
From NYC to Harvard: The War on Asian Success - ghosh
http://nypost.com/2015/12/29/from-nyc-to-harvard-the-war-on-asian-success/
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mxhuang
I'm a second generation Asian American (parents immigrated from China), but I
have mixed feelings about the obsessive culture around academics. Of course
it's good to succeed in school, but being so narrowly focused can produce
unbalanced individuals. Back in high school, I felt like a machine whose sole
purpose was to work myself to death by achieving higher and higher. I came
home with a 2390 SAT score and my mom asked why it wasn't a 2400. There were
times where I was planning to just kill myself to escape from it all, which is
a common sentiment in the nation's top high schools.

In the end, all that pressure wasn't worth it at all. I burned out hard and
suffered for it. Now I'm trying to find the right balance in my life, which
has meant rejecting some parts of my upbringing and becoming more of what I
want personally.

~~~
lazyant
Yes, the other side of the story:
[http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/12/the-
sili...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/12/the-silicon-
valley-suicides/413140/)

