Expectations are part of the human experience regardless of age, gender, or race. Parents have expectations of their children. On the contrary, managers have certain expectations out of their employees. Teachers as well lay out expectations for students. Expectations are like rules; follow the rules and success will be closer to ones reach. Break the rules and you can find yourself searching for success. The goal of countless expectations from the standpoint of parents is to create a strenuous path to success for their children. The parental motives behind these expectations are complex, but the reinforcement of expectations molds the children of today into the adults of tomorrow. I am no exception to this. As soon as my eyes set sight on the world, I was instantly burdened with the expectations of an Iranian son. I was born with a straitjacket around my body, a straitjacket of expectations that have funneled my thoughts and actions.
Iranian parents live their life, after the birth of a child, striving to push them to the highest level of success that can be reached. Many of these parents did not have the opportunity that the United States presents their first generation children having lived most of their lives in Iran. They set very high standards for their children. The manner in which this is displayed and how it affects my identity is far more aggressive and effective than the manner imposed by the families of any of the friends I have ever met. For example, I have never known an Iranian American who did not have exceptionally high grades. On the contrary, I have many friends from other cultures and a handful of them have parents who could care less how their daughter or son is doing in school as long as they are staying out of trouble. Good grades and a positive public image mold the identity of any person with the blood of an Iranian. To be Iranian, I must exemplify my brilliance and strive for moral perfection.
School is the area in which my parent’s high standards have had the most dramatic impact. As outlined earlier, Iranian parents have very high expectations of their children in school. Reflecting back on my life, I can see how high standards have influenced me as an Iranian son. During the early years of elementary school, I got off to a shaky start in the education system. “Babak,” my parents would yell as I walked in from a long day at school, “Why did you not complete your homework? Why did you fail to study for your quiz?” I heard these cries of expectations from my parents on a weekly basis growing up and a typical response was, “Sorry Mom, it won’t happen again.” I felt resentment but mixed emotions of remorse. As soon as it became apparent to my parents that I would not show my brilliance in school through my own motivation, their expectations were laid on the table. With a serious look on their faces, I would timidly hear them express their emotion and motivation in regards to their expectations. There was no room for failure; I would know only one thing and that was success.
What does it look like to have expectations manifest? After the realization of my parent’s expectations, my cognitive thought process towards the meaning of school transformed. To have their expectations woven into my cognitive thoughts only furthered my understanding of the power of the Iranian culture. One of my closest friends was Iranian, too. I saw the same expectations manifest through her at the same age. Parents of Iranian children constantly try to guide their son or daughter down the path to success. The importance of education and the high standards my parents placed on me, based off their intuition, completely reversed my fortunes.
Although middle school grades did not have much significance, my parents would not allow me to slack. How often do you hear American parents breaking a sweat and bursting a blood vessel out of anger that their son or daughter got a C on a sixth grade math test? Parents may get upset by this if even bothered at all, but far more often than not they will disregard the grade, especially because it is just the beginning of middle school. This is when I began to make a significant attitude adjustment and my identity took a turn. Every day I paced into my math class from then on, the name Babak Zolfaghari-Azar was written on the wall. It was not written because I had done something wrong and the teacher was trying to make a point about it. The teacher was making a point of writing in my name in place of a blank spot for the highest test score on the most recent test. In seventh and eighth grade, I was Top Dog of my math class. Every time I saw my name on the wall it brought a giant smile to my face. Not only did I feel ecstatic that people were quietly whispering in class about how well I was doing on tests, but my parents could see that I was being the obedient son they had always expected me to be. In witnessing the whispering, I thought the students saw me as a smart person, showing a correlation between the “Me” and “I”. This relates to the ideas of Mead as to how we think others think of us versus what I think of myself. I felt influenced to do well due to the reaction students had to my consistently exceptional grades. I was adhering to my parent’s high standards and learned that it would pay off.
Beyond the stringent expectations my culture places on me in respect to school, my public image is also affected by my ethnicity. Throughout my life, I have done an excellent job of staying out of trouble in all aspects of my life. Although my parents always reminded me to “be good” and stay out of trouble, it had always been an unconscious idea; I never had gotten in much trouble so I never thought about it. Since my actions reflect directly back upon my parents and my direct family, maintaining this image was key. This shows that cultural expectations have a significant impact on who am can be, a strong characteristic of the ideas Berger carries out. Never had this idea of my image played such a significant role in my life as it did on a beautiful afternoon this past summer. On this sunny afternoon, I got in my car with four other friends and made the poorest, most regrettable decision in my life. With a cold case of Coronas in the trunk of my car, a close friend of mine as well as my cousin and I drank a Corona like it was cold water. All notions of consequences stemming from having a car containing alcohol and five minors, as well as open containers, was thrown out the window. “The driver is a good close friend of mine and she has a license Sheriff,” I nervously explained. “I am responsible for the car.” We were pulled over by three officers who had gotten a call that there was underage drinking in my car. The thirty minutes that ensued after being pulled over and questioned were by far the longest thirty minutes of my life. My heart rate was racing as I paced the sidewalk; sweat dripping from my sweltering face. I was dealing with three officers who wanted severe justice brought to me. As frightening as a sheriff and two of his partners are, they were the least of my worries at the time. What were my parents going to do with me?
Soon enough, my hot sweaty hands were pressed together by a cold pair of handcuffs. I was arrested and escorted to Washington County Jail. I had never been faced with any trouble in my life. As I sat cold in jail, the only thing that kept running through my mind was, How are my parents going to react? What is my family going to think of me after being arrested and brought to Washington County Jail? These questions would not have been as pressing and nerve racking if I did not have such heavy expectations of me. Hunger was blinded by the questions running through my mind. Finally, my dad picked me up in the cold and windy hours of the late morning. I slowly stepped out the door to freedom, head down, and spirits low after over eight hours of isolation from the real world. My father asked what was wrong and I replied simply by saying that I was in sheer embarrassment for what I had done. After stepping foot in my house at 2:00 AM, not having seen my mom the entire day, I was not thinking about the exhaustion my mind and body was facing, nor the relentless growling of my stomach, but more than anything the thought of my mother’s reaction was speeding through my mind. It went exactly as I expected. A week after my arrest thought, I found myself in a meeting with my lawyer that would not go as nicely as I expected.
My lawyer was born in Iran. This entails that he knows everything about the identity of an Iranian and what their expectations are. Even before stepping foot into his office, I felt sweat dripping down my tense body and the hairs on my arm stood on end. He immediately expressed how he could not believe that I would put myself in a position to run into trouble with the law. “Babak, cherah kardi?” He sternly began. When he asked me why I had committed this offense in such a serious tone it caught me off guard. I know my lawyer very well and he is a friend of the family. I simply responded by saying, “Bebaksheen, I made a mistake and it will never happen again,” I said in a truly embarrassed and repentant tone. He said that any person from the Iranian community who heard of my arrest would not only forget about any of my prior accomplishments in life, but that it would reflect poorly on my loving parents. People’s notions of how well I was raised would come flying into the face of my parents and people would think they were failures in teachings expectations to me. This was as far from the truth as the North and South Pole are from each other.
In order to understand my experiences, two before mentioned theorists immediately appear in my eyes; Berger’s idea of cultural expectations and Mead’s theory of the “I” versus “Me”. Throughout my life, I have submitted to the best of my ability to becoming a construction of the cultural expectations of Iran despite the isolated incidents that have gone against expectations. Their expectations have helped in the evolution of my cognitive thought processes from the main events that have impacted my life. I have internalized my role as an Iranian and this has impacted my life in a vast number of ways. In the example of how my arrest affected not only my image but also the illustration my parents have made for themselves, the “I” and “Me” took a huge hit. In this case, my actions are determined by the impact of others opinions on me, entailing the impact on I. The influence of me is far stronger than that of I. Mead has a powerful explanation for this when he states in some of his writings, “Symbolic interaction involves interpretation, or ascertaining the meaning of actions or remarks of the other person, and definition, or conveying indications of another person as to how he is to act.” This is his explanation as to how cognition occurs. I have interpreted and eventually defined actions leading to my mind processing the element of self. I am told what my culture expects of me and clearly, through the life changing events I have gone through, the internalization and manifestation of these expectations has composed who I am today.
I walked out the office of my lawyer, as the hand on the clock moved forward one hour, with a part of my identity in limbo. As an Iranian son, an event like this could never happen again as long as my heart pumps my Iranian blood. I feel resentment in this regard because it is as though I am not living my life for myself, but my identity was succumbing to the identity my parents and now more significantly the identity my culture expects of me. Anytime I put myself in a negative atmosphere, anytime I get a poor grade on a test, the prime thought circulating in my mind is how the event is going to affect my identity. Every second of my life would have to be spent in trouble-free environments, one in which everything I do would be critically analyzed not only by my parents, but also by the Iranian community and myself. There is a dichotomy between the individual and the group in my life. I am put second to the primary group, which is the Iranian identity. Although I feel resentment and feel that I am put second to my culture, my parents have done nothing more than express the importance their expectations will have on my future. They were once in my shoes going through the same expectations and vigor of the Iranian identity. As I reflect back on the events and challenges I have faced, I can clearly see how high expectations have shaped who I am and how those expectations will continue to stitch together the continuing construction of me, Babak Zolfaghari-Azar.
“Identity of an
Iranian”, the title of my essay, is about how expectations from my
parents
based on me having an Iranian identity have made me who I am. Being born
an Iranian son ascribed me expectations as to my success in education and
academic achievement as well as a strong expectation that my personal image not
be stained by a foolish act. The creative component symbolizes how my
country has made me who I am. The Iranian flag makes up the portrait of my
body’s image. The numerous pieces of green and red paper that come from
the Iranian flag were torn apart and rubber cemented together as one. The
formation of the colors is like the pieces of a puzzle that
have formed as one to make me, a son with the Identity of an Iranian. The
artwork was completed with the illustration
of the present day emblem of Iran in front of my heart.