Parents are, to say the least, irritating.  As teenagers, soon to be full adults, we’re baffled by these awkward, unhip, creatures called Mom and Dad.  They seem to serve only one purpose: telling us what we can’t do.  While everything they encourage us to do is either painfully boring or socially humiliating.

As a senior, I feel especially resentful towards my parents.  I had spent my last (and entire) 17 years on this planted attempting to escape parental authority.  I made some small gains,  privileges here and there and some overall autonomy on the side.  But then, school came around and college applications smacked me in the face.  The  long and difficult journey away from my parents was reversed. I suddenly found myself needing them more than ever.

This, for some reason, has led me to feel more antipathy towards those who brought me into this world than ever before.  All the suggestions: study for the SATs, get your college essay done, don’t take the ACTs, start working towards your license, pile up and create a very angry Da Wei.  Everything they say starts to sound ridiculous.  “They are wrong about everything,” I think.

This principle dictated much of my life.  I became exceedingly disciplined at doing the exact opposite of what they recommended.  Though it may seem unlikely to the unbiased observer that two people, far more experienced in life, would find the wrong answer to absolutely everything, it never struck me as odd.  In fact, in my enraged immaturity, this seemed intuitive.

This year, I have had to make many important choices.  For many of which, I adhered to my previous rule.  When my parents told me I wouldn’t do well on the ACT’s without studying, I did not study.  When they told me I needed to work with them to learn SAT vocabulary, I tried to learn it on my own.  When they said I would be stressed if I didn’t start college work in the summer, I waited until October.  My parents were 3 for 3 in correctness.  Each time I ignored their advice and followed my internal compass, I failed.  Dejected and disillusioned, I was forced to confess that my parents are right about pretty much everything, a real kick in the face.

But this should not have come as a surprise.  People with twice as many years as me under their belt should be considerably wiser.  My parents, like many of ours, are successful and educated.  In addition, they are not stuck in the baffling haze of adolescence but are objective advisors to an experience they themselves went through.  There are all too many reasons why they are so often correct.

So I guess the only reason to think our obnoxious and overly protective parents are incorrect about anything is convenience – providing us with justification for our overly zealous and irrational wills.  Teenagers are notorious for following passion over reason, impulsivity over calculation.  We want to be individuals and following our parents advice compromises our uniqueness.  If they are right, it proves you can’t just do what you want, you have to learn and think about it first.  That takes time and patience and is usually very boring.  But at least it works.