Education Quote by Sandra Oh

The sting in Sandra Oh's line is how gently it refuses to villainize anyone. She names a pressure point lots of immigrant and Asian diaspora kids recognize: education not as a choice, but as a moral obligation, a family project, proof that sacrifice meant something. Calling it a "big no-no" sounds almost playful, but it smuggles in the weight of conditional approval: deviate, and you risk being read as ungrateful, reckless, or embarrassing.

Oh's real maneuver is the pivot from resentment to translation. "Discouragement was for my own protection" reframes parental control as fear management. In unstable economies and unfamiliar countries, "safe" careers are armor. The subtext is that art looks like risk because it doesn't come with a clear ladder or paycheck, and parents who have been trained by scarcity can't afford romanticism. Protection becomes a love language that can still bruise.

Then she draws the boundary: "they didn't understand that there is value in this". Not "in me", but "in this" - the work, the vocation, the cultural contribution. It's an argument for legitimacy, for creativity as labor, not hobby. The final line, "That's because they didn't know", lands as both absolution and indictment: the knowledge gap is structural, not personal. Acting is presented as a world her parents couldn't access, so they couldn't endorse it. Oh is talking about higher education, but she's really talking about cultural literacy - who gets to recognize art as a future, and who has been taught to see it only as a gamble.