<p>My parents have wanted me to become a lawyer ever since I could read. Actually, my dad just wanted one of his daughters to be a lawyer, and now that the two before me have chosen different directions, I feel as if me not becoming a lawyer would just KILL him, and I don't want to do that! Thing is, I also don't want to be a lawyer.</p>
<p>I was alright with the idea for a while, but after a summer filled with community service and a year of working with kids (snowboarding instructor and day camp counsellor) I realized that I'd much rather do those two things that I've come to love so much as a career. So now I'd like to become a pediatrician and once I'm a legitemate doctor, go to third world countries and volunteer at the orphanages and treat the poverty stricken kids without acess to proper healthcare.</p>
<p>You would think that wanting to do something like that would be given the a-ok by most parents, but my parents are different. They care a lot about money and whatnot and think that volunteering is a waste of time...I actually had to convince them that I was only doing it for college applications and am sadly not allowed to volunteer anymore because they figure that I've done enough already-it's the weirdest thing!</p>
<p>Anyway, how can I break it to them that what I want out of my life isn't what they want out of my life?</p>
<p>Well my mom is a physician and it doesn’t seem as if she likes it very much. A lot of kids with doctor-parents that I know have been pushed toward medicine, whereas mine haven’t at all, if ever it’s mentioned it’s about the long hours, years and years of schooling, and how “weird” doctors are.</p>
<p>You really don’t have to make that decision now (or tell them now). You don’t have to have a specific major to go to law school or med school. You only need to take certain required courses to apply to med school, which you can take even if you ultimately plan to apply to law school. So, just cover your bases and make the decision when you’re a senior in college. You might even change your mind to take another career path by then.</p>
<p>For the record, as a lawyer myself, I can’t quite understand the dream of your parents’ that you be a lawyer. It’s a demanding stressful job and only a small percentage of lawyers become wealthy from it. It’s also a very difficult market for lawyers right now.</p>
<p>Well, I kind of do, because at some of the schools I’m applying to you have to apply directly to the school or faculty where you want your degree from, and if they knew I was applying to the science faculty or school, they’d be kind of bewildered as to why exactly a lawyer would major in microbiology. I knwo that I could change my mind between now and then, but at the moment this is the path I’d like to go down so I’m going to work toward that.</p>
<p>And my parents have a strange, preconcieved notion about lawyers. I don’t know where it came from…I guess they just figure I’d be good at it because I like to read and am always arguing with them? Haha, I don’t know.</p>
<p>Tell them you are pregnant with twins and dropping out of school. Then say “Just joking, but I am going to do pre-med and become a pediatrician”.</p>
<p>You could want a science background in order to be a medical field attorney, whether hospital or malpractice, or something else.</p>
<p>If you are just now applying for university, I would not stress your post grad choices just yet. I have a DD who applied thinking premed, changed her mind withe experience with the gunners, etc and is now pursuing a PhD; I have another DD who entered UG undeclared and decided to make sure to take premed prereqs to leave her options open and ended up a science major.</p>
<p>Just take the major about which you feel genuine passion and leave your options for post grad open. Then become involved at school and check out the various fields, shadow docs & attorneys, learn your interests and then pick.</p>
<p>Mini–actually, we were happy that neither of our kids went into medicine, though we would have supported the aspiration if they truly wanted to.</p>
<p>You may end up changing your mind about medical school, but doing pre-med as an undergrad will in no way diminish your chances for Law school. You can keep all your options open by completing pre-med requirements with a very high GPA, and then decide which way you want to proceed in 4 yeas.</p>
<p>My husband’s father wanted to pass his business down to my husband, and was crushed when H refused it and became a writer instead. From the moment our D was born, H has been determined that she become a writer! D would no more do this than join NASA; she’s focused on theater, period. Well, it makes me laugh! How can H try to force his vocation on D, after he suffered so when his father did the same? Your life is your own to live-- if your parents find the law interesting, they are welcome to study it. I believe your parents will understand, and I know they SHOULD understand. Think of all the kids who are playing video games or beer pong right now, whose parents would be so grateful if they had a focus in life!</p>
<p>Are you really sure you want to be pre-med?</p>
<p>I ask because your enthusiasm for this choice seems to come from experiences working with children, and being a pediatrician is only one of a vast number of careers that involve working with children.</p>
<p>Are you sure that medicine is the path you want to take?</p>
<p>You don’t really have to “break it to them,” to be honest. When you attend college, you’ll be an adult; you don’t have to pick a biology major or whatnot to be pre-med, and certainly when you apply for medical school you’ll be a fully-fledged adult. Your parents can’t really dictate to you what you decide to study or do with your life; they can’t <em>make</em> you go to law school!</p>
<p>A lot of people also have misconceptions about lawyers. Whereas doctors universally make a lot of money (even the lower-paid family practitioners average about $180,000 a year), lawyers do not. Some attorneys can get wealthy by working long, long hours at firms and working their way up to partner; most will not become wealthy, however.</p>
<p>But, you can definitely work a science field and go to law school – tell them you’re interested in patent law, or medical malpractice, or intellectual property, or environmental health law.</p>
<p>I also agree with Marian. While if you think you want to be a pediatrician you should certainly take the pre-med classes (it will hurt you more time-wise to put them off, and then change your mind actually go to medical school, than to take them and change your mind and not go), take the opportunity that is given to you - the chance to go to college - and explore the wide wide WIDE range of careers that will allow you to help people, volunteer in developing countries and such. For example, there are many lawyers that work with child services as advocates for children - they may represent indigent children who are abused or neglected by their families find justice and proper home care; some lawyers fight for the civil liberties of children; some work on legislation that involves children’s welfare, such as WIC laws and health insurance for poor children. Not that I think you should be a lawyer, but keep an open mind as to the wide range of careers that are available to you. You may decide that you want to be an attorney after all or you may not. You may pick something altogether different.</p>
<p>Honestly, I work with college-bound seniors tutoring and counseling and I’d say about 40-50% of the kids I talk to want to be either physicians or attorneys. There are SO many careers out there, I wonder why people get stuck on those two. (I think it’s a combination of knowing, or thinking, that you can make a lot of money while helping people and being in a prestigious career.)</p>
<p>I knwo that post grad is QUITE the distance away, and I’m definatley aware of how things can change in the span of four, five years, but as for right now pediatrics is what I want to go into and it’s not so much for the money and prestige as it is for the ability to feel like “hey, this kid is gonna have a better chance at living an unhindered, healthy life because of me” and that is AWESOME. I’ve also considered careers in broadcast journalism and writing…but I want to be super hands on as far as helping people goes rather than just telling people about what’s wrong and urging them to do so…gotta be the change we want to see in the world, you know?</p>
<p>But really the whole having to tell my parents thing, a major, major part of that is because they’d be the ones paying for my education. they’ve got the means to make it so that I wouldn’t have any student loans and residual debt, but of course they would refuse to pay if they didn’t like the field I was going into. These are the type of parents that have chosen all of my classes in high school and basically directed my entire education, so of course my major is basically up to them as well, since they have the checkbook.</p>
<p>You can major in anything your parents want you to major. The only things you need to get into a top med school are completion of pre-med requirements, a high GPA, and a high MCAT score. The only major that would preclude you from getting into a top law school is a “pre-law” major. What do your parents want you to major in?</p>
<p>Perhaps you shouldn’t even worry about this right now. Many kids go into college as Undeclared majors. Many schools don’t even let students declare their major until their sophomore year. While your interest to “save the children” and “be the change” is admirable, you must also consider how the financial investment in your college education is going to allow you to get a job and pay your bills when you get out. This doesn’t mean that you should study something that you have no interest in just because of the possible future salary that it may bring. </p>
<p>The key is to find something you’re interested in and then figure out a way to apply that into a realistic future. I don’t understand your interest in pediatrics based on working with young kids at a camp and a snowboard instructor. Not once have you mentioned an interest in the sciences or math. Not once have you mentioned an interest in community service projects in your local hospital. Have you ever volunteered in the pediatric care unit at a hospital? </p>
<p>Your strong satisfaction in working with kids leans more towards a possible interest in teaching rather than in pre-med. There are numerous fields that you could go into that can be geared towards helping young kids—physical therapy, speech therapy, child psychologist, social worker, art therapy, occupational therapy, or teacher. Try not to lock yourself into one path at this time.</p>
<p>For a while, my younger son wanted to be a doctor. It wasn’t until the end of his sophomore year in high school that he understood the realities of what it meant to be a doctor. He came to us one night and told us that he decided he couldn’t go through with studying medicine because he would never be able to look into the eyes of a parent and tell him/her that he could not do anything to save their child.</p>
<p>I know that post grad is QUITE the distance away, and I’m definatley aware of how things can change in the span of four, five years, but as for right now pediatrics is what I want to go into and it’s not so much for the money and prestige as it is for the ability to feel like “hey, this kid is gonna have a better chance at living an unhindered, healthy life because of me” and that is AWESOME. I’ve also considered careers in broadcast journalism and writing…but I want to be super hands on as far as helping people goes rather than just telling people about what’s wrong and urging them to do so…gotta be the change we want to see in the world, you know?</p>
<p>But really the whole having to tell my parents thing, a major, major part of that is because they’d be the ones paying for my education. they’ve got the means to make it so that I wouldn’t have any student loans and residual debt, but of course they would refuse to pay if they didn’t like the field I was going into. These are the type of parents that have chosen all of my classes in high school and basically directed my entire education, so of course my major is basically up to them as well, since they have the checkbook.</p>
<p>“Is your response to my post simply a repeat of a cut and paste of your last response?
Why did I even waste my time in trying to help?”</p>
<p>no, my computer sent it twice…that was a glitch, sorry.</p>
<p>I do volunteer at a local hospital though, i’m just not allowed to do anything but floral delivery, gift shop work, and secretarial jobs since i’m not eighteen. i’m honestly not so great at math, but i do love science and am very good at it. i’ve won science awards and am involved my school’s most prestigious extra curricular, an invitation-only science club based on a perfect science test score during the prep school admittance test and numerous recommendations. i’m good at science and enjoy it very much, particularly biology and chemistry. i’m currently in anatomy, and although i’ve only had four or five classes i’m already finding it very interesting. THAT’S a major reason why i’m leaning towards pediatrics: it’s the perfect marriage of my favorite subject with one of my favorite activities (activities may not be the best word, but you know what i mean). a lot of the kids at my day camps were in foster care or on scholarship to be there, and there were two that had been recently adopted from abroad. they would tell me about their experiences and it was just kind of devastating to hear that in five or six years, they’d gone through more difficult stuff than i have in seventeen years–especially the foreign ones. those kids got the chance to live and be kids but there were hundreds more that wouldn’t get that chance.</p>
<p>i’m not trying to lock myself in. as i’ve said before, i’m aware that things change and that i may want to do something different. all of the jobs you suggested are things that i’ve considered or will consider, as they’re viable options as well.</p>
<p>aly, there is no such major as “pre-med”, you have to major in something. Biology or chemistry, perhaps? You can always tell your parents, “Yes, I still want to be a lawyer, but I’m majoring in the sciences because: i) statistically these majors perform better on the LSAT than the so-called pre-law majors (it is true - google it up); ii) having an undergraduate degree in the sciences opens a possibility for me to become a lawyer specializing in intellectual property, environmental law or medical malpractice or get a job as an in-house biotech or pharma attorney.” I betcha your parents will say “Awwww, what a smart kid we’ve raised!” and will happily pay the big bucks for your undergrad studies :)</p>
or you may not. You may pick something altogether different.</p>