Becoming a dancer or singer should be encouraged just as much as a doctor or lawyer.

Hi, Nohandlebars Thank you for your reply! Happy New Year!! Please check out my footnotes to see further comments and citations (in order of appearance) From Con’s previous post (Round 3):(1) Encouragement “Doctor vs dancers both have its pros and cons, and many of the pros and cons are very related...There is no guarantee job outside the doors, and somebody has to find it themselves” I pretty much agree with you on this one. However, there are some things that I must add though. To be a doctor, you must be pretty much the top students in your high school’s health sciences classes. Getting into med school isn’t the easiest thing that can be accomplish. For example, Stanford University’s (CA) medical school’s acceptance rate is at 1.4% (“The acceptance rate was 1.4% for the most recent class to matriculate at Stanford School of Medicine...” http://medical-schools.findthebest.com...) [1]. With ever increasing competition and work immigration, if you can’t get into one of these ‘elite’ universities, there isn’t a guarantee that you will be employed and even if. Public hospitals are working on ways to cut costs while private hospitals are becoming increasingly selective and more skeptical. Additionally, medical school is long and tormenting but you are also barraged with student debts, fees, and other payments as well such as textbooks, hence, financial security is also an important factor to career success. Even with financial security, students find themselves with unbelievable stress, here’s an article I found a quite a while ago on the Telegraph: (http://www.telegraph.co.uk...) [2]. This article mentions how children of wealthy parents (>£100,000 Per-Year) have an increasing chance of getting depression and mental health problems due to expectations and anxiety. Pretty much all acting schools are open admission. Being employed is also not as difficult as you mentioned. Being a performer does not mean you have to be big-shot hollywood star, or appear in the billboard or grammy, many performers (and I mean almost all of them) started off as a no-name. Christian Bale did not become a renowned actor after he left school, he appeared in an cereal (or softener, from various sources) commercial, then he started to appear in movies and got increasing reputation and recognition (http://www.imdb.com...) [3]. Other performers who may not be aiming for hollywood-grade acting may join local performances or even Broadway shows. However, with given effort and self-actualization, bigger goals can be accomplished and as a result, you get the TV celebrities you see today. If a performer find himself / herself unemployed, oftentimes, they practice their talents. If you have been to or live in New York, you may find street performers that wishes earn while in the job waiting list. These people don’t make one or two dollars, they make a lot from tourists. For aforementioned reasons, going into a stressful career path does not guarantee a job. For example, a soldier duty is a honorable role in serving a country, these people face extreme stress and even suffer from PTSD (Post-traumatic Stress Disorder. http://www.nimh.nih.gov...) [4] Yet, around 13% of the homeless population are veterans; military requires many skills, experiences, and instinctive thinking. Given this, some of the homeless veterans served as combat medics, corpsmen, engineers, mechanics, and other roles which require high-level military education. (http://nchv.org...) [5] Please don’t misunderstand me, I am not saying that performance careers are a better choice for people. If you can get into a medical school or law school and love it, that’s great! If you get into acting career and you show talent in it, that’s fantastic as well. This leads to my next point. (2) Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic “ok that was a really interesting website, but anyhow, how is Extrinsic less than Intrinsic ? “ Good question! Research found that intrinsic motivations lead to passion, and passion influences almost everything we do; however, extrinsic is simply your wish to accomplish a reward, whether it is money or a piece of chocolate. The Incentive theory of motivation indicates that encouragement increases intrinsic motivations, however, if the task seems difficult to accomplish, or at some point subconsciously underestimate the task and failed, this can dramatically decrease intrinsic and all incentives will cancel out. Here is an excellent graph that clearly explains it : Credit: Alexander Kjerulf (artist) Here’s the link to the website that I found this (this is even a more ‘interesting’ website that that previous one: http://p2pfoundation.net... [6] - P2P Foundation (This site may seem like Wikipedia, but I can confirm its validity) You can find this at the same page as the link above: And here’s an article on a study of why Extrinsic (reward or money) motivations don’t work: http://naggum.no... [7] - Study of Money rewards “Studies Find Rewards Often No Motivator” I am not plagiarising anything or making a copy and paste argument, I just want to support my arguments with evidence from studies. Please feel free to look at them! (3) Stress from Acting and Stress from Doctors / Lawyers “ I argue that stress is incomparable from a doctor or lawyer, to a dancer or actor...” Yes, I agree. Medical careers are far more stressful and is incomparable. You are proving my point from round two here. Thank you! “As I've stated, these choices (dancers) of careers can leave you jobless for weeks, looking for a gig…(+further arguments about weight loss and acting /media stress)” Wait, so you are now saying that stress from the two careers are equal? Your position seems a bit inconsistent here. Anyhow, As I mentioned before, there are stress from all kinds of occupations, even strippers suffer from stress. Earlier, I have given an example of Veterans, and I will illustrate my point. In an acting career, if you mess up or somehow intentionally or unintentionally insulted a particular group of audience, the worst case scenario is you may lose your job and / or popularity among certain audiences. For a doctor, however, if you made a mistake, it could mean death to your patient and not only that, you may be sued for it. In a lawyer career, if your argument for the defendant is weak, the defendant loses his possessions or freedom. In an Engineering career, if measurements are inaccurate, this can create a disaster such as the I-35W bridge that collapsed on the first day of August, 2007. “Jennifier Hudson had to lose her baby weight for her new movie and went from a size 16 to a size 6.” From the same source which you used, it indicated that she also promotes Weight Watchers. According to an article, Jennifer Hudson lost weight in a healthy way, this is a double-score, not only did she managed to stay in shape, she also gave hope to those who are aiming to lose their weight, and became the face of Weight Watchers. Many articles have noted her success in her workouts. "I love basketball. It's fun, you don't even realize you're working out. [You] just keep that metabolism going and just keep that energy up. That's that cardio — you're getting it in and you don't even realize it," - Jennifer Hudson to Oprah Source:http://www.fitsugar.com... [8] “I hear all about out Phil Robertson said a gay remark to the media...” It’s unfortunate that anyone have to face such stress. However, this stress did not come from his career, but from himself. His career did not ask him to make comments on gays or encourage men to marry 15 years-old girls on ‘the Duck Dynasty’. Justin Bieber is (or was, depending on the time you are reading this) a singer, then is it his career’s fault that he is hated by so many? Bieber urinated in a mop cleaning tank at some kitchen, spat at several people, and had a sexual intercourse with a ‘Brazilian prostitute’ (later known to be his ex-girlfriend, Selena Gomez). But did his singing career caused all this hate towards him? Maybe his singing, but not his career. If a not-so-famous person said or did the same things, they would have gotten the same reaction, the fact that they are famous merely makes it easier for the news to go around and catch people’s attention. (4) Other arguments “Of mice and men didn't save one life didn't save two lives didn't save 10 lives. The life of a doctor cannot be easily compared to the literary value of a piece of entertainment.” I am not comparing I am making an analogy; there is a significant difference between the two words, google it. And I didn’t compare books with doctors either, I compared it with how media works, they are both made for entertainment purposes aren’t they? This is what I wrote for round two: “I am not going off-topic here. I am simply making an analogy from normal (private stage shows) actors from professional (hollywood) actors and actresses with books in the canon and regular, common books.” - Me, at Round 2 “There are plenty of careers out there that are successful, and any talent could be applied to something successful.” And performing careers can’t be applied to be something successful? I am not advocating people to become beggars or garbage scavengers here.Footnotes:Definitions:Extrinsic Motivations - Money / External rewardsIntrinsic Motivations - Inner will, personal interest, passionIncentive - Another word for Motivation, a thing, substance that increases intrinsic motivations If requested, I can upload the PDF version of my Psychology Textbook (DAVID MYER's PSYCHOLOGY, 9th Edition)