To med school or not to med school: the central dilemma of my life.
To med school, or not to med school... that is the question, but I seem to be the only one without a concrete answer. Everyone else in my life has an opinion one way or another, but there are just so many factors and so much at stake that I don’t know how to begin to answer that question.
- It would mean another seven years in school, or at least until I was fully financially independent
- And by that, I mean I can barely eat because I have 400K in debt, or more.
- I guess it would mean putting any familial or marital or really most outside ambitions on hold for another decade, seeing as I will likely only be able to feed me (and potentially a hamster for company, I’ll get too lonely on my own).
- School never really stops for doctors, I don’t think. You always have to stay current on new info, have to take and retake certain exams to be able to practice, etc. Keeping up to date with medical information is just too important when people’s lives could depend on it.
- The thought of medical malpractice and all of that jazz terrifies me, not because I believe I’ll be a shit doctor who screws up, but because there are plenty of angry and unfair people who forget that a doctor is still primarily a human and not a machine that gets everything right on the first go. (That being said, it is a profession where minimal mistakes are indeed optimal.)
- Despite the fact that it would be a grueling ass decade, and probably the rest of my life, I really fucking love the subject material. It has just always been interesting because I can’t think of too much that is cooler to me than to know the inner workings of humans, and organisms in general. And again, despite the fact that Biochemistry as a major was completely heinous and unnecessary and cost me probably too much time and effort for the results, I can’t entirely say I would have done it differently because I love what I learn and I love what I do.
- I guess aside from the fact that I genuinely love the material, I also love the idea of truly helping. It scares me, because I’ve grown increasingly introverted and lost tons of self-confidence over the past few years, but I think the importance of what I would be doing would always overshadow my own personal shortcomings and help me look past that to be able to do what I need to do for others.
- But maaaaan, one thing that both made me lose steam and then gain steam was my experience with medical professionals when I needed them. As far as I’m concerned, none of my doctors that I’ve had for my colitis have been particularly helpful or receptive. Not to say they are bad people or bad doctors; I think it is very much in part the system and the time crunches and their own stresses that have them flitting from patient to patient without hearing all the details and really working out the problem, but it results in patients feeling alienated and alone and suffering, and that’s just so hard to deal with and even think about. I didn’t want to be a doctor for a while when I first dealt with this dissatisfaction because why would I want impart that dissatisfaction on someone else down the line? I always had the idea that I would spend time on my patients and really listen and get to the root of their problems and help them live a better life, but that wasn’t what I found coming out of the doctors I’ve been to (again, I get the reasons why, but that still doesn’t make it appeal). But somewhere down the line, I realized that maybe that was the case for some doctors, but if I had the personal mission of really somehow managing my goal of actual intensive help, then I could do that. I could be the doctor that patients want and would feel comfortable around, etc etc. I should be the change I want to see in the world? yeah, something like that.
- They say when you love what you do, you’ll naturally progress and do it well. So that could be a possibility. Plus I like the idea of spending hours in a workplace filled with intelligent, kind hearted, and helpful people. I could spend 8-48 hours there, if that’s who will be there with me.
- But then again, with all this healthcare stuff changing, I’m also kind of worried. I’m not going to lie, one of the things that makes it easier to devote your whole life to medicine and a career is that you will likely be covered financially (and one hopes, more than covered). But with everything changing, I’ve heard a lot of current physicians/politicians/people whose judgement I would rely on say that the way things are going, the money for universal healthcare is likely going to come from a significant reduction in salary. :/ Where going from 250K to 100K was the most common scenario I’ve heard. Which, you think to yourself, 100K is still a hefty amount of money, why is this a problem? Because, when I finally get a fucking paycheck, I’ll be 32 and have 400K+ in debt, probably have some form of a family, and I’ll have to be paying for that malpractice insurance (NOT CHEAP, I LOOKED D:) on top of every other insurance I would normally have. So that 100K really starts looking kind of hard. I guess maybe that is shitty and all that I worry about money, but I don’t want to slave straight through my teens and twenties in hope of a better future and career, missing out on things I want to do, to find myself in my 30s with hella debt that I will struggle to pay for the next two decades...
- And I guess it’s also the trade off between other things I reaaaally want to do and med school. I want to travel, I want to learn to draw and dance and sing and make french pastries, I want to smoke pot and dick around with friends, I want to have a lot of other life experiences. But they don’t really align with the other want of med school. And I can’t decide whether it is/was worth giving up everything.
- lol so maybe this should have been my primary concern, but I seriously also doubt my potential to get accepted at this point, and so the thought of going for a less rigorous professional school has occurred. Dental and Pharm are the two that come to mind first, but while it might be an easier lifestyle and an easier time through school, my parents have led me to believe that I will regret doing anything that isn’t an MD or a PhD :/
- Parents/family/friends should probably not be a concern, considering this is my life and career, but let’s be real. I’ve spent all my life people pleasing, and it’s just a thing at this point that someone else’s disappointment in me will affect me, no matter whether people say it should or shouldn’t. I know if I don’t go to med school, most everybody will be whispering about how I probably just didn’t get in and wasn’t smart enough, or how I’m just lazy and how they feel so bad for my parents, etc, and I just can’t swim with that. If it comes down to me knowing that med school isn’t right for me, I’ll face it, but while it is still a good and somewhat possible idea, this bullshit still factors in.
- Also, angry even rantier side note: I don’t think med school (and a lot of schooling) is at all fair or healthy at this point. When most of the students I know don’t have time to do daily life things (i.e. sleep, cook dinner, go to the gym, have hobbies) that I think are pretty important in learning how to live and maintaining health and happiness, I have to think that the system is jank. I know too many students that have four tests, a project, and a speech all in one week. And those students usually get 3-4 hours of sleep a night, don’t have time to go to the gym, live on a steady diet of coffee... just no! Why is this happening? I honestly think that the whole education system, along with a lot of other systems, need a rewrite. Times have changed, there is waaaay more information that before, the students’ needs and wants have changed, and yet, we’re still sticking to systems put in place decades ago. It’s just not feasible to keep this trend going on, and students and eventually the entire education system will collapse. We gotta rethink some things, you guys. Okay, ranty things over for now.
Now that I vented years of frustration into a ten foot long blog post, I will say good bye. :)
