I’ve been nice. Now where’s my prize?

It’s your duty to study hard and give your best to get good grades, not as a way to show your parents that you’re a good kid, and eventually use it to bribe for some prize. This belief might have uprooted from my parents’ neutral response when I show them my *good* grades. They don’t see it as my voluntary gift for them, but as a duty that I need to fulfill. Education is a right, and I’m blessed to enjoy that right. As my responsibility for having that right, I need to study well, and give my best.

It irritates me, when my stepbrother tells his father that he’s on the top of the class and that is his gift for him. Same way when he flaunts that he’s been a good kid (Oh really? I just scolded you.) I mean, you should not see it as your *gift* because it is your obligation to work hard in school and be a good kid. If you fail, at least you tried. But if you see it in a way that your parents are in debt of gratitude because you did your job, it is like saying the oxygen should be grateful because you breathed it in.

If I were the oxygen, I would refuse to go inside your lungs to fill your body with the part of life you need if you’re that kind of kid.