Choosing a major is never easy. Once a person starts school, they are asked to say what they want to be when they grow up. Can’t forget those career days I used to have every year in elementary school. Surely, since at that age we are young, we say the first thing that comes to mind. In some occasions, we don’t end up going with that career we mentioned twelve years ago. Which brings me to this: stop pressuring and manipulating your kids into studying something just because it pays more, it will give them an important “name” or just because during their first-grade career day they dressed up as a doctor. What family thinks or says can affect our decisions and how we feel when we go a different direction in our career choices. My whole life I said I would be a pediatric nurse or pediatrician. My family loved that I wanted to study something so “important”. Once I graduated high school and received orientations for nursing and pre-med, I knew that was not what I wanted. It didn’t take me that long to figure out what was the right career path for me. What did take a long time was telling my family what that was. There was no way they would be happy for me. Especially because I was going towards one of the most judged careers out there: education.
Don’t get me wrong, I do understand why people judge those who want to be teachers so much. Even more if you live somewhere like Puerto Rico. The educational system here is not the best, but that is not the teachers’ fault. The pay for teachers here is not good and there’s poor access to educational resources. Even with that, the love for teaching is still out there and teachers go all out to do everything they can for their students; that’s what education is all about. It took me a while to get some family members to understand that I have a passion for helping students and motivating our future generation, although this judgement did cause me to not talk about my major that much. Sometimes I still get a weird face from the people I tell this to;however, that just keeps me motivated to be the best teacher I can. It is baffling that students are sometimes scared of telling their loved ones the major they choose because they know it is not what others wanted or expected from them. Parents and family should be able to show support no matter what we decide. Pressuring will only cause anxiety and worry. Support your child’s decision, dreams and be proud of all their achievements; that should be all that matters.