Yes, I am a private student. Yes, I know it’s expensive… and yes, so were my previous schools and universities. Yes, my dad works in a bank. Yes, it’s a multinational organization. Yes, I have lived abroad most of my life. Yes, I have traveled extensively.

No, I am not a spoiled brat… and No, we don’t have a money growing in our backyard (come to think of it, what backyard? We currently live in an apartment!)

This is to those who assume that I can just pick up the phone and go “Daddyyy!! I need money!” First, because I was not brought up like that. Second, because I was not brought up like that.

I have to say that this is one of my biggest pet peeve: people stereotyping me as a rich, spoiled brat. I take that as an insult to me, and to my parents.

I realize how blessed I am, and rest assured I do not throw it away. I (ehem!) excel at my education (partly because I know just how much it’s costing my parents!) and control my budget appropriately. My parents and I always work out my allowance and living cost before sending me abroad (and it is set to the average spending pattern. No outlier here.) and they send it to me lump-sum for the whole year.

And that’s it. My parents will not send me anymore money after that. They trust me enough to send me halfway across the world, and so they trust me enough to take care of myself: health-, education-, faith- and money-wise. I never questioned it, because I agree with it. With the greater freedom and power of living alone with no parental supervision, comes greater responsibility to discipline myself (modified from Spiderman). I chose to go where I went.. and that means I choose the consequences and responsibility that come with that choice.

I am just thankful that I had a choice. A lot of people don’t.

Yes, there are those that have a choice and abuse it.

No, I am not one of them.

So there. That’s my rant for now. (I’m now going back to face my current biggest responsibility: my thesis.)