The heavy weight of expectations ...

A chorus of voices out there will tell you to follow your passion. Free yourself from the expectations of others and listen to your heart, follow your bliss, chase your dreams.

In many ways, it is good advice. Some of the most compelling 650 blog posts have joined this clarion call for pursuing your passion in life.

Molly Lavin, who graduated in 2017 and is in her sophomore year at Brown, doesn’t disagree. But she does recognize that it’s not as easy as it seems to follow your heart.

For one, some people don’t have driving passions. For another, it can be hard to know whether or not something qualifies as a passion. (As Stephen Colbert says, “Thankfully, dreams can change. If we'd all stuck with our first dream, the world would be overrun with cowboys and princesses.”) Then, of course, there is the biggest deterrent of all: the heavy weight of expectations. That’s what Molly writes about here.

Molly is making the most of her time at Brown, where she studies Political Science and Gender and Sexuality Studies. She is also a Sexual Assault Peer Educator (SAPE) and Sexual Health Awareness Group Peer Educator (SHAG). For both, she leads workshops to a variety of communities like Greek life, athletic teams, clubs, and residence halls on topics ranging from contraception, STI destigmatization, mental health and sex, and how to prevent gender-based harm in the Brown community. “I am loving Brown and am constantly inspired by my peers and faculty who are incredibly intelligent, compassionate, and innovative,” she said.

In her post, Molly offers some practical advice about how to move purposefully forward with those heavy expectations strapped to your back. “It’s about how to navigate the overwhelming pressure that young adults and students endure due to the sacrifices that their community make in order for them to have access to opportunities like higher education or high paying jobs.”

- C.H.

I have often considered writing a book on my parents. Two high-school dropouts who managed to leave their small, remote towns, travel the world, and work their way up to be exceptionally successful business-owners.

I love my parents more than anything, and their stories are what drive and inspire me on a daily basis. However, it wasn’t until this year that I realized how heavy their accomplishments weigh on me. I felt this constant pressure to recognize and repay all of the opportunities they had given to me through their infinite sacrifices. This dilemma highlights the universal dichotomy that everyone faces: wanting to craft a life around your own passions but also seeking to profit off of your education and gather the skills necessary to earn the highest paying jobs. There is a reason that the introductory Computer Science and Economics courses are the most popular at my university.

My and so many of my peers’ education has become a public good. One that my parents, teachers, friends, family members, mentors, and countless others have invested an extraordinary amount of time and energy into producing. With that mindset, how could anyone feel assured in following their wildest ambitions? My humanities friends are double majoring so that they don’t “waste their degrees.” My STEM friends are refraining from pursuing careers in social justice to sell out to companies with the biggest brand names. I am surrounded by geniuses whose skills are reduced to developing apps that equate intimacy with a single swipe.

This mindset is not new. A quick visit to the Parker Lower School and you can see a handful of students already donning the brand name of “top-tier institutions.” With annual tuition price almost tripling that of a new car, how can students not feel pressured to attain exemplary grades, extracurriculars, recommendations, etc. to repay this enormous investment?

This mentality cements itself in high school. My junior year at Parker proved to be the most detrimental year of my life. I had an extremely harsh transition in the caliber of my courses; I tripled my extracurricular count; I started prepping for college applications. It was this mindset that triggered my spiral: the days where I couldn’t get out of bed or off the kitchen floor; the pervasive hopelessness stemming from my failure to accomplish everything that I thought was expected of me. Upon reflection, I am not surprised by the decisions that I made. I saw all of the sacrifices my parents were making, not only to fund my education but also to ensure I had access to every resource and opportunity Parker had to offer. I watched my teachers exert a tremendous amount of energy into not just lesson planning but also mentoring students—like me. I can’t count how many hours I spent on their couches while they empowered me with advice, support, and direction to foster my educational success.

Since graduating from Parker, I have realized that education does not and should not be seen as a mechanism for churning out the most efficient students, but instead, as a tool to produce the change-makers we need to solve the infinite problems we face today. I wish I could tell my high school self to pursue classes and extracurriculars that inspired me, not just the ones that I thought would look best on a college application. Success shouldn’t be determined by your college acceptance rate or the number of zeros on your first paycheck. I wish I would have recognized that I am not required to be flawless just because I am a product of the love and support of so many others. The people who invested in me were not doing so for me to work an inconsequential job to afford meaningless things. Instead, they fostered my desire to pursue what I love and harness those ambitions to make a difference in my community.

I cannot claim that I have never felt the pull toward a comfortable life; the classic underclassmen cliche of finance or consulting as a backup plan. I have contemplated postponing my desire to change the world until I have a financial safety net. I recognize that not everyone has the financial privilege to pay off student loans or steadily transition into the ~real world~. But that does not mean we need to sacrifice all of our moral obligations to work for a bank that helped cause the financial crisis or code for a company that has been a platform for hate speech and propaganda.

I hope, when the fall of the senior year of college rolls around and countless students start receiving offers from megacorporations that can immediately offer the comfort of high-paying jobs, we can all deviate from this path and embrace the insecurity of what life has to offer. I can feel this becoming cliched, and I am not asking everyone to dedicate their lives to a purely morally righteous cause. Instead, recognize that it is our responsibility to help create the world we want to see. If we want to live in a country where every citizen has access to quality healthcare and education, where gun violence isn’t an everyday occurrence, and where our environment is protected, we have the agency to decide who and what we support.