Mohammad Bazal

9/13/2022

Professor Oliva Wood 

Unit 1: This I No Longer Believe

Illusions 

Growing up in a Pakistani family meant having parents with great expectations, academically and culturally. The norm that my parents are accustomed to is that their child having good grades in school will lead them to becoming an engineer, a doctor or a lawyer because those are the professions that make a healthy living. These ideas instilled to my siblings and I created a standard that others would see as a reach-  having perfect scores going to any ivy league and ultimately going to law and med school. As the youngest in the family I couldn’t believe my brother’s journey from a public school to an ivy school while he still went out, played sports with his friends, and had time to play video games too. These observations lead me to believe that the society’s norms are just illusions.

Going into middle school there was a sense of responsibility of doing all the homework and getting all the work in because if you didn’t you would fall back, the idea of school has always been trying to get the best grade or even getting a passing grade to move forward. Chasing these high grades has always been the priority which influenced cheating. You would always look around the room during the test and people would either be cheating with other people or even online. It wasn’t that these people didn’t know the material, it was the pressure of getting a 100 and being the best so you can go to a specialized high school that led them to cheat no matter what to guarantee success. When going into these high schools cheating was even more prevalent, everyone wanted to go into good colleges and associated college with their wage. 

  I too always cared about grades and made it my personality. I used to study for every test and right after I received a high grade I would start studying for the next test and forget about the last. I used to come home and show my report card to my parents and them praising me would be my dopamine. Something to prove was always my motive whether it was my siblings, parents or even my classmates. Showing society that I was successful just because I was doing good in school and that would keep translating as I progressed through the years. 

Now that I am in college, I finally understand that knowledge is what makes a person successful, it doesn’t matter how much you study just for a test and forget it after a year. It’s about gaining and building knowledge, if you cheated you cheated yourself in the future. Someone who cheated in a math beginning course could never keep going without cheating because without the basics you would be lost. This applies to working as well. You go into a job with an entry level and the return offer is off the work you do rather than some tests. Tests should be practiced if you have the knowledge in the field. 

Everyone wants you to believe that doing good in school has a direct relationship with success but as you can see with the top 1 percent build their own wealth with things that weren’t taught in school such as how to create your business or even having an online presence to build your brand. Examples of this is that all of the top 10 richest people in the world own business and made their name and brand out of nothing. The time you spend worrying about others can be used to create something unique and become the person you always dreamt of. It ok though, ,ajority have these misconceptions, a piece of paper shouldn’t be your degree or validation as personal skills get you places in life. Personally as a computer science major I know that these a+ in classes that aren’t related to computer science won’t help me in the real setting and I should have realized this before in high school and in my free time would have started coding to learn and expand my knowledge. The illusion of school is really dangerous. It puts your mind in a cycle that you wake up at the same time everyday, go to the same classes five days a week, do homework when you come home and the free time before sleep is for your free time. The weekend is for the family as your parents and you are off work so you can hangout for two days. That 7 day schedule is your life from the ages of 4-18 you learned how to follow rules and believed that you were ahead in life by doing these things. Nowhere in that schedule did you gain any skills and knowledge to use in the real world. You are always considered a child and suddenly you become an adult at a random age in the 20s. 

Breaking out this cycle of illusions thrown by the world is what helps you self evaluate and you decide how you want to spend your time and efforts to change the world or even have self goals is the key for self discovery. Everyone will tell you what to do because they have been told what to do in which you will break this cycle. As a freshman in college this cycle was ultimately broken as I got to choose my classes and when my free time is to go to the gym, study while having free time for entertainment and most importantly time to hone my skills and knowledge in the computer science field. Working as your own boss makes you think out of the norm and at the end of the day you realize that the future is near and without planning you will fall into the cycle of a 9-5 that doesn’t pay enough for all your desires because you never put the work in.

It doesn’t take an ivy league degree or validation from people to start becoming a learner rather than someone worrying about the next test you have. If you just think about all the graduates from your school in your field you need to understand how people pick the needle out the haystack, you have to be unique. Having a degree at columbia and having a degree at ccny with extra circulars such as apps and websites can have the same value and end up working at the same place. You shouldn’t blame your circumstances as a learner because at the end of the day everything is online and in books so the only person holding yourself back is you even if the world thinks you are a straight A student you know whether it’s from cheating or studying or actually knowing the material.