Last summer while I was in LA doing my internship, I heard
John Kobara tell me and my fellow interns to
stop listening to our parents and he gave us a few pointers on how to get them off our backs to boot. After that meeting, I joked to my fellow
intern Monica that I was already on the right track because I never listened to
my parents.
As kids, we were always told that we were young and should
listen to our parents because they knew better due to their experience. Of course, this applied doubly since I was
Asian. Do get me wrong, this is great
advice when you are say 12 but I realize now it is no longer naïve to think
that I know more than my parents. It is
not arrogance that has led me to say this, but rather something that I have
concluded after listening to “guidance” from my parents that was either
inconsistent with the times or simply out of their area of expertise.
I have always had a hearing impediment to my parents’
advice, but it was not until my winter quarter in sophomore year in college
that I made a conscious effort to divorce myself from my parents’
guidance. That was the year that I
decided to completely drop my Economics double major because it was making me
miserable. I had taken up the additional
major due to my mom essentially telling me that with my Anthropology degree I
would graduate with no job prospects (little does she know Economics also does
not offer a skill set that employers are looking for). It was at that point that I realized my parents
did not know what was best for me.
So what is the problem? I already decided I was no longer
under parents’ influence, case closed right?
Well, not exactly, because later that sophomore year, I made a
commitment to reconnect with my family, I have been finding myself straying
from my independent thinking that has served me so well. As a sort of good will gesture, I have
started placing weight into the advice that they give me, which in turn has
caused me doubt myself. This became a
real problem during my search for summer internships.
I turned to my dad to help me find an internship, due to the
fact that I was in Shanghai at the time.
Everything appeared to be going well, my mom told me that he was sending
my resume out and getting responses and assurances. My mom told me not to worry and that for sure
they would find me something. My
skepticism increased dramatically when my dad got back to me with jobs that
were extremely technical and seemingly as far from the marketing department as
possible. In the end, the whole finding
me an internship through connections turned out to be a flop, leaving me
scrambling to find something, anything that I could add to my resume.
The trouble continued once I got my first interview at a
startup. My dad scoffed after the
interview when I told him that if I got $10 an hour I would be happy. He told me I was silly to expect that kind of
money since interns at VMWare and Cisco were making around $25 an hour and that
the startup’s pay had to be competitive to that. I am not sure why I trusted him at that point
about the pay, because it certainly made no sense! Why would I expect a multibillion dollar company
to pay at the same rate as a startup with just $50,000 in seed funding? When
the offer came and it was $10 an hour like I had expected, my dad did not say
anything, perhaps he realized the folly of his reasoning.
My interview with the startup that gave me the offer went
very well. I really enjoyed talking to
the founders and had a strong hunch that we would work well together. I had another interview scheduled, but in
reality I had made up my mind. The other
startup interviewing me would have had to be beyond amazing to even get me
considering to join them. In essence, my
heart was pretty much set on where I wanted to be for the summer, there was
just this feeling that the first startup was where I needed to be.
When I told my parents this, they panicked. They told me to not rush the decision and
wait for the other interview (something I was going to do anyway) and for the
second time I listened to them. I
started doubting my own hunch about where I should be and began wondering if I
was being a fool who was rushing in. The
second interview came and it was a disaster, the founder was cold and generally
gave off this attitude that she did not give a shit whether I came onboard or
not. Immediately when the second
interview ended, I wanted to call up the first startup and tell them “I ACCEPT!”
However, my parent’s words about caution and thinking things through started
creeping in from the back of my mind.
Once again, I was doubting my own judgment and hesitating on what I felt
was the right course of action.
In my doubt came anger and then shame. I felt that I was betraying myself by not
following my own intuition which has served me so well for so long. I had always blazed my own path and marched
to the tune of my own drummer, yet here I was making the most important
decision of possibly the year and doubting myself because of my parents. A shameful moment indeed.
After this epiphany, I picked up the phone, dialed my mom
and told her I was going to accept the offer the next day. She tried to tell me not to rush the
decision, but I was having none of it, my mind was made up. My choice, once again ended up being the
correct one as I am currently having the best internship experience of my
life.
Morale of the story? Understand that being close to your
family does not mean that you have to listen to them.
-muffinman
