When your parents are Middle Eastern immigrants, you have three choices. You can become a doctor, a lawyer or an engineer.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I came from a traditional immigrant family where education meant there were only a few valid paths: doctor or lawyer - and I didn't want to be either one.
My parents have mellowed quite a bit, but, growing up, there was a sense that the only real professions were doctor, engineer, lawyer. Those were your choices.
My parents always said that I would be a lawyer or pilot or doctor - and I always just thought that's what I would do.
My generation's parents told their children, 'Become an accountant, a lawyer, or an engineer; that will give you a solid foothold in the middle class.' But these jobs are now being sent overseas. So in order to make it today, you have to do work that's hard to outsource, hard to automate.
Dad and mom would have preferred that I be a doctor, a lawyer, a scientist, or a great humanitarian.
My parents were farmers' kids from South Dakota. My dad was an engineer. I wanted to be responsible and major in something pragmatic.
Both my parents are doctors, so from the time I was a child, I wanted to do medicine.
Maybe it will be difficult, but I want to finish school. My parents want me to finish school, and I am pretty sure I will. I will not go to university; I will turn professional when I finish school.
Being from a very traditional Chinese-American family, my parents believed the only options to have a successful life were to be a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer or a business person.
My parents never understood why I didn't want to be a doctor or lawyer. They're Cuban immigrants who wanted to give their children the American dream, and, to them, that was more of what 'the dream' entailed.