This question should not be that hard. You just have to figure out why you actually want to be a doctor.
If you say you want to help people / save people / etc., that must be presented in the context of the life you live. If you REALLY had only the desire to save/help people, you would go around the world distributing oral rehydration solution to folks with cholera [actual class example used by one of our teachers]. You could literally save thousands of people with little money. In medicine you usually spend zillions to actually "save" very few people. So helping/saving people IS a component of medicine, but clearly not the only component. But it IS a career where you do get to help people and still live a relatively normal life [note I did say relatively].
One component is personal interest. I hate to sound cheesy [and I'll admit as a first year student, I do have limited experience in medicine], but medicine can actually be interesting. If you're interested in science, you might just find this career interesting.
So why go into a career where you will work so hard? One will argue that people work their butts off in LOTS of careers. Some people work hard no matter what. They could be a janitor, and damnit they get three janitor jobs and work their tail off! Some people just have that in their personalities. If you know you'd be working like crazy no matter what you did b/c you're just like that, medicine might be for you. I know this is not a reason to go into medicine, but it is certainly a reason to not be dissuaded from going into medicine. If you think this is not relevant, I was actually asked about this in an interview last year.
My main point here is that we all have different reasons for going into medicine. But there is usually never one main reason b/c you could usually get the same effect from numerous other careers. But for most people that go into medicine, when they add up all the things they want in a career, the signs end up pointing to medicine.
I will give you a very brief list of my reasons for entering medicine as an example [note, I am not taking the time to explain these here, but hopefully they might serve as good examples....also note they obviously will be different than your reasons unless you are exactly like me]:
attracted to scientific aspect
like opportunity to research is i choose
like opportunity to teach if i choose
ability to help others
like the idea of feeling like i worked for something worth working for instead of working just to make money, etc., like some people do
like the idea of a stable income [i know people say mentioning $$ in an interview is taboo] since i grew up in a working class family with a small business that never had a stable, predictable income
like the idea of living where i want to live
like the idea of not having to move wherever some business wants to move me
like the idea of having smart, interesting colleagues
i like to make decisions
i like that the field is based on merit, where some other jobs are not
like the idea that no matter how hard it gets, it really does matter
Anyway, I chose medicine for reasons like the ones above. So really sit down and think about what you like about medicine. It does not have to be just about helping people or devoting yourself to your patients, b/c you really can do that in many other careers.
