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Dr Masimba Mavaza
A career is medicine is stressful enough for the doctors who see it as a calling.
It could be worse for those join the profession because their parents forced them. It can really be punishment.
Traditionally, many parents have highly regarded law, medicine and engineering, without really knowing what goes with these professions.
As children grow up, they are encouraged to take up law or medicine. In most cases, parents want their children to do exactly what they failed to do themselves.
A friend of mine who is a lecturer at a UK University told me the following story. One day he was just finishing an open day programme at his university when a prospective student approached him and asked him: “I don’t know how to ask this? My parents really want me to enrol medicine but I’m not interested. How do I say no? I think I can get in but my heart is not in it.”
He replied; “It’s great that you recognise it. Have you tried talking to your parents?”
“I’ve tried and tried, but they have invested their whole life in my brother and me,” said the student
“What would happen if you said no?”
“They would be really disappointed in me. That would break my heart,” answered the girl.
“But if I did medicine, I wouldn’t be honest to myself. And I’d take the spot of someone who really wanted it.”
She faced a wicked dilemma: whether to obey her parents or rely on her own, admittedly young, instinct.
A momentous decision hung in the air, the sort parents can help address, but of course, the parents were the problem. And though she relaxed at the opportunity to voice her dilemma, I knew that the knots in her stomach would return soon.
I wished that I could solve her problem; I wished I could convince her parents that a child of her poise and humility would do well in whatever field she chose.
I told her to see the school counsellor again and I reminded her to be true to herself, but when she left, I felt hollow, musing whether she would one day be the troubled student or the depressed intern.
This girl represents many students who are forced to embark on courses which bring joy to their parents without considering how the child feels and what is her strength in life.
Many children in the Diaspora are increasingly finding themselves in a quandary, as they are forced to choose between their hearts’ desires and those of their parents.
Believing that the country has some of the finest law and medicine schools in the world, parents are forcing their children to get into medical school or become lawyers.
I have met a lot of children here who are being forced to pursue careers they do not want.
Children are in a dilemma.
These youngsters know what they want and know their strengths, but it seems for the parents, only law and medicine are suitable, presumably for the ‘prestige’ that is attached to the professions.
It appears the parents are trying to achieve through their children what they failed to achieve.
This has resulted in the creation of doctors and lawyers who are not committed to their profession.
We are losing brilliant engineers and artistes as these children try to fulfil the dreams of their parents.
The psychological trauma caused by such a forceful push on the children has caused irreparable damage.
Some children are now rebelling and refusing to go to university.
In the so-called land of plenty and rights, children are not being allowed to be true to themselves.
Parents are at the forefront of creating frustrated students and depressed professionals lacking passion in their fields.
A generation of grumpy doctors and inefficient lawyers is being created by the selfish parents.
Knowing nothing about the rigours of law and medicine, they have the audacity to frog march their children to these ‘prestigious.
Online Reporter