My Version of the Family Culture

Armed with the strong belief and worked hard. After a series of successes, I found
myself in a French classroom participating in a class of Linear Algebra. I did not like
what I was learning, but I considered myself to be a representative of all the people
that encouraged and believed in my abilities. I thought that it would be a selfish to
pursue a different career because I would be listening to my inner ‘irresponsible’
needs. Imaginary social pressure and encouragement made me believe that staying the
course was the right thing to do.

The attitude that anything was possible and that ‘failure is not an option’ appeared to
be a liberating force, but it also limited my imagination, and did not allow me to take
risks. There was constant support, encouragement and reward for performance, as
well as negative reinforcement for failure, disobedience and disorganization (fertile
ground for cognitive dissonance). In high school, I at one time disliked mathematics
because I was not good at it and that was acceptable to me because every other
member of my class was not good at it (group culture). With pressure from my family
and some hard work, I was able to excel in mathematics by the end of my time in
high school. This external justification caused me not to focus on the internal
inconsistency within myself. Also, the promise of other socially attractive benefits
such as respect, social status, and financial success was at the root of the dissonance
that prevented me from acting on my displeasure with my career path at the time.

1 This and other such stories serve to explain and communicate how things and why things are done within a cultural group - family