<p>I had the same problem…
My parents want me to major in nursing and pharmacy but I want to be a doctor. So I told my parents what I want to be a doctor and they were worried. So I applied to some colleges for pre med and some for nursing. Then looked for schools that you can easily change majors like U of Michigan. </p>
<p>Another option is for you to talk to your college counselor to talk to your father because your choice matters.</p>
<p>I make a living writing and always have.</p>
<p>I’m sorry to hear your situation :(. I was in a similar tight spot last year when my parents pushed me into pharmacy. I was previous going into pre-med because of pressure, but I told them that I hated blood, so I was placed in pre-pharmacy instead and I HATED it. It took me almost three months to figure out that I wasn’t happy being a biology major. </p>
<p>If you don’t have a passion for being a doctor, don’t do it. No one wants to go to a doctor that doesn’t care about his/her patient. It’s uncomfortable to know that your doctor doesn’t enjoy his/her job and that you’re the cause of his/her misery. It’s hard for me to understand how a person can give away his/her dreams just to make a lot of money. Sure, you make a nice living, but at the cost of happiness? It sounds like a miserable life. Your dad has no right to control your future. It’s your future, not his. Your dad may have some control on who pays the tuition, so you’ll have to find a major that both of you can agree on and be happy with. </p>
<p>Have you tried talking to your dad about what you want? If you know what sort of major or career you want to go into, talk to him about it. </p>
<p>If you know what you want to do, do some research about your career in mind before switching majors or applying for college. I’m sure you can find a career you like that can earn a decent living. If you show your dad that you did some research, it shows that you have seriously considered that career path and that it’s not just a phase. </p>
<p>It’s not going to be easy to make your dad accept your decision, but if you stick to your decision long enough and you do your research well, it may convince your dad that you’re sure of what you want to do. Good luck.</p>
<p>If pushing a person to become a doctor works, everyone on the street would become doctors.
You need to do what you want to do. Put pressure and explanation to them.</p>
<p>LOL. become a doctor. there are TONS of people who can’t afford to pay for med school. it’s a great/respected profession, helps other people, and i have no doubt you will come to love your work if you try to foster an interest in it.</p>
<p>think about it some more. it’s really your parents’ goodwill in paying for your education. education is a privilege not a right.</p>
<p>I say stand your ground, but also evaluate what good a major in English would do you. If writing is something you love to do, why not write on the side? Write for the school paper, start a blog, or start building credibility (and wealth) on websites like eLance by writing content for businesses.</p>
<p>I know I’m in the minority of current college students since I believe you shouldn’t just go to college for what you think you’ll love. Think about what you want and whether a specific college education is even necessary for your career. Maybe you don’t want to be a doctor, but I’m sure you could still get a job as a writer with a biology degree. If you insist on going to college, get a degree that you can fall back on.</p>
<p>I feel like I am in a very similar position as you. I love writing and want to major in journalism in college. However, my mom repeatedly tells me that it is hard to make it as a journalist unless you are exceptionally talented and lucky. The way she told me has always brought down my feelings and I always felt shunned from my passions, if not, unsupported. A couple days ago, I was actually looking through some forums on Writing/English majors and saw the reality of this occupation. It is very hard to become a journalist. I understood what my mom had been telling me all those years. I still want to write as a hobby when I grow up, like maybe write a column to my town’s local newspaper or something like that, but I know now to focus on another major.</p>
<p>Sure, it’s “your life not his,” but is he paying your tuition? In the majority of cases your parents just want the best for you. It’s very difficult to make a living solely from writing. Few people ever do it; even most prolific writers (freelancers or bloggers) have another job and write on the side.</p>
<p>I don’t understand why so many parents push their kids into being a doctor; that is one field where if you don’t have a passion, you’re going to waste a lot of money. There are so many steps! What if your kid washes out of their 2nd year of medical school with $120K in loans and no way to pay it back?</p>
<p>I agree with the advice to find a major that you can both agree upon, and maybe double-majoring or minoring. Talk to your career office about careers in writing and what other useful skills you can have. One suggestion is maybe (if you can stomach it) English/creative writing and computer science; then you can go into technical writing or something like that.</p>
<p>I agree with Universary and kathrynstern…a lot of people will tell new college students to follow their passions and do what they love, and that things will come together. While I do think you should do what you like, I think it pays (literally and figuratively) to be practical-minded, and that college students should think about how they intend to use their majors or what they plan to get out of it. That doesn’t mean that a major in philosophy can’t be practical; it depends on one’s intentions. Also, it’s difficult to realize what your passion or purpose is when you’re just 18 years old. You’re not yet familiar with the wide range of careers out there. Your major doesn’t determine the rest of your life - a prolific writer can write regardless of whether he/she majored in English or mathematics or anything else.</p>
<p>Everyone who chimed in has a point, but I think they focus too much on either the money or the parent-child dynamic.</p>
<p>The question you should ask yourself is: are your skills good enough to become a good doctor? If not dont even bother. Being an MD requires hard work - in school, during your residency, specialization, and continuing education. If you dont have the intellectual bent for medicine, you should not get into it. On the ROI side, If you just become a family doctor, you’ll make probably 90K tops. With 90K, after all that sacrifice and tuition expense, its hardly a good ROI. You would be better off majoring in business or something practical or something with a cheap tuition and then writing on the side.</p>
<p>The second question is: Do you really think you can write? What have you written so far? Maybe your father has watched you grow and realistically has not seen any impressive output from you. At your age you should have at least been a writer or editor for a high school paper, a blog, community paper, a play, etc with hopefully some awards on the side. You should have something to show for it. </p>
<p>If not, maybe both you and your father are wrong about your career prospects</p>
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<p>As Ucbalumnus and my post-college bio major graduate roommate demonstrated, a bio BS degree alone is actually no better than many “non-practical degrees” in practice. It’s certainly not a degree I’d recommend falling back on based on what I’ve seen. </p>
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<p>CS not only requires strong mathematical skills(A CS grad friend summarized his major as “Mathematics with electricity”), but also the ability to think in a highly structured logical manner for long periods of time that can grate on more creative types. </p>
<p>It’s also a reason why several creatively minded students who couldn’t adjust to a highly structured logical writing style ended up dropping out of law school. </p>
<p>Turns out they lucked out as not too long afterwards, the legal market went into meltdown mode in 2008 and the law school classmates who stuck it out to graduation mostly ended up with $200k of law school debt with no highly salaried job…or any job to pay it off.</p>
<p>Tell him you are majoring in English because you want to become a Lawyer like him.</p>
<p>I understand what you’re coming from - I am in the same dilemma, and I’m still trying to figure out how to have my parent accept my personal career goals completely. I’m getting there very slowly. </p>
<p>I don’t think you should double major to try to make a compromise - unless you are truly passionate about both subjects, it’s a bad idea to do such. You will dragging yourself down trying to learn one subject with enthusiasm and the other with reluctance and obligation. Don’t “fool” him either with elaborate switching of majors - if he does pay for your college tuition, he should at least know what he’s paying for, Your dad means well - he wants you to be in a successful and recession-resistant career. However, he is going about his concern in a warped parent way - by making you go his way or the highway, and then may later claim that your struggle to pay college tuition is due to your major. I think you may have to invest in FAFSA, student loans, and a part-time job. It may sound unreasonable to you, but seriously, not too many people actually have their parents may for their schooling and must pay their own way.</p>
<p>You should always follow your passions just make sure youre marketable.
That being said, I do have to warn you that English is indeed a major that is consistently on the “worst” paying/job prospect list. Granted, the major can be applied to a diverse number of jobs, but they are mostly entry level and you would be competing in job market that is overflowing with English majors already. You <em>DO NOT</em> need a degree to write - you only need a writing medium and a story to tell. And connections to get that story published, but we can get into that later.
What do you plan to do with your English degree? if youre going into copywriting or journalism then its definitely an option but like I said, the job market is has no demand another English major. And consider attending a public university if you still plan to major in English. When you graduate, if you do find some trouble finding employment, you at least won’t have mounds of school debt. </p>
<p>You can <em>always</em> write no matter what your major is, and I do suggest going into another major you can enjoy as well as make decent money. What other subjects are you interested in?</p>
<p>@granipc</p>
<p>What I think the “right” thing is probably is a bit situational, but the way you handled your situation sounds fairly on-point. Personally, from what I’ve read, I would not even mention my child’s major and go out of my way to never even imply that I have a preference, but I am pretty obsessive and it’s probably unrealistic to think that a parent could really dedicate herself to raising their child as textbook-perfectly as I would have to in order to feel OK about the situation, which is probably pretty much fine given incomplete information on the subject and all. I’m sure you’re an awesome parent. </p>
<p>But regarding the OP’s father, again, yes, he has the “right” to do whatever he wants with his money, and again, he has the right to do a lot of things that are sleazy and unethical. It’s sleazy to lord someone’s future over their head like that. It’s not illegal, it’s just immoral. The kid has the option to say “kiss off,” and I surely would, but that’s not the point. The point is that if one places so much value on being able to dictate their kid’s future to them that they are willing to make them choose between being happy and being doubt-free (not to mention the strained family relations caused by a power play like this), while that is their “right,” they are a pretty terrible person and an even worse parent for doing it. I get why he WANTS to do it, but I also get why Bernie Madoff wanted to do what he did.</p>
<p>I originally wanted to major in psychology. Then for all kinds of complicated reasons I switched to English. I decided as I approached graduation that I really did want to pursue a career in mental health so I quickly took all the courses I would need to apply to grad school, graduated and went to grad school and became a psychotherapist. Grad school was easier for me than for others because of my writing experience. </p>
<p>My husband was an English major. He’s a lawyer which involves a lot of writing. My daughter graduated with an English major and has been gainfully employed since. I know another young woman with an English degree who is working for Google with all of their nice perks – they do need people in PR, advertising, etc. My son who is a freshman in college will probably major in English. I’m not worried.</p>
<p>As for med school, I have a son currently in an application season, already accepted somewhere. There is a ton of essay writing for med school applications and knowing how to write well would be an asset. No one should start a path to medical school unless they really think it’s the right thing. It’s a long road even before you’re admitted and it’s an expensive path. But you can certainly go to law school with an English major or business school. And doing something you like and earning a high GPA will make you competitive for professional school should you choose it.</p>
<p>And one more thing – yes, you can teach with an English degree and there is no shame in being a teacher. Depending on where you live, it can be a secure profession with good benefits.</p>
<p>*On the ROI side, If you just become a family doctor, you’ll make probably 90K tops. With 90K, after all that sacrifice and tuition expense, its hardly a good ROI.[/i[</p>
<p>The median annual salary for even family practice physicians is about $213K. They make far more than $90K. And subspecialty MDs make far more - cardiologists averaged $585K in 2009, a figure that has surely gone up (since PCPs averaged $191K that year and now make $20K more). It’s one of the most well-paid careers, one of the few that pretty much guarantees a high income.</p>
<p>[Primary</a> Care Doctor Pay Jumps Past $200K As Obamacare, Market Push New Pay Methods - Forbes](<a href=“http://www.forbes.com/sites/brucejapsen/2012/07/10/primary-care-doctor-pay-jumps-past-200k-as-obamacare-market-push-new-pay-methods/]Primary”>Primary Care Doctor Pay Jumps Past $200K As Obamacare, Market Push New Pay Methods)</p>
<p>Sorry that your dad is pressuring you to go into a field you don’t want to go into. I understand that he wants the best for you, but I also know where you’re coming from. You want to be happy and do what you love, and you should be able to! Instead of giving him a vague topic of “writing” as a career, I would really try to give him more concrete plans. I’m sure that above all he wants you to make sure you’re successful, therefore, you should show him examples of successful jobs that you’d like that you’d like to pursue. If you’re interested in writing, think about an English major, which has plenty of options and fields that you can go into (that are full of success!). That way, he sees that this isn’t just an idea, but an actual plan. Also, if he doesn’t cave in and accept that you are your own person, you just have to go with your gut. I wouldn’t be able to sit back and do something I hate for a living. I’d end up being extremely bitter towards my dad if he threatened and I followed his plan instead of mine, only to hate my career later. Find something that you love to do, and try your best at it to succeed. Your dad will hopefully eventually understand. And tons of people take out student loans, there are work-study programs, and scholarships to obtain. There are ways to make your dreams happen even if your parents don’t support it. Don’t sacrifice your dream to make someone else happy.</p>
<p>I know my opinion is probably held by a very small minority, but it goes this way: pressuring someone to go into a field they actively dislike or really have no aptitude is misguided. Not going to a field in which a person has spectacular talent and interest is also a wasted opportunity. </p>
<p>In between lies overwhelming majority of the people I know including everyone in my family. For this crowd, “Passion”, as I see it, is grossly over-hyped; for those who are so young to have little experience in the field, passion is even more dubious because the mundane reality of what someone actually has to do for decades in a field is quite often very different from what they experienced in their introduction due to one great teacher, or in a summer project, or in a museum trip, or because of what they saw in a documentary. </p>
<p>To me true passion means that a person will continue to pursue that interest regardless of the tangible returns. Sadly, I know of too many “truly passionate” people who are dying to take early retirement, or already there by age 55 and talk about how lovely their prior job in healthcare, or teaching, or whatever else was. </p>
<p>I’m probably quite a stereotypical cc-Asian parent and our strategy with the kids had been to expose them extensively to fields that we liked - I bought electronic components and designed and built circuits that we connected to oscilloscopes when they were in elementary school. I taught them programming at a young age so they could do things on the web before Geocities or other user friendly tools had been developed. When we went to amusement parks, we made calculations of the mechanics of the rides, calculated momentum, did probability problems in our heads while waiting in long lines, etc. We signed them up in every science contest and designed vacations around a math contest in Boston or Chess tournaments in Florida. </p>
<p>The bottom line was when it was time for them to decide which way they wanted to go, comp sci, medicine, engg, vet, etc were at the top of their choice as careers, while areas like writing or art were hobbies, at best, and fields like history were, “yuk”. </p>
<p>DW & I would never have forced, or even pressured them to go to a specific area, like mandating my son to go to medicine or the daughters to do engg. We certainly had our “A” list of fields we would give them everything we could, a lukewarm list where they better round up healthy amounts of assistance, and some even worse. But the good thing was that our interests were practically identical to how all three kids felt, so there was no conflict. </p>
<p>We realize, of course, that there’s no guarantee that DD’s medical education or DS’s comp sci/engg education will bring them great satisfaction or tangible rewards, but our reasoning was that there was no guarantee that anything else would either, so what’s wrong with this? </p>
<p>I also notice that it’s not uncommon to call salary, “compensation”. Compensation for what? Let me guess, for the time you are asked to give up from doing what you really want to be doing. So to conclude, my feeling is that for the bulk of us who are not Lennon/McCartneys, Shakespeares, or Feynmanns, there’s no great loss to the person or to society in not following the field of passion at age 18 as their career; rather, it makes sense to look at fields where the mediocre person in that occupation has a relatively good life, reject those that you intrinsically dislike or have sub-par talent in, and settle to being reasonably compensated for something that you don’t despise, but not necessarily be passionate about.
[/rant]</p>
<p>If your dad isn’t paying for medical school, he is an idiot. It’s financial suicide unless you go into a high-paying specialty, which is becoming more and more competitive to get into.</p>
<p>I am so sorry that so many young people feel so pressured. I am a junior in high school and my parents have no intention of paying one dime of my college expenses. They have made this clear. So, they really don’t have any say in what I major in at all. I thought it was really stressful worrying about how to pay for college, but it is nothing compared to someone trying to dictate my life.</p>