dentafryian

Hello everyone, I will be attending Cornell for Statistics. Any advice as to what type of car to get?

Being the child of first generation immigrants, I am one of the relatively lucky ones. My father got a BA back in China, my mother dropped out of middle school to support her three younger siblings. I don't even want to describe the incredible difficulties they had to go through to even establish a life for us here in the United States. As a result, my father had to give up a pretty comfortable lifestyle back in China to be the owner of a liquor store here, working 10-12 hours a day. The reason I say I'm lucky is because my parents have never burdened me with the stress of having to cover living expenses the entire time I was an undergraduate (I currently go to a public university so I only have around 10k debt for the past 4 years of tuition). I did not have to work part-time jobs to support my family, thereby allowing me to explore my options in college and concentrate on my grades. Sometimes I wonder how I could have made it through as a undergraduate with so little money-managing skills. Props to those on this forum who have overcome so much more (mentally, financially and psychologically); you have my deepest respect. I guess I just wanted remind ourselves of the effort and hard-work our parents have put in to set us on the paths that have led us here. With that said, however, it was pretty damn difficult having parents who spoke little to no English. Like so many of you, I had no help whatsoever when it came time to apply to colleges. My parents knew of Harvard and Stanford, and their idea of the realm of education consisted of "you be a doctor, you no speak good for a lawyer." To this day, I am not so sure my parents understand what my majors mean - economics just means "accounting" and they simply gave up trying to pronounce "statistics." I feel that I could have easily sidestepped many of the academic potholes if I had just a little bit more direction. Entering college intent on the political science major, it was not exactly a smooth transition to math/stat/econ, having almost failed my lower division courses here and nearly given up along the way. But when I got received the funded offer for a Ms/PhD, all that seemed to have melted away. I think I may even have waltzed a little. But I guess that is what really unifies us under this thread. We have always been on our own. We don't go running back to our parents, lamenting our woes, not because they don't care, but because they simply don't understand. We can't fall back on our rich uncle Jack for jobs/money because we don't have relatives who speak English. We can't discuss career options with our parents because, well, their choices were limited back in [insert underdeveloped country]. At the same time, we feel as if we are it, the solitary array of hope from our family. Our parents' sacrifices add pressure to the need to justify them with our success. I am fortunate to not have been embittered by the number of times my friends would talk about their Europe trips or their impressive internships at daddy's firm. Sometimes my friends would tell me that I work too hard, or that a B is really not that bad of a grade. But then I think about my father getting up at 5am to open shop, and those words just don't seem to resonant. All I can say is "holy crap" to those of us who have made it to our goals; it sure took an incredible amount of resolve and, whether or not we would like to admit it, luck that we should be grateful for.