I was very far ahead of my high school classmates, and by third year I was practically already in university, because I was spending so much time at the University of Toronto libraries. I actually could have entered university after the third year of high school, but my father forbade me from doing so because he disapproved of my academic plans. I had wanted to study computer science and physics (especially astrophysics), with a smattering of courses in religion and history, which I could have done by entering a flexible program with a small workload and then choosing my own courses. I was preparing myself to fill a niche for scientists who could communicate with both computer scientists and physicists, while being in a position to take advantage of the career and monetary opportunities created by the coming shift of the West’s attention to the Muslim world. My father claimed that this was “unfocused” which, of course, was nonsense, considering how carefully I had planned everything out. But more revealingly, he said that a regular science degree was not “prestigious”, which showed where his priorities lied. He would deprive me of the background and training I would need in the future, just so he could satisfy his egotistic need to boast to others that his son was going after a “prestigious” degree in university.
I ended up entering the Engineering Science program after five years of high school. At the time, Ontario actually had what was called the OAC year, and so taking five years of high school was not unusual. (Subsequent school reforms have reduced the length of high school in Ontario to four years.) But I basically wasted two years not being in university because my parents refused to allow me to study what I wanted to study, although I made the best use I could of that time. My parents threatened to disown me if I entered a program that was not acceptable to them. This, of course, did nothing to actually convince me that they were right, but it kept me in check and prevented me from leaving for university. I told them that I would wait until my brother graduated from high school, and then we would go to university together. When my brother had earned enough high school credits to graduate, my parents made me an offer I could not refuse: if I enrolled in the same program as him, they would pay for an apartment for the both of us; otherwise, neither of us would be allowed to attend university. And they actually had the gall to call me “selfish” for not considering what was in my brother’s best interests. I relented.
There really isn’t much to say about my undergraduate years academically other than that it was a huge mistake right from the very beginning. I should never have been in the Engineering Science program. This isn’t a criticism of the program itself, which I actually think is an excellent one for the right people. It was just that I was clearly not one of these people. Nor is this a case of “sour grapes” — I actually did very well in the program, so much so that I felt very guilty about it, because I didn’t try very hard at all, and a lot of my classmates tried really hard and did very poorly anyway.
For any parents who are considering forcing their children to act against their own wishes “for their own good” in the belief that “they don’t know any better” and they will thank you later, I will state unequivocally: NO, THEY WON’T.
– davinci
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