<p>I didn’t read all the posts, so this may have already been said. My advice would be to:</p>
<p>definitely plan on an MA degree, </p>
<p>keep doing your art - make it a real discipline in your life & carve out some time each day for it, </p>
<p>get some career advice one way or the other (school career office, books, internet),</p>
<p>definitely take art history (to broaden your education & for credibility in the field),</p>
<p>try to get some type of internship through your school (museum, graphic identity design, texture creation in gaming, lots of possibilities!) - make those connections as is possible!,</p>
<p>keep your antennae out - this field is not as cut & dried as medicine - you will just have to accept that, and live with the relative uncertainty of it.</p>
<p>I would also suggest that you put all the emotion having to do with your parents into a little mental suitcase that can be closed 
and (best advice coming here, although it sounds very mundane): keep putting one foot in front of the other. You will get somewhere. (You will be satisfied with your career, self-sufficient, and your parents will probably be happy with you - they just don’t have a clue where you would go in the art field - that part will be up to you to figure out.</p>