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It comes down to this: Who is paying the bills?

If your parents are paying all the money, they get to call the shots. They can "cancel the check" any time.

But if you continue, getting loans, which you will later pay back yourself, it's your decision.

Your parents may be right. You may go the piano teacher route and later hate it, and your life.

But you might go into medicine, hate that, and not even be good at it.

In the end it's your life.

If my family had tried to guilt me into doing what they wanted me to do, and not do what I wanted to do, I would have said goodbye to all of them, although I might have possibly greatly regretted that later. But I was lucky. They were behind me.

Here is another perspective:

With the accelerated advance of AI (Artificial Intelligence), some predictions say, 20 years from now, the vast majority of disease diagnosis would be done by computers.
And IBM Watson enabled systems can already do legal works, in certain areas, better, a lot cheaper and much faster than trained lawyers.

20 years from now, the landscape of the job market will be drastically different than what it is now.
And your parent's perception of job market is probably what it was 20 years ago. My sister in law is a medical doctor in the US, and she didn't want her daughters to pursue careers in medicine.

I don't have a crystal ball and can't tell you what the job market will look like in 20 years, but it will be different, very very different from now. What would stay the same is people will continue to like music. However, the music that people likes to listens to could also be different from today, but that change would probably be slower.

What I am trying to say is, don't try to predict the job market, do what you are good at, do what you love to do, and you will have a better chance to succeed.

Having said this, have you taught student yet? Do you know that you love teaching or just that you think you love teaching? You are at the end of undergraduate years, go find some students and start teaching, while you are deciding what to do.

Hi all,

I'm thoroughly and ever-so-grateful for all these helpful, motivational, and realistic posts. To be given life experiences from so many is beyond what I can ask for. It's going to take me a while to reply to every idea and concern brought forward, and I do have a busy day ahead of me, so do trust that I am keeping an eye on these forums and I will do my best to answer soon. I may send private messages for specific questions.

This has already been more than I expected, but by no means is it too much, so don't be afraid to offer any more advice or feel free to wait for my reply before you post if you so choose.

Thank you so much!

Hi Ryan,

You've received much good musical advice, and I don't have anything to add to that. What resonated most with me was along relational lines -- your parents' wishes for your career path versus your own thoughts and dreams.

I hesitated to say anything, because I know different cultures have varying parent / adult child relationship traditions, and I don't know the dynamics of your culture. However, a book I recently read came to mind when I read your post: Boundaries, by Dr. Henry Cloud & Dr. John Townsend. The chapter entitled "Boundaries and Your Family" addresses, in part, issues an adult child may face when relating to one's parents. It gave the example of an adult who, on the outside, had moved away from her family, but on the inside, she was still very tied to her parents. Emotionally, she felt she didn't have permission to be a separate person, or free to make choices about her life without feeling guilty when her parents wanted her to follow their (different) path for her.

I don't have answers for you, but I would consider thinking in terms of not only career, but how relationships fit into your life. What impact would your deviating from your parents' wishes have on your long-term relationship with them? What impact would your following a career path that doesn't inspire you have on your relationship with your parents? Could you envision resentment and bitterness building up in you if you didn't get to follow your dream, but had to work instead in a field that turned out to be unsatisfying? Would any such resentment lead to a big blow-up and a fractured relationship with your parents?

I see relationships and career as both very important in life. You're in a better position to determine the balance and interplay between the two in your life.

Wishing you the best as you contemplate your future path, Ryan. Fascinating post.

Repeating some good advice here:

What do you want to do with music besides practicing for hours a day? Try teaching before you make up your mind. You really have to love teaching to be a good teacher. Being a bad teacher is a disheartening experience. Your students will suffer, and you will also (few discuss this aspect of the teaching profession). Teaching is not for everyone.

Have an exit strategy. If "A" doesn't work, what is "B?"

It doesn't have to be a major in music or in medicine (of course there are so many careers within the medical field that provide a good living). Consider your options. Some people thrive with a job that pays the bills and leaves them alone at the end of the day to pursue their passion and then others would settle for nothing less than total immersion.

Actually, there are worse problems to have. You are talented and intelligent and have a supportive family (financially and emotionally). You can probably nudge your parents along--if you take your time and maintain your connection with them. Has it occurred to your mom that her losing her chance to study medicine is similar to your losing your chance to study music? Be patient and bring them along--and you have some hard work ahead to think more carefully about your choices.

Good luck!

Wow, a great OP and a lot of useful and interesting advise.

To OP:

• Considering yourself lucky to have such parents that love and care so much about your future. And, no matter what decision you make - know that family relations are more important than any personal pursuit of career or hobby. Do not let this process negatively impact your family relations.
• You think you will love piano teaching - but you do not know it for sure. Why don't you teach for a few months (perhaps via a music store that is providing lessons etc.)? You may not like listening to bad piano playing for hours after hours. Find out for yourself, if you will really love listening to bad beginner/intermediate piano playing for the rest of your life. Love for music/piano playing and love for piano teaching are two different things.
• You will likely have a spouse and children in future and you would want to be able to provide best for them. Keep that in mind in whatever decisions you make. What if you have to move in future to regions with less piano teaching prospects? All regions have medical facilities - but not necessarily piano students.
• Love/passion for something can quickly change if that thing becomes a job instead of a recreational/educational activity.

You are making a decision that will determine the outcome of your life for next 50 years - so give it due consideration and good luck!

Osho

Hang in there Ryan!

As children, most of us had at least some of our decisions questioned by our parents, but we still grew up to be parents who questioned at least some of the decisions made by our children.

Most of the time it turns out ok.

Best wishes!!

As someone wrote above the future will most probably be very different to what we are seeing today. So trying to make a decision about the rest of your life today is less important than keeping oneself open minded, flexible and able to accept change and find new paths. You can do this whatever field you decide to study.

When I studied in the US, I took chamber music courses and met many non-music major musicians. They enjoy playing instruments as hobby. Some of them went to law school and some went to medical school after graduating. They all have passion in both what they studied and music and that's why they are doing great in their fields.

I talked to one of my partner (violinist) in my chamber music class who completed his MD/PhD program in top U.S. medical school few years ago. He told me it took lots time for training and studying before actually making good income in the medical field compared with other professions. You won't do great if you don't have passion for it.

Having been working in semi-conductor industry for over 10 years, I do see things move very quickly especially in recent years. New technology becomes out-of-date technology very quickly and I have to keep learning new technologies to keep up. And that is also the case for other fields.

So keep looking and learning new things you like and try to be the best of it. Open to any opportunities. Connection is also very important. Making good friends in both your field and other fields could help you discover new things and opportunities more easily.

Ryan wrote: ...though I believe since I love piano so much that I'll work hard to ensure that I'm at a point where I'm rejecting students instead of looking for them, as well as obtaining money from multiple outlets such as performing, music making, online marketing, Skype lessons, etc. I live in Las Vegas, a very populated city, and piano is one of the most popular instruments in general - I'm pretty sure I can find students to make a living. One teacher in my city says I can charge $45-50 an hour starting with even just a bachelors degree. To me, this seems pretty good.

1) You may love piano so much, but teaching piano is nothing like playing piano. In fact, I have very little time to play piano. And after four hours of teaching piano, I'm not much in the mood for playing piano anymore. And you must remember all the life things you still have to do besides teach, such as mowing the lawn, etc..

2) I do not believe for one moment that you can ensure you will have more than enough students, or even enough students. A lot of luck goes into getting students. In addition, keeping them is not easy. They are nothing like the dream students you may be imagining. Often, they barely practice. They can have dull personalities. They can be super talented (very rarely as talented as yourself), and yet ungrateful for your extra efforts. Some are content with you, and occasionally you will get a nice thank you card. But, it's a lot of plodding and reinforcing and changing lesson times.

3) $50 per hour is not really good. You are not factoring in that there are only so many hours after school and on weekends. There are many costs associated with running a studio. It will be very difficult to earn even $30,000. But even if you earn $60,000, it's still not great, and a lot of it goes to taxes. You will be lucky to have anything saved, even if you're lucky enough to afford a grand piano.

4) I think if you really like teaching children, you are better off teaching them something else besides piano, perhaps science at school.

5) You might also consider neurology.

But, ultimately, I don't think you should teach piano as a living. I teach piano because of health issues. I enjoy many aspects of it, and I'm suited to it. But it is not a way to financial freedom. Also, do you want to be married and have kids? If so, this is not the right career. You will have difficulty even seeing your kids due to the conflict in times.

Really listen to what your parents are saying. They may not be right about medicine as a career, but they are definitely right about finding financial security; it really contributes to happiness. I haven't had a vacation in nine years, have nothing saved for retirement, and worry about money a lot.

Well, my situation is on the other polar extreme. I do have financial security and have plenty saved up and invested. I bought two grand pianos with my own money. I take vacations regularly, though not as often as I'd like. I haven't had to worry about money yet, and probably won't unless something catastrophic happens.

And I do practice piano and interact regularly with colleagues and other like-minded people. And I attend concerts, piano competitions, and master classes. I continue to learn new things about piano and its vast literature and history.

Life is good, that is, since I accepted the fact that most of my students will be "expensive babysitting." I have no problems with that as long as the parents are happy and the kids are pleasant. Of course we all want to teach the wonderful, hardworking musicians, but those students are rare.

While I tend to agree with what you say about financial security, most of the private music teachers I know have families, and get to see them.

I don't doubt that there are many good reasons not to choose music teaching as a career, but my experience is that never seeing your family isn't one of them.

If you want never to see your family, become a university professor. I didn't see my wife whilst she was awake, nor my infant daughter other than out of the corner of my eye, for about three years. I'm sure many people, in many lines of work, have the same experience. Anything that keeps you traveling all the time will be a drag on family life, for example.

I can't help thinking that music teaching is a good career choice for somebody with an alternate income stream, or a supportive spouse or family. I have a couple of friends who semi-retired from the banking industry to be music teachers. Both are glad every day that they did, even though they no longer drive around in Bentleys. At the same time, both have a stash of money from their previous lives to help out when times are hard.

On the other hand, I have another friend who is a private and school music teacher, who lives from hand to mouth. She's currently seeking alternative employment -- any kind of employment -- but it's tricky when you have no experience except music.

Homeschooling solves the problem of not seeing your kids much due to varying schedules if you're not taking students all hours of the day and evening every weekday. Scheduling your piano lessons for, say, 3:00 pm and after leaves many hours of the day to devote your time exclusively to the kids.

Seriously?

My university professors all have nine to five jobs, less than five days a week, plus generous holidays. Whereas for over a decade, I spent my non-working hours trying to catch up with lost sleep (life-or-death situations etc), as well as moving around with my job. (Family, what family?)

Thankfully, I don't have to do that now. That was why I was able to buy my own piano - my first piano - in 2010.

Depends on whether the professor already has a tenure or working towards it. I have seen Professors working 70+ hours a week when working towards a tenure at reputed schools. After tenure, well time to play more piano!

From personal experience, I can say that engineers in high tech industry, routinely have 50+ hours of work every week for their *entire* life. I hear, doctors have even worse hours.

Osho

If anyone has a 40 hour work day in any professional field, hooray for them. I work in private industry and an easy workday for me is 10 hours, but normal workday Is 14. And it’s been that way for many decades working for many different companies. It is just the industry expectation

Exactly. I went to grad school for physics. Some nights we be in the lab till 2 in the morning with our advisor. Dr. "X" would say, my wife is going to divorce me. He never went home!

In America and the companies I've worked for, if you work 40 hours a week only and are salary, chances are you won't be around long.

From my personal experience, a university professor's job is anything but 9-5 (talking about the US academia here). The whole point is that there's no clear sense of when you're done--you have to prepare for classes, do research, advising, all kinds of administrative work (meetings, committee service, etc.), plus service to the profession (refereeing other people's articles, book manuscripts, grant proposals, etc.). It just never ends. But then for the most part you're in charge of your own schedule, which is reasonable flexible, at least at research universities where teaching load is not huge. The myth of professors "having their summers off" is what it is, a myth--usually all the research and other projects that didn't get done during the school year are left for the summer. But again, it's more flexible and we don't have to be physically in the office 9-5, get to travel, etc. I do agree that things get a bit easier after tenure--there's actually more administrative work and service expected but less urgency and psychological pressure, because you're no longer on a tenure clock. As for not seeing you family--I've been raising two girls being very much involved in their lives this whole time, before and after tenure. I do have a very supportive husband, who's also a professor at the same university, and the institution itself is rather family-friendly. So, no, this is not the case for many. ... It's not an easy life but not the worst career by far. Just my two cents. I know we've digressed from the original topic, sorry.

In the US that is. In many European countries you'll be frowned upon if you work over 40 hours a week without due overtime compensation. And in many fields it's less. I personally tend to do extra hours and get into trouble for that...

Research suggests that long hours do not necessarily correlate with productivity btw.

In science it's a bit different because when you do research your brain works even if you are officially not working. And you don't stop in the middle of something great happening because it's 4 o'clock.

Having worked in a global environment for many years, I am familiar with European work laws and customs, but have found that most of my European colleagues work the same horrible work hours as the US ones do, but just hide the reporting of the overtime. I, of course, cannot speak for all fields, but just mine.