6 Things That Happen When You Tell Your Lebanese Parents That You Don’t Want To Study Medicine Or Engineering

Is there anything as daunting as growing up Lebanese and realizing that you don’t want to become a doctor or an engineer? What will you tell your parents? Their hopes and dreams will be crushed the minute you utter the words ‘English Literature’ or ‘Women’s Studies’ or anything that doesn’t involve the future prospect of you becoming an architect, chemical engineer, or heart surgeon. Here are the things that happen when you finally get the courage to confess to your parents that the pronoun ‘Dr.’ will never precede your name.

1. Denial

First, be prepared for your Lebanese parents to be in complete denial of your ‘newfound’ revelation. You always used to play with legos as a kid, your parents will tell you, and it was a telltale sign of your true calling to becoming one of the world’s greatest architects. They’ll say something like ‘it’s just a phase’ because you just finished reading The Alchemist for the first time as part of a school project, and they’ll call your school and lecture them about maybe introducing you to more useful literature like Gray’s Anatomy instead of irrelevant novels about life, happiness, and the laws of attraction.

2. They’ll beg you to change your mind

They’ll start convincing you that there’s nothing good that can come out of any degree other than medicine or engineering. By good, they are of course referring to money. Money = happiness, it’s science. There is no way you’ll be able to fulfill their dreams of you being rich and living in a penthouse in Downtown Beirut with a degree in Women’s Studies. They might even try to guilt trip you about their financial situation, in hopes that it will convince you to consider how you’re going to be able to support yourself (and the family) once you graduate from college with a degree in Sociology.

3. Anger

Who cares about following your passion?! That is not what this is about. That is surely not what life is about. How could it be? When your dearest son wants to become an Archaeologist instead of an Anesthesiologist, life is over and it’s all your fault. Your mother will convince your father that he needs to ‘have a serious talk with you’ about your future and how to put things into perspective. He will instead give you the silent treatment, or the opposite treatment, by yelling at the top of his lungs in hopes that his loud voice and bulging neck veins will scare you into switching majors and letting go of your life dreams.

4. Mourning

After the anger phase comes the mourning phase. Your mom will spend her afternoons sniffling in the corner, and she’ll be so upset that she’ll stop making your favorite dishes and she’ll only cook Fasoulia until all of Lebanon’s white beans run out of stock.

5. Acceptance

One day, as long as you stay dedicated to your dreams, they will eventually accept that you will never become the dentist or brain surgeon that they dreamed of, and that they will, unfortunately have to pay their dentist bills for the rest of their lives.

6. Celebration (hopefully)

Although it seems unlikely, no matter what route you choose in life, Lebanese Parents are a proud bunch. Whether you become a notorious drug lord or a world-class architect, they’ll speak badly about you to your face, but celebrate everything about you, your achievements, and your impending English Degree to their family and friends, saying something like this, “men hiyye w zghire bshufa meske l 2alam!