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<p>Your parents have a lot more to lose than you do. They have a limited number of years.</p>
<p>I’ve been through the parents crying because you won’t do something routine myself.</p>
<p>Sometimes saying no to your parents is better for them in the long run.</p>
<p>^ Well said, BCEagle. </p>
<p>I’ve friends who’ve gone through very similar things. If you want to know what happened to them, you can PM me. </p>
<p>You have to learn to become your own person and not obsessively seek approval from your parents. A sufficiently graceful person with sufficiently sane parents should be able to make his parents understand and accept his position. So I think you should make every effort to try to convince them first. </p>
<p>If you’ve already tried countless times to no avail (not sure what your situation is), then you will have to make some sacrifices. If you reasonably think that your parents would stop feeding you for rebelling, then maybe you need to reconsider your relationship with them. Sure, they’ve made sacrifices for you, but it is parents’ responsibility to allow their children to live their own lives. </p>
<p>Imagine if I sacrificed my life savings to send you to Julliard to study the trumpet. Suppose you have absolutely no interest in trumpet. Would it be reasonable of me to be mad at you and make your life miserable for declining my offer? For that matter, would it be reasonable of me even to make this sacrifice in the first place without even considering your needs? Or even better, is it reasonable to devote your entire life to trumpet just to make me happy? I would argue that you should end our friendship, even if I were otherwise pleasant, because this type of behavior is manipulative and toxic.</p>
<p>Assuming you really are interested in pursuing engineering, I have some advice based upon my own past experiences.</p>
<p>If you can, pick up an engineering-oriented EC and see if your parents object to it (if they do, good opportunity to bring this up). The best thing would be to be open with your parents about this. </p>
<p>If this is not possible, then you may have to bite the bullet until you are legally an adult (19?). They basically can’t touch you after that, unless you do something stupid like get caught with drugs on campus. </p>
<p>If you are a strong student, aim for large scholarships or schools generous with financial aid. If you can work/pay for your own education, then you’ll have the freedom to study what you want without having to worry about your parents cutting you off financially. This worked in my case because my parents refused to pay for my schooling after I changed my major, but my program of choice gave me a full ride. </p>
<p>Make sure you get good internships that pay well over the summer, in case your parents don’t support you.</p>
<p>Apply to schools you actually want to attend, preferably good engineering schools that will let you change majors. If you manage to become reasonably independent from your parents, then you can switch majors. If your parents make you apply to med school pre-admission programs, maybe you could sabotage your applications. </p>
<p>I’d avoid resorting to these tactics though, unless you’ve sincerely tried to help your parents understand your position and they absolutely won’t budge. You may ultimately have to choose between parental approval and your own sanity.</p>
<p>By the way, even a typical engineer will live a very comfortable life. You don’t need a doctor to live a good life. If anything, doctors have arguably more stressful lives. You have four years of med school, plus debt, plus residency before you can get a real (not to mention very demanding) job. </p>
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<p>I believe you. If they are still feeding you, then you have to handle this delicately. But do your own thing as soon as you’re safe. Become successful and then see if you guys can reconcile. </p>
<p>If you limit yourself to what your parents want, then you’re just going to feel this way for as long as they are alive.</p>
<p>ummm, hope you really are a ■■■■■. know MANY docs making barely $100,000 or even less. don’t know any making $1 million or more, even the surgeons I know.</p>
<p>you can pay your folks back by working hard & doing well in whatever field you can. incurring buckets of debt to try to pursue something you don’t really want to do seems pretty foolhardy to me, IF you can even get into med school. if they have tons of passionate applicants who REALLY want to help others & stellar credentials, why would they choose you over them?</p>
<p>No, I do not think it is bad to want to be a doctor primarily for the money. Not at all. Does not mean you would be a bad doctor or not care about your patients. I do NOT care why my doctor wants works as a doctor, why my pharmacist does, dentist, mechanic , I only care that he/she is competent. I work in healthcare and mostly picked my job for the money, schedule flexibility, etc… as did 75% of my coworkers when asked…Except I only have to work less than 1/2 hours a doctor works, am not on call, make a lot less but to me it is still a great amount. However, I do not know any doctor who makes $1,000,000. NONE. most make 150-250k after they are attendings-( after 4 years medical school and 3-7 year residencies/fellowships). surgeons like ent, urology etc do NOT make 1 million dollars. not at all. maybe a plastic surgeon to the stars might or the rare dr or two who is now doing talk shows, etc… If you are a plastic surgeon working on wound flaps you will not be making a million dollars either, no where near that. Remember how many YEARS of your life this will take up. Your whole 20s and early 30s gone. medical school, then residency and fellowship for many specialties. 80 hour work weeks EVERY WEEK, and that is THANKS to the new limitations.who knows what the hours will be when you are done. being up all day at work from 6am-6pm THEN overnight call. Where you will be paged and excpected to answer promptly and then get up to do it all over again tomorrow. I work in a teaching hospital and believe me 80 hour weeks every week for years, while you are getting $40-50k, and not liking it at all, will make you very miserable. if you felt forced into it, it will make you resentful. many are, and by that point the only realistic option is to continue on due to heavy student loans.
Yes, your parents might not talk to you forever, but that might be a risk you have to take. Many do. They might not be as informed as they think they are. Plenty of fields offer a good income. I would advise my future kids against careers in medicine. (lol-seriously)And sometimes the bark is worse than the bite.</p>
<p>Well, i do know a kid friend of my kiddo. Doctor Dad, Doctor Mom, two older Doctor sibs. He rebelled at 18 and did not even go to the “family Big 10 university” although he could have and is a biomedical engineer working on prosthetics and quite happy at age 27. Chin up and find your path, it’s really up to you.</p>
<p>Thank for all your answer it was very helpful!so now please give me some advice to approach them without looking rebellious?!i really have a passion the computer science!</p>
<p>Tell them you’ll have a lot more money to support them if you don’t have hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical school debt.</p>
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<p>It won’t be until age 24, marriage, or after military service that the OP’s parents income and assets will no longer be counted against him/her for college financial aid purposes. This gives the parents power over the OP with respect to college and major choices until then (even if they are poor enough to have EFC = 0, the parents still have power by being able to refuse to fill in financial aid forms).</p>
<p>Getting a full ride merit scholarship is a way around that, but that is not necessarily easy to do.</p>
<p>You can apply to med school as a computer science major. So, major in computer science, and take the premed courses you need. If your parents ask why you aren’t majoring in biology or something, tell them there are plenty of jobs for doctors who also know about computers, which is true. Don’t tell them that you have no intention of taking one of those jobs. </p>
<p>Apply to med school. Then don’t go to med school. By that time, you’ll have a valuable CS degree, and it won’t matter if your parents stop supporting you.</p>
<p>I don’t think it’s “the money” so much as “the security”. Assuming no huge malpractice boo-boos, doctors can pretty much be assured of earning a secure and at least comfortable income pretty much any where on the planet. </p>
<p>In terms of compensation, my sense is that the truth is somewhere in between some of the claims on this thread. Many physicians earn < 100K ? Nope. Maybe early years starting in with a practice in a lower compensated speciality. Or if they did a specialty like preventive medicine. But the data pretty much disprove such a claim. OTOH, it is true that even the top paid specialists are not going to make what a really successful person in business will make.</p>
<p>Here’s the Medscape 2012 physician salary report summary:</p>
<p>Physician income declined in general, although the top-earning specialties remained the same as in Medscape’s 2011 survey. In 2012, radiologists and orthopedic surgeons topped the list at $315,000, followed by cardiologists ($314,000), anesthesiologists ($309,000), and urologists ($309,000). Previously, radiologists and orthopedic surgeons led the pack, at a mean income of $350,000 each, followed by anesthesiologists and cardiologists (both at $325,000). The bottom-earning specialties in 2012’s survey were pediatrics, family medicine, and internal medicine.
For employed physicians, compensation includes salary, bonus, and profit-sharing contributions. For partners, compensation includes earnings after tax-deductible business expenses but before income tax. Compensation excludes non-patient-related activities (eg, expert witness fees, speaking engagements, and product sales).</p>
<p>workHaRd12, you need a clearer idea of what it’s like to be a physician in the US today. You have an inflated idea about physician incomes - even surgeons don’t routinely earn $1 million per year. Most of the few who do are in specialties with grueling training requirements, who spend as much as 10 years post-college earning far less while they’re repaying medical school loans. I know a surgeon in a demanding pediatric specialty. He’s well paid (nowhere near a million/year, though). He spent nearly a decade to become qualified in his field. He is under constant extreme stress, has to shuttle between two cities 90 miles apart every week, has little time for his own children, and must deal with the inevitable loss of patients despite heroic efforts. Is a lot of money worth that kind of life to you, absent caring about healing people?</p>
<p>Being a doctor is demanding work. You can’t just do it in your own head. There’s a lot of personal sacrifice. Please do yourself and your future patients a favor. If money is truly the only reason you’d consider a career in medicine, do something else. A lot of smart folks on this thread have told you that, with your interests, you can make a gazillion bucks without trying to do it in medicine.</p>
<p>You’re young - maybe you’ve never had an experience with an MD who’s in it strictly for the money. It’s ugly.</p>
<p>I dont’ think the OP needs to be convinced not to become a doctor. I think he/she needs to figure out how to tell the parents that their dream isn’t going to come true.</p>
<p>OP,
Do not worry, you will not survive if you are going into Medical field and do not care much about it. You fall out of this track. It is sooooo competitive and soooooo hard and time consuming and cost so much money, that asking yourself why are you doing it if you do not like it will get you to quit. So, there is no problem whatsoever, you will not be there “making people healthier” because as you said: “I don’t care about making people healthier”.</p>
<p>Thank you for all answer I end up talking to my parent!we spoke all night my dad barely had an heart!but he fine!my mom isn’t looking at me anymore but she will get over it! but they told me that I am starting a fight I can’t handle!if they took that way I am decide to fight for my future!I tried as respectful as I can also my uncle is on my side!</p>
<p>Congratulations, workHaRd12. I’m sure that was very difficult for you. Your parents will start to see that you need to live your own life on your own terms. As long as you are respectful and logical, they will come to see your point of view.</p>
<p>Good job, workHaRd. Remember that this is the first time they’ve heard this so it was a bit of a shock for them. It will take some time for them to get used to the idea. But you’ve started the conversation, which was the hardest part. Be respectful and patient.</p>