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Re: Lee 3/?
Along with failure socially, there was the difficulty in academics itself. Paying attention in class was hard, understanding the lessons afterward nearly impossible and putting together what he knew in order to pass his important exams was surely only luck. His grades were consistently only good enough to get him promoted to the next grade. This was not good enough for his family, and certainly not for himself. Even without their pushing, he still felt the need to do better. Other students thought he was stupid and the teachers even seemed to have given up on him, but he just had to show them that he could do this. No matter how hard he worked at it though, he never managed to truly succeed. After spending long hours at studying and many weeks of after school tutoring his grades finally seemed to go up. Finally he was doing better than just getting by. He would have been happy, but this small victory didn't seem to count. The pressure placed on him by his family had increased as the years went by, though their expectations for him were clearly falling. As he got closer and closer to graduation, they almost seemed to stop caring. He just wasn't expected to come to much- disappointing, but what can you do?

Even without someone else's expectations to keep him going, Lee didn't stop learning after high school. He applied to the community college because of it's closeness and affordability, but also for the fact that his grades didn't seem impressive enough to any other schools and he hadn't then figured out what it was he wanted to study. He enjoyed this part of his schooling a lot more than he ever had high school. People seemed so much less judgemental, and though they said the courses were very hard, Lee was able to deal with the heavy workload because he refused to give in to pressure and drop out. It only lasted two years, and soon after that Lee decided he wanted to move on.

It was only a necessity at first. He was eager to live on his own for the first time and for that he had to make money. Being bored was also the last thing he liked. Sitting idle could never be an option. So when an offer came by word of mouth that there was a job he needed little to no prior knowledge or skill to do, that paid well but happened to be extremely hard and sometimes even dangerous work, he jumped right on it. This was just what he had been hoping for, and he would be foolish not to take a perfectly good opportunity when it arose! The possibility of personal injury didn't even stick in his mind for a moment.

The job ended up being construction, which was not at all skill-less but was definitely dangerous. He enjoyed it immensely though, and spent a year working and moving around to stay with the jobs, rather than going back to school immediately. He was learning and doing something he was proud of. It was honest, useful work and each new home or building that went up or was repaired gave him a feeling of accomplishment, no matter what small part he had really played in getting the job done. It was a team effort, and he appreciated and was as proud of that as much as his own part in it.