By Abby Lass
Managing Editor of Arts
The night my older sister received her acceptance letter from the University of Virginia, I came home to a giant blue and orange frosted cookie cake, calls of congratulations from numerous relatives, and a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach that I just couldn’t shake.
It wasn’t that I wasn’t proud of her (I was) or that I would miss her (I would), it was that this singular event suddenly created a giant dividing line between me and the rest of my family. My sister’s admission to UVA meant that every single member of my immediate family had attended a college and an undergraduate program that I struggled to see myself in.
It wasn’t that I didn’t want to be a businesswoman or that I didn’t like the school; I could certainly see myself working in corporate America after receiving an education at this historic campus in a beautiful area of the country. There was nothing explicitly wrong with UVA in my eyes. It just didn’t feel as right as I thought it was supposed to.
This realization left me somewhat confused about where my next step would land: would I end up at UVA, only because it would be easier to get in as a legacy than it was to stick out my neck for another school and risk rejection? I didn’t have any strong desire to steer clear of the school, so what could the harm possibly be?
I was also perplexed by the source of this pressure. My parents have never explicitly stated that they want me to enter UVA’s business school. In fact, my parents have repeatedly told me that I should get a degree in a field that I love and proceed from there.
Still, despite their apparent support, I can sense the tone of the conversation shift dramatically when I mention a career as a research psychologist or journalist rather than a career as a marketing specialist. I know that my family will support me regardless of the field I pursue, but they’re all human beings with their own individual opinions, and sometimes those opinions are impossible to escape, even if they don’t express them outright.
I’m not the only one struggling with this underlying pressure.
“I like to think I made my own decision, but I also know that my family very much influenced it,” said junior Ellie Kissin, who has decided to become the next generation in her family’s long line of doctors and scientists. “I think I will continue the tradition. It is a good, solid, and helpful career. I will have an interesting job that also helps other people, and I think those are very important qualities to look for in jobs.”
Though some students feel pressure to continue the legacy, some feel an equally strong concern about proving that they can make something for themselves.
“I don’t want my future to be dictated by my family’s past,” said junior Noah Gans, who has had several family members attend Brandeis University. “I will only choose to go there if I feel it is right, not because of a legacy.”
While Gans recognizes that his family would support his decision either way, Kissin has experienced more overt pressure to carry the family torch.
“I remember very clearly being about seven or so and my grandma taking me to drama class and asking if I was going to continue the family legacy of doctors,” Kissin said. “At that point my sister wanted to be a horsekeeper and my brother wanted to be a basketball player…I wanted to be an artist. I really didn’t want to be a doctor because I thought it was gross and boring, but I felt I had to because my siblings obviously were not going to be doctors.”
So here we have two different students, each feeling distinct levels of pressure and each ultimately making their choice in a different way. What is the deciding factor?
Is it the fact that Kissin is a first-generation American, and the oldest of three siblings? Is it the fact that Gans’ family is less attached to their legacy, seeing it as more of an interesting fact than a standard to be upheld?
By looking at these and several other cases of family legacies, including my own, I managed to create a formula to loosely calculate one’s percent likelihood of following in his or her parents’ footsteps:
The formula goes as follows:
Each factor is assigned a value from 1 to 10 in terms of strength (10 being the strongest and 1 being the weakest), but Personal Desires can range from -10 to 10 (negative implying that you have a strong desire to go against your family’s tradition). Providing the negative option was vital to me because while I don’t have a strong aversion to following the rest of my family, there are those who definitely want to go in the opposite direction, and that preference deserves representation.
Though family legacy is sometimes seen as a negative source of pressure that many people feel the need to depart from, others find it helpful, especially in an industry that can be difficult to infiltrate.
Junior Austin Burton, for example, is proud to be the third generation of star football players in his family. Burton’s father and grandfather both played football at Northwestern University and had separate tenures in the NFL. Burton’s grandfather was even the first draft pick selected by the New England Patriots in 1960.
“It definitely influences me even to this day to know how hard my dad and grandfather worked to get where they wanted to be,” Burton said.
Burton fell in love with football at a young age and knew he wanted to play professionally from the moment he learned to lace up his cleats. He has continued to play with an intense passion, citing his father’s experience as a source of his edge.
“The main upside from having this football legacy is all the knowledge about football my dad knows and that he shares with me to help improve my skills,” Burton said.
Burton, whose siblings are also athletically gifted and have proceeded to play college basketball, knows that his family is behind him when he says he wants to continue playing.
“I know my family supports me with that decision wholeheartedly,” he said.
The immediacy of Burton’s family legacy is clear, as he is the next Burton who will have the chance to carry on the tradition. His father and grandfather are there, whenever necessary, to help him grow as an athlete and strive for new opportunities. Burton’s Immediacy ranking, therefore, would receive a 10.
On top of this, Burton’s personal drive to achieve as an athlete puts his Personal Desire at a 10. Burton genuinely wants to play football and has worked at it since he was six years old. This intense desire to succeed, in concurrence with his family’s hopes for him, drastically increases his likelihood of following in his family’s footsteps.
Burton’s estimated calculation is 83%.
Burton is lucky in that his dreams fall in line with those of his parents and relatives, but many are not so lucky. Junior Yuval Dinoor, who moved to the United States when she was four years old, has been struggling for years to determine whether or not she will follow her family’s wishes and join the Israeli Defense Force (IDF).
“It inspires this kind of nationalism in my family,” Dinoor said. “My family is very full of very, very proud Israelis because of the personal contribution each person in my family has given to protect their country. It emphasizes how much that country means to our family as a whole.”
Though Dinoor is a proud Israeli-American citizen who has spent her life hearing about every family member’s experience in the army, she has often struggled with the decision to join the IDF, even if only for two years.
“For a while I was kind of trying to fight between what was more important to me: the legacy of my family or the new future that I would carve for myself,” Dinoor said. “I kind of knew that the idea of starting over with an entirely new life in Israel for two years seemed beyond anything I could want for myself. I would not want to start clean, but at the same time I was trying to take into consideration that my family is sitting in Israel throughout wars.
“They’re running to bomb shelters on their birthdays, they’re facing terrorism. It’s a real fear in their life every day, and if I can be part of something that will work to protect them and innocent people like them from that then of course it is so important to me to do that.”
Though her extended family feels strongly that she should join the army, Dinoor’s immediate family has been more understanding.
“My mom was very accepting from the get-go,” Dinoor said. “She actually encouraged me not to because she thought it would be counterintuitive to the life I have built for myself here. My dad was always a lot more for me going into the army, but he ultimately accepted my choice to follow the dream and the path I have set for myself.”
It was a difficult decision, but Dinoor has accepted that joining the IDF is not in her future.
“I ultimately figured out that the price that I would pay emotionally by having to start clean and alone in a country I haven’t lived in since I was four years old was too much to ask of myself,” Dinoor said.
Still, she has trouble being honest about her decision.
“I kind of wish I had the bravery to be honest with my distant family members about it because knowing how important the legacy is to them is a big key player that keeps me from saying I made this decision myself and I don’t want to do it, and that’s on me not on them.”
While Dinoor’s cultural heritage receives a 9, the Intensity of the pressure (rated at 8) is diminished by a mediocre Immediacy rating (5), and a relatively strong Personal Desire not to follow in her family’s footsteps (-8).
Dinoor’s estimated calculation is 33%.
So what made the biggest difference? Burton and Dinoor are both the only eligible members of their generation to carry on the family legacy (Dinoor being an only child and Burton being the only male out of his four siblings). Both have grown up entrenched in their respective families’ legacies and both felt relatively intense pressure, overt or otherwise.
The defining characteristic, the one factor that made a significant difference not only in these cases but also regarding those of Kissin and Gans (who received a 69% and a 50% respectively), was the strength of the individual’s Personal Desire.
Neither Kissin nor Gans felt an intense personal inclination towards or away from their legacies, so the other factors were left to work. Burton’s factors were strongly in favor of following the trend, and his inclination to do so only boosted his percentage. Dinoor, on the other hand, also had all the variables pointing towards continuum, but she decided that the army was not a viable option for her and was thus able to override the odds.
So what does this mean for the rest of us?
For starters, it means that your personal wishes and desires matter. Just look at the equation: Personal Desire was given a higher weight than any other factor for a reason. No matter how the other pieces of the puzzle fit together, you have the power to make your own decisions.
Now, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with following in your family’s footsteps. It was the right choice for my sister after all, but it may very well not be the right choice for me, and that is entirely okay. I have a right to decide for myself, and so do you.
It can be scary; it can be difficult. You may very well make the wrong decision, regardless of whether or not you carry on the family legacy. And that doesn’t even incorporate how your parents will react when you tell them that photography is your life’s passion and that in no universe are you ever going to become a chemist or a seamstress or a civil engineer.
The hope is that your family will respect you for making your own choice. It may not seem like it in the moment, but I promise they will still love you anyway (at least that’s what I tell myself, given that I’m only applying to UVA because I have to).
It’s impossible to deny that our families shape us. We can’t pretend that they don’t influence us or that our need to please or spite them doesn’t affect the choices we make in life; however, we can and do decide what aspects of our legacies we can own and what aspects are better left behind.
In the end, for better or for worse, it’s all up to you. Just look at the math.
