When I think of my role as an older brother, I think of a guinea pig. I think of ourselves as test subjects that go through countless experiments to see what works and what doesn’t. If something goes wrong, our parents learn from our mistakes to help our younger siblings in their own journey.

My whole life I’ve been the first. The first born, the first to go to kindergarten, the first to speak, the first to go to first grade and the first to apply to college outside Mexico.

There is a silent and powerful pressure that comes with these firsts. It’s the type of pressure that you do not notice until it all comes crashing down. The type of pressure that builds up slowly and that you did not know you carried for years.

For me, the pressure of being the older brother revealed itself last year. It was Feb. 14, my sister’s birthday, and my family and I were headed to visit our grandparents in Mexico. Since moving to the U.S., we hadn’t seen them very often, and considering our grandfather had cancer, we figured we should pay them a visit.

On the way to their house, my grandfather died in his sleep. There was no warning, no sign,  just the cries from my mom and my sister as the rest of us sat in silence. The silence felt like one of those hydraulic pressure machines you see on the internet. The ones that begin to crush their target slowly. The machine did not allow me to cry or to scream, only to remain silent.

However, I was the older brother.  If someone had to hold their composure, it had to be me. If someone had to help out at the funeral, it had to be me. If someone had to step up on stage at chapel to talk about his now-deceased grandfather, it had to be me. I still remember hundreds of eyes staring at me. Their stares scared me, but the big brother can’t crumble under pressure.

I thought that after that weekend the pressure would die down. After all, junior year was right around the corner with many exciting opportunities: my brother had just gotten accepted at St. Mark’s.

At first, I was excited. I got to go to school with my best friend and show him around the school I loved. However, the older brother’s pressure came back. Once again, the pressure wasn’t something dramatic or instantaneous: it built up and announced itself with silence.

I began to doubt myself. I began to question if I was being a good role model for my brother. I wanted to be a good example for him so he could have someone to look up to. As the older brother, I just wanted to be the guy he thought I was.

I wanted him to think of me as someone who could deal with the workload that came with the school, as someone who could deal with the pressure of taking standardized tests and as someone who could give good advice while he succeeded.

Looking back, being an older brother can be the most enjoyable experience in someone’s life. To have the people you care the most about look up to you is both a responsibility and a privilege. It can turn into pressure, but it can also become a motivator to work harder and to help yourself and others.

To be the older brother means to be the guy that paves the way for his siblings. Now that my brother goes to school with me, there are so many things I’d like to share: I want to tell him to not worry about college because there will be so many people that flex their grades and scores; I want to tell him that the only way he’ll succeed is if he follows his own path and focuses on himself; I don’t want him to try to be me; I want him to chase his own passions and grow to be greater than me.