Decisions, Decisions

We all make a lot of decisions in our lives. That sounds so typical. What I really mean is that we make decisions about who our friends are. This effects who we become. It effects our choices when it comes to our majors. A bit of a stretch, but let me explain.

As I've mentioned, I used to live in California. Northern California. Silicon Valley, if you must know, but I won't get more specific than that. I went to public school. I've always gone to public school. Well, save for preschool, but that's never public, it's glorified babysitting. I digress. My point with this is that my friends in Silicon Valley were very typical students in Silicon Valley with very typical families in Silicon Valley. Their parents are business men and women, people who work for Yahoo and eBay. They are engineers who work for IBM and Google. They are doctors and medical researchers. This is what I grew up in. A competitive region where you are only as good as your SAT score. Where your friends help you, but secretly pray that you just bombed the latest test. Where AP classes are expected to be taken and aced (IB had yet to break onto the scene, but I am sure it is comparable to AP). Where if an AP class is unavailable an honors course will suffice. Where, by the age of 16, you have your life pretty much set. You know what you want. You know how you will get there. Your parents support this. Your friends support it.

Most of my friends had dreams of becoming successful in ways very similar to their parents. And now that we are in college, most are starting on the path that will lead them to this dream. Some are business majors. Some are computer science majors. Some are engineering majors. Some are biology and chemistry majors in preparation for medical school post graduation. The few that took the arts path want to end up in video game design. I cannot think of a single person who is not planning to graduate with a bachelors degree in more than four years, even if they are double majoring.

Please compare this to the two states in the Midwest where I now have friends. The environment is the same. Their parents are doctors and medical researchers and business men and women and engineers. We had SAT tutors and competed against each other for the top spots in everything academic. Yet, for some reason I can't explain, most are undecided. They want to join fraternities and sororities. Most have a desire to be in the liberal arts. Some want to be successful entrepreneurs. There are the handful that want to be doctors or engineers, but these are far and few between.

The overall environment is the same. The upbringing is similar. So why such dramatically different results? Where did my friends from the Midwest make that choice, that decision, to stray away from the path their parents laid out for them? I can't answer these questions for them, nor do I wish to. I do wish that my Midwest friends could be the same way as my California friends. I think the world would be better off with more driven people.