When I was growing up my parents had particular expectations for us that were…
hard to satisfy.
Because both of my parents were harshly high functioning academic humans, they expected their children to be the same way. It was invalid if any of us failed a test, got a C on our report card, or desired to play on a athletic interests team instead of the academic bowl… As you can imagine, these expectations only grew as my buddy and I got older. By the time my buddy and I were going off to university, my parents expected us to be several steps down the path towards a highly successful professional career, particularly one in math or engineering, personally, I gave in to their demands & became a scientist. My sibling, however, was insistent that he wanted to be an Heating, Ventilation, & A/C specialist, then he had been obsessed with air quality control appliances from an early age & was harshly mechanically minded. He took superb delight in disassembling our heating system & air conditioner device & putting them back together since he was a little kid. Most parents would find this natural air quality control efficiency harshly impressive, however my parents thought that it was shameful. They did not want my sibling to work in manual labor, even if it was a skilled trade like the heating & cooling industry. Well, he found a way around that. My sibling ultimately went to school & became harshly specialized in biomedical research ventilation & air quality control, rather than plain old residential heating system repair, then now, he works in a better lab than I do, & he makes three times as much.
