But for every Asian American student at Mission who gets on the same stereotypical fast track through stress to success, there is a non-Asian student who is under just as much pressure from his parents and himself, and several Asian Americans who defy stereotypes and have their priorities in different aspects of life. Many of my peers couldn’t care less about becoming doctors and lawyers and use the pressure they can feel around them to fuel their artistic talent or pursue music instead. What I mean is, the stress surrounding MSJ’s student life is not a myth, but neither is it the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but.

I don’t approve of all the stress that the Mission environment places on its students, but it really is a good school, and shouldn’t be defined solely by being the archetype of everything that is unhealthy about the work- and success-driven Asian American culture. I’m tired of all the news agencies looking for a story and zeroing in on my high school in order to prove that STRESS IS BAD!!! Of course stress isn’t healthy, and of course Asian American students are under a lot of it. But we deal with it, and whether or not Mission SOS (the student organization that made the Grace Lee video, which was only founded my Senior year) really does help the students, the students themselves are smart enough to deal with it and not suffer mental breakdowns.

Also, it is generally agreed among Mission students that the CNN report on Asian students being smarter was absolutely ridiculous and did nothing but further negative stereotypes against MSJ as a school.

When students at Mission graduate and get out of the Fremont/Bay Area bubble, they’ll discover what the real world is like, and it’ll be tough for some to adjust. But at least they will, and they’ll grow up just like I’m still growing up and learning, and realize for themselves what is really worth more in life: grades or LIVING. Until then, the national competition to get into college is predicted to peak this year and then settle, and generations of Asian Americans with less culturally conservative parents are reaching high school age, as current high school students learn their own limits and relax… and life goes on.

I think these Asian schools are turning into college prep high schools. At other high schools, you have most people getting jobs and getting pregnant. I don’t see how going to a school dominated by Asians is any more stressful than going to say Phillips Academy in Andover. As for cheating, everybody cheats. Premeds cheat to get into medical school. People cheat to get into business school. The only advice I would give your kids is that you better not catch them cheating.

When I was at a majority Asian high school in San Francisco, I didn’t remember it being so stressful, but I never got 4.0s either. My parents didn’t pressure me in school, but they weren’t too happy when I got rejected by a lot of colleges. I do recognize that times are changing too. When I went to kindergarten, I did not know my ABCs or other things like that, but now kids in good neighborhoods are expected to know those.

The source of the stress is peer pressure. A kid told me that he feels stupid when the other Asians ask him about his grades and they think he’s dumb when he gets a B, since a B = bad on the Asian grading scale as stated above. When the Asian kid goes home with a B, the parent says you can do better next time. When the White kid goes home with a B, they go out and celebrate. In China you get beaten until you can’t sit for being #2. Parents want their children to have a good education in order to surmount the bamboo ceiling. An Asian person can’t even teach English in China if they wanted to. You need to be white to teach English in China according to some 8asian post.

Cupertino is hilarious with the all the wealthy Asian engineering and business people. The kids there call it the CPT, but the CPT I know is Compton. Rest in Peace, Eazy-E.