MY PARENTS EXPECT ME TO BE A DOCTOR

Dear Coleen

I’m an 18-year-old girl in my final year of sixth form before going to university. My problem is that my parents, who are both doctors, are expecting me to follow in their footsteps and study medicine.

I’ve kind of been going along with that and basically telling them what they want to hear.

However, I really don’t want to do it and I’m starting to panic – I want to do drama, and don’t know how to tell them. It’ll shatter all the hopes and dreams they had for me, and I’m worried they’ll be angry too.

How can I talk to them about it?

Coleen says

You have to sit down with them and be honest about how you feel. It’s not an easy thing to do, but putting it off is only going to make it harder the closer it gets to taking your exams.

Tell them you’re very proud of what they do for a living, but it doesn’t excite you and you don’t think it will make you happy.

The bottom line is, they’ll be forking out a lot of money to help fund something you’re not interested in studying. If showbiz is in your soul, I don’t think anything will change your mind.

You could offer a compromise – that you’ll try drama for a couple of years and see how it goes.

If you decide it’s not for you after all, then you can go back to studying medicine – you have plenty of time.