Medicine Career Path?

Career Qualm: Follow Your Heart or Satisfy Parent's Dreams?

• Bottom line: I have been searching for a suitable career to study in University. For the past year I have narrowed it down to science-based careers. Lately, I've had a big interest holistic/alternative medicine, especially things like osteopathic medicine. The problem is that my father is a snobby, spoiled, social-status conscious and terribly conservative parent, who claims he "wants the best for me" and that this would NOT be the right path for me. Instead, I should become a doctor that specializes in "conventional" medicine branches like Cardiology, Neurology, etc. To me, that path is not the one I must take, because I am strongly against industries like the pharmaceutical industry, which many of these areas support. With holistic medicine, there is a strong emphasis on things that I tend to be drawn to, something which regular medicine ignores. Bottom line, what to do? Nod my head and do what my Dad says, or follow my heart and passion and study alternative medicine?

• Answer:

  I would say research both fields thoroughly to mkae sure that you won't have any impediments in terms of career options in the future; which I am sure you won't with osteopathic medicine. Afterwards, I say choose the one that you feel that you can sit down and say to yourself in the future that you are happy doing. Also consider whether or not you have a family, and make sure that whatever you choose can support them. I am in this predicament in another major also, so I wish you the best of luck and hope you find your way! Good luck! And I hope everything works out gloriously!