How do I convince my sister she's going into the wrong field?

In My Humble Opinion
1

My older sister is a bit of a late blooomer on the college front, so to speak. She didn’t start attending school until after I did (she’s 29 now and working on her Associate’s)

She’s going to school for radiography, so, as she explains it, she’d be the technician doing MRIs and such.

Here’s the problem- though she’s not stupid, she’s not a math or “hard” science person at all. She has tried and failed (twice) to take Elementary Algebra, which is a remedial course she must complete before starting on any science classes. She’s a lot like me, more into the social sciences. She really enjoyed her sociology and psychology classes, and loves to debate.

Plus, she is grossed out by blood and guts and all that (completely unlike me- I jumped at the chance to dissect a different marine animal every week in my marine biology class, and think watching open-heart surgery is perfectly acceptable dinner-time entertainment). She’ll have to take A&P I & II, and I know in A&P II you have to dissect things (I actually dropped my A&P I lab when I found out we didn’t get to dissect anything, and I’m a history major, I was just taking the class for fun). She just called me, asking about A&P, and told me she’d have to try to get some exemption based on (false) religious grounds to get out of dissecting crap.

We’ve talked before about her career choice, and she knows it isn’t a good fit for her, yet, I quote, “But any career in the fields I’m interested in (e.g. sociology) won’t make me any money.”

I’ve told her this is stupid. I’ve also told her that she probably won’t make it through the radiography program (I assume Elementary Algebra won’t fulfill their math requirements) and even if she did, she’d probably get a job as radiographer only to find out that she hated it, and would be back at school doing something she’s actually interested in and (gasp) good at, but she’s still motivated solely by monetary concerns.

Really, she is so poorly suited for this career it’s laughable; in fact, we should totally switch places. I know not everyone can be like me and choose a career that seems to actively discourage the acquisition of money, but I can’t imagine that a degree in something like sociology would provide no opportunities to earn a decent living.

What should I do? I know she’s a big girl and all that, but she’s really wasting time and energy on this. She’s said she picked radiography because pushing a few buttons on a fancy machine seemed so easy, and paid so well. So, maybe I won’t make so much money, but teaching classes, doing research, and writing seems really fricking easy (and fun) to me, and I know the same sort of thing would be easy (and fun) for her too.

2

She sounds like one of those people that simply has to find out for herself. I don’t think I’d waste too much energy trying to persuade her to go into another field. It isn’t like it’s a life-or-death decision. She’ll survive if she’s making a mistake. Wish her luck and have your “I told you so” speech ready. :wink:

3

I wish I could give you help as well. My sister is doing a BIG mistake like you are. She HATES people. I mean, she really hates people. And she doesn’t like people that are impatient or rude. She doesn’t like dealing with people she doesn’t like or people she doesn’t know. Guess what field she’s going into…nursing. She wants to take care of sick, nasty, dieing people who might not be interested in being nice to her or asking her please.
But, like it has been suggested, shes going to have to find this out on her own. My father and I have explained this to my sister before but it only makes her more stubborn. I’d be surprised if that isn’t happening to your sister as well. If she thinks she can do it, let her try and fail. It makes us all better people in the end. We learn nothing from people fixing our mistakes…

4

One of my best friends is at school for radiology tech right now. It’s hard. He’s a smart guy, but he always complains about how hard all his classes are - all hard sciences. Anatomy and physiology, biology, math, and all the actual radiology classes (including history of it). He likes his hospital work but he is thinking about quitting and going back to his first choice, secondary education, because he is having a hard time cutting it in all those science classes. He made great grades back in high school and his first two years of college, but is barely pulling C’s now. They’ll kick her out of the program if she can’t do it. She’ll figure everything out in time. But I’m wondering why she thinks professors are so broke - get decent grades and a post-grad degree, job at a decent school, and she won’t be poor or anything. It will take more time to make money, but it’s not like she’ll need food stamps while teaching or anything.

5

It is not easy to make money in something like sociology, and those who do usually have pretty good quantitative skills, way beyond elementary algebra. Being good at discussing the concepts of sociology or psychology is quite a bit different from doing or even helping with the kind of research that gets done to develop and test those theories. So I really wouldn’t push the sociology.

From what you’ve told me, this actually doesn’t seem like the world’s worst career choice. It’s not like she’s trying to be a surgical nurse.

Don’t enable her at all in getting out of the anatomy and physiology. I’d take the stance that if it really bothers her she should see a counselor to deal with her fear or disgust. Just curious, but can she cook a chicken? Dissecting is really no grosser than that.

Also, same with the math. She should see if she has some type of learning disability related to math. This sounds judgmental even as I say it, but I have a hard time figuring out why an adult without either a learning disability or a bad attitude can’t pass elementary algebra. She needs to figure out which it is.

6

I feel your pain, it’s difficult to watch your siblings stumble or make choices you deem ill advised.

Being older now, I have a better grasp of the things I struggled with in my youth. I watched my brother enter into a doomed marriage.

The truth is you can’t keep people, even the ones you love, from learning their own life lessons.

It was so challenging for me I went through a year with this taped to my computer:

You cannot help someone by doing for them what they should or could do for themselves.

You cannot give someone else self awareness.

Also don’t be too sure you know how things will play out. More than once, I was mistaken when I was confident I was 100% right, and things ended up taking turns I could not have possibly foreseen. And, in some cases, had they followed my advice they’d have missed some other development that changed their path for the better.

Imagine she takes your advice and spends a lifetime blaming you for never reaching her financial goals because your opinion of her abilities held her back. In truth, would you let anyones else’s opinion of your abilities stop you from reaching for goals you thought you could achieve? I hope not. I’m not saying your assessment is mistaken, it’s probably right on the money.

One day you will be a parent and have to watch your beloved off spring make their own mistakes. How will you react? Perhaps this is your training.

Good luck to you, I know it’s hard to watch

7

Tell her to go into pharmacology when she comes home queasy and disgusted after a dissection in class.

8

Yeah, I don’t know much about radiology, but I’d imagine that it would involve some sort of physics (E&M maybe?). However, it is possible that she could be good at science. I don’t know if it is at all or not. I’ll give myself as an example. I’ve always been very technically minded, yet I’m not particularly good at math. I was, however, really good at physics, and the application of the math I never cared for when taking it for it’s own sake. But when it came to the actual application of things I was really good. Same thing went for economics. I don’t know why but I just got it.

But really, choosing a career because it sounds like it makes a lot of money for little effort is a bad idea. It doesn’t really inspire much confidence in her ability to do much with it. It’s a shame that so late in life she’s doing this. She doesn’t really have the time to be learning things the hard way.

My new rule is to pick something that you like and are good at. That way you’re probably going to be more successful. I think.

9

You could try encouraging her to talk to some people who do the career or look into “job shadowing” a radiographer to get a better idea of what it’s like before investing all that time in the training. No harm in learning more about your future career.

However, I don’t think you should try to tell her it’s a mistake. That will probably just cause hurt feelings.
To be honest, I think your post here comes across as if you think you’re better than her, since you kept comparing your own successes to her failures. I don’t think you intended to give that impression, but it goes to show that it would be very easy to give the impression of being a bossy know-it-all if you keep trying to tell her she’s wrong about this.

She might surprise you. Even if the classes are a struggle for her, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the wrong career. In many professions, the classes are more of a hoop to jump through, rather than a reflection of what it’s like to do the job day in and day out. She may need to work a little harder than others to get through the schooling, but end up perfectly happy with her career after it’s over.

If this path is a mistake or she’s truly not qualified, I’m sure she will figure it out on her own sooner or later.

10

I also think it’s a mistake to assume that she only has two choices–radiology or sociology. It’s not bad to know that some sort of finacial security is important to you. There are people who are happy eating ramen and living in an unairconditioned studio apartment if it means getting to do what they love and people who are not. Better to know what you want/need and go after it than to pretend you are different.

I suspect that a lot of what appeals to her about radiology is that the carreer path is clear–get the degree, get a job as a radiology tech. Some people (and I am one of them), really like the idea of being certified/qualified for a particular job. It limits you, sure, but it simplifies things as well. If you decide you have to talk to her about this, you might research other degrees that also have clear-cut job paths and pay the same or more but do not have the same math and science requirements.

Or you could mind your own business. Which is really what I would recommend. But if you have to talk to her, do some research first. And then listen to her concerns, don’t dismiss them. Find an alternative to suggest that deals with those concerns.

11

Although I agree that it’s hard to watch someone go down a path that you think isn’t suited for her, I also think you need to watch yourself in the judgemental attitude. I’ve come to learn that that very few experiences in life are a complete “waste”. Someone more experienced and better off than you could scrutinized your path and decide that you’ve wasted your time. Doesn’t mean they’re right.

On her own terms, in her own way, she may discover that radiology is not her bag. But on the journey to this discovery she may stumble across a career that IS suited for her. So don’t denigrate the journey by calling it a waste.

I have an older sister who only as an AA degree and has hopped, skipped, and jumped from career to career while I have stayed pretty much in the same field throughout my adult life. I’m sure she would consult me for advice if she wanted to go back to school, just because I have more experience in that area. But I wouldn’t feel comfortable giving her career advice. I haven’t been in a career long enough to be able to do that. And I have the feeling you haven’t either.

It’s great that you’ve found your way to a career, but your sister doesn’t need you to lord that over her (especially since you’re younger). Just be supportive of her decision to go back to school, period.

12

Mrs Geek used to be a nuclear med tech. Having spent a lot of time around nuke med, x-ray, and MRI techs, I can tell you that the math and science isn’t a big deal. They get paid to operate a very expensive piece of machinery. The machine does all the math and science. They push the buttons. In a way it is an easy job because your sister is right, all you do is push some buttons and you get a nice big paycheck. But, it’s not an easy job. It’s a very stressful job and in most of the hospitals I’ve seen, the techs are VERY overloaded with patients so you are constantly under pressure to get things done in a hurry and you don’t dare make a mistake because that costs time and time is the one thing you don’t have.

Mrs Geek went into the field because she didn’t know what to do and her father kinda picked it for her. Once she got into it she found that she didn’t like it, but her father made her stick with it. She worked for about seven or eight years and completely hated every day of it. She made very good money at it, but she regretted ever choosing it as a career path.

I guarantee you that if your sister talked to Mrs Geek, Mrs Geek would tell her to run in the opposite direction of this career path, and run as fast as you can. It’s a great career path for some people, but if your sister doesn’t like it and is just doing it for the money, she will end up being miserable.

13

She’s really squeamish about meat, even though she eats chicken and beef. It all has to be overcooked so there’s no juices and it doesn’t resemble meat at all (as I put it, so it’s further removed from the happy chicken it once was).

As for the math, like I said, she’s not dumb, she’s just not a “math person.” Some people really buy into that stereotype and it prevents them from doing well, just as much as a lack of ability.

lavendarviolet, I am a bossy know-it-all, actually. :wink: But I’m not trying to say that I’m better than she is (what successes are you talking about? It took me 5 years to figure out what I wanted to do! Unless you think finding dissecting a squid oddly satisfying a “success”). But she’s actually asked me for advice… I believe the words that came out of her mouth were “I think I want to change majors.” This was less than a year ago.

I know that radiography (not radiology- she won’t be interpreting the results) and sociology are not her only two options, I just know that, from what she’s told me, sociology was her favorite class. Just to give you an idea of what she’s actually good at- social sciences. She’d actually make a great lawyer, everyone told her that growing up. Now there’s a good job that pays well.

I’m also worried because she’s 29 with a 6 year old and another on the way in a couple of months. She works as a secretary for our parent’s business and isn’t making all that much there. She’s got 2 kids to think about and her husband is a cook, so if this ends up being the wrong career for her, she’s got to start all over. In the meantime, are the kids going to suffer? It’s not like she’s 18 and has a few years to spare that she can dick around and finally settle on the field that suits her (like me- 5 years to figure that out! And a buttload of unnecessary credits later) Really, the thing that sucks for me, just as much as watching her struggle and be unhappy, is that she will bug me for the rest of her school career, asking for help with her math (she somehow got the idea that I’m good at math because I’m not terrified of it, but I am certainly no math whiz) and I can guarantee at some point she’ll offer to pay me to do her homework if she’s having that much trouble. It’s not like she’s really into radiography and totally dedicated to it, it’s just an arbitrary career choice. And she asks me for advice all the time, because I went to the school she’s going to now.

So, yeah, I’m a bitch because this career choice will annoy me for the next few years. Talking about a Supreme Court decision or cool sociological study, all right. Bitching about how you hate your classes and plotting ways to get around the dissection requirement, not so much.

Is there actually any sort of exemption for religious reasons to get out of that part of A&P? If not, I think that’s really going to be the turning point for her.

14

There may well be a religious exception to get out of dissection in an anatomy and physiology class, if someone is perhaps a Jain whose religion really does greatly center around avoiding any harm they may do to other living creatures. Some schools probably don’t have dissections due to budget constraints, so it is hard to argue that there is no other way to learn anatomy and physiology. Most religious exemptions are based on reasonable accommodation. In this case, for undergrad or community college credits, that might mean watching someone else do the dissection or watching a video, or perhaps writing a paper about the body systems. Or maybe it would involve doing the dissection on a human who died of natural causes instead of on an animal killed for your convenience :smiley: For professional qualification courses or medical school it might be harder to argue that the accommodation is reasonable. I have no problem with this as a legitimate religious accommodation, but would find it an absolutely unethical and despicable thing to fake. If I were a professor and suspected a student of faking, I would definitely suggest a visit to the med school’s cadaver lab as an adequate substitute.

15

She does realize that she’ll be taking pictures of raw meat in some cases? Bad breaks, recent surgeries, etc. If she can’t hack raw chicken, how will she manage hacked up people?

16

Oh, and just so I don’t come off as the world’s biggest bitch:

If she was all gung-ho about this, even if she’d never shown any interest before, I’d keep my mouth shut. But she’s expressed doubts about her major, at which point I told her what I thought.

I told her picking a field solely because of the money is stupid, and I do think it is. Now, saying “I’m interested in X, Y, and Z, and have the skills A, B and C, and this is the job that requires those skills and pays the best” is fine- go with your interests and abilities. Saying, “This job looks easy and pays well” even if you’re not interested in it is, IMO, really stupid.

I never told her she couldn’t do it, I think she’s perfectly capable of doing it, I just think she’s not well-suited for it and she’ll struggle because she’s not particularly interested in it. I don’t think she’s stupid at all. All of my siblings are really smart. I just hate the idea of someone slogging away at a job for 30 years, hating every minute of it. That’s really my problem with this. If she expressed a desire to become a lawyer and argue before the Supreme Court I think it would be an equally difficult career choice, but better suited to her.

Yes, I should keep my mouth shut, but what do I do when she’s complaining about her classes (or trying to bribe me into taking her A&P lab in her name if she can’t get around the dissection thing?)

And Harriet, they do dissection at this school. I used to go there, and asked about it when I took A&P I, which is how I know they do it in A&P II. I don’t agree with her faking Jainism either, which is what she called me this morning to ask about, which is what prompted this whole thread.

17

Yeah, that’s what I’m thinking. The squeamishness is the deal-breaker in this case. But she seems convinced she can get around the dissection requirement and never have to look at anything gross again.

Maybe I will suggest job-shadowing so she can get a feel for what she’s actually going to be doing. If she’s all excited afterwards, then great. But lukewarm interest combined with ultimate squeamishness spells disaster IMO.

18

The point I was trying to make (not well, clearly) about some schools not doing dissection for budget reasons is that if some accredited schools teach A&P w/o dissection, it is hard for another school to argue that absolutely no religious accommodation alternative can be provided.

Sounds like you need to brace yourself not to enable any nonsense on her part. I recommend laying the law down sooner rather than later that you won’t do her work for her or listen to endless whining.

19

Coming from an older sister, any advice from a younger sister is NOT going to be taken well.

It happens with my sister and I all the time. I’m the oldest and she tries to give me life advice. The problem is that, being the older sister, I consistently underestimate her on that front. I think that if someone is immature enough to still be thinking of a money-above-happiness career, they’re still probably going to think this way about their younger sister. It’s not really a slight on you, it’s the older sibling thing. Something about pride.

Granted, my younger sister ain’t even out of the house yet, so take my info with a grain of salt, but that’s my general feeling, corroborated in most of the older-younger sibling groups I know.

~Tasha

20

Just because someone asks for your advice, that doesn’t mean that you should accept that responsibility. Tread with caution.

And your automatic response should be? Please do not enable your sister to bypass the requirements for doing her job well. This is how she will learn if she is suited for the job.

Your sound like a very caring sister, but turn loose!

BTW, my step-daughter just graduated from law school with a doctorate this time last year at age 40. Your sister is not so old!