences is that meeting expectation is a good thing and exceeding them is better, but don't bash yourself up just because you didn't meet the expectations. There are many more opportunities and failing one time doesn't mean that you won't succeed in what you want to achieve in the future.