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Great Expectations
By Bernardita Azurin Quimpo
My parents grew up in a generation when families averaged 7 children, each one assigned a role to play. From the 7 would come a priest, a nun, a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer, a soldier, or an artist. It all depended really on the family's traditions. If you belonged to a family of doctors, you and your siblings could all be expected to train as doctors.

My parents had no such expectations for us. Perhaps because they, unfortunately or fortunately, did not assume the roles they hoped for or even those which families would have wanted them to play.
My mother was the 12th of 13 children and the youngest daughter. When her turn came to go to college, her parents no longer saw the wisdom of letting daughters get a degree, having already sent about half a dozen of them to college, the majority of whom had settled down to raise their own families ( 1 became a nun). In the case of my father, he was not able to finish school because his family did not have the money to send a fourth child to university.
But they were resourceful people. My mother, at 15, was already an accomplished pianist and earned a living giving piano lessons to children. My father later in life tried to earn a living from writing. This is how I explain my eldest sister's pursuit of a musical career and how I, being Papa's girl and conscious of the high regard he had for writers in general, became a journalist. Our parents never verbalized their choices of careers for us, but their modeling was probably a subtle influence. Such influence turned out for the best, however, because both my sister and I have no regrets about the professions we chose.
I know people who do not seem to be as lucky. They are stuck in jobs which bore them or involved in activities which do not interest them at all. They would much rather be doing something else . Nene wanted to be a graphic designer, but her father, being of a scientific bent, prevailed on her to become a chemical engineer. An unhappy chemical engineer, she turned out to be.

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