To be upset dd is set on studying nursing when she could do medicine?

[Majamandy]

My dd is very academic - she got straight As/9s in her GCSEs last year (apart from 1 D in Art) and is half way through her A levels taking Maths, Biology, Chemistry and History. Her working grades are AAAA.

She's been doing a lot of medical work experience this year, as she's been set on doing something medical for a long time. She recently told us that she's decided she's going to apply for nursing.

AIBU to think that that's a waste of her academic potential? She'd earn so much more as a doctor.

YANBU to feel that way, but you would be unreasonable to push her to do something she doesn’t want to do. Bizarre choice on her part though.

By the way the reason I say it seems a bizarre choice to me is that nursing is IMO very low paid for how hard you have to work. Not because nurses aren’t clever.

One thing I would add is that, in my experience of women who went into high-powered, high-pressure careers (doctor, solicitor) as a result of family pressure, a striking number of them wound up quitting their jobs when they had children. If your heart is not really in your work, the struggle to combine work and children feel demoralizing rather than exhilarating, and it is still considered far more socially acceptable for mothers to quit than for fathers to do so.

If she needs 'talking into' medication it's not the right career for her.

A friend of mine did the interviewing for a similarly high pressure, competitive course at a unique and once told me they get students arrive at interview and tell them they didn't want to do the course, they're only there because nothing short of failing to get a place will get their parents off their back. If she doesn't want to do medicine then please back off, she's not going to be happy studying for 6 years plus her years as a junior doctor, so essentially a decade of training, if it's not what she wants.