Any medical field related to my inclination to make weird food concoctions?? AKA, "is medicine right for me?"/M3 not enjoying medicine

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tl;dr: Did anyone else feel during clinical rotations like they don't belong in medicine because no rotations interested them, or they felt lazy and like they wanted to avoid doing hard work (the required level of passion for medicine wasn't there)? What did you end up doing? Do you see a future for me in medicine, or should I look to leave after med school/not do residency? Can you think of any fields where I can exercise the same creativity that I like to do with food?

----

Hello,

I'm an M3 who's finished IM/neuro rotations and almost done with surgery. I am a way-below-average med student, based on pre-clinical grades, my step 1 score (209), and comparing my amount of knowledge to that of other students. I'm also hiding in the library typing this instead of trying to find some random surgical case to watch (because there's nothing for me to do on the floors, and there's no case on my service to watch. Or rather, I'm not making more of an effort to find something rotation-related to do).

I was terrible at IM, pretty much have ruled out surgery:
I HATED IM and got a grade of "conditional pass" for "some struggles re: obtaining, interpreting, and organizing data." I hated IM because it was just walking and talking, I hated following up on labs etc in the afternoon, and maybe most importantly, I realized that I don't enjoy thinking about people's medical conditions.
- And yes, people have been questioning why I even went to med school in the first place. I thought I would enjoy the intellectual aspect of it, and to be honest, there was a bit of "the draw of prestige" involved, even though I thought I was mature enough (I started thinking about med school at age 26 and entered at age 30) to make this decision without outside influences.

The only thing I enjoyed about IM was when I got to talk to patients, not about their medical conditions but about their lives, how they're feeling emotionally/mentally, etc.
- This got me thinking about psych - specifically psychotherapy, not CL. But in psych residency, you still have to do the medicine-related stuff, and I just worry if I'd be able to do well enough for them to let me become a psychiatrist.

Anyway, when I entered med school, I was thinking I'd do EM, but now I think it would bore me because I'd have to deal with medical conditions all the time.

So now, these are the specialties I'm considering:
- PMR/sports med: I'm passionate about exercise so it's personally relevant, and I want to help people return to or start an active lifestyle.
- Pathology: a pathologist came by to read a biopsy on my surgery rotation, so I talked with him, and I want to explore it more. Sometimes I've been tired of seeing patients, so maybe path would let me work in my own quiet space (I like that it's quiet down in the basement) while still being able to have human contact with other pathologists or through talking to docs on the phone.
- Psych: again, I like the idea of doing talk therapy. I could also go into private practice, work 4d/week, and have time for my hobbies (exercise), which are super important to me.

I know I said I get tired of talking with people, but I also want to do talk therapy. Maybe I sometimes feel drained because I don't enjoy the other work (like on surgery), but I also notice that talking to people rejuvenates me (as long as we don't talk about their medical conditions). So, the work may be a drag depending on what it is, but when I can connect with someone, it makes me happy and excited.

--

Is there a way to connect what I enjoy doing with food to a medical field?
I also wanted to mention something that I've noticed about myself that's NOT related to medicine...but maybe I can find something in medicine that uses the same thought process or gives me the same feeling.

Ever since I was little, I've been really into combining foods to create a new/different/interesting concoction:
- Bread, sandwich meat, cheese, mayo, ketchup, mustard, peanut butter, jelly, lettuce <= I called it my "Super Duper Amazing Delicious Sandwich" or something with a really long name
- Milk and orange juice before I knew Orange Julius was a thing
- I split baby carrots in half, made the butt ends touch, and microwaved it to create sparks. Same thing with grape halves (I didn't know this was a thing, I just happened to try it on my own one day)
- Microwave chip bags to shrink them down to miniature versions
- Created tumblr blogs (though never posted) where I would microwave various things and show what happened
- Nowadays, I get really into combining into one bowl foods that don't necessarily seem to go together. I like to combine random things, or microwave things that aren't usually microwaved, and see what they end up looking and tasting like. Sometimes I feel like I achieve a mini-"flow state" when I'm cutting things up and going back and forth in the kitchen and throwing this and that into the bowl, adjusting the amount of this or that ingredient
- You might notice I'm really into the microwave, it's much faster than using the stove :)

I wonder if there's a way to relate my food experimentation tendencies to the medical career. I don't know, they seem pretty unrelated. Maybe I don't need to try to connect them, maybe they can just be separate.

Or maybe, the things that I find interesting about my food experimentation, the things that I enjoy about doing it…maybe there's a certain feeling I get when I do that, or a part of my brain/heart that gets tickled when I'm doing that stuff…maybe there's a way to relive that feeling somewhere within the medical field…

Can you think of anything that might have some similarity with what I do with food, i.e., combining and adjusting all manner of things to make a new/interesting/weird concoction (or, not so weird as it relates to people, since people aren't trying to look or feel "weird," they're probably trying to feel "normal"!)? I keep thinking of some kind of subspecialty within plastics (or ENT, or some kind of surgery), but 1. I'm not sure if this is accurate, 2. there must be other areas that I'm not thinking of, 3. I don't like being in the OR (or maybe that's because I don't do anything but stand and watch as an M3), and 4. I have a low step 1 score.

I googled "medical specialty where you can be creative" and SDN and Reddit (which I try to take with a grain of salt) said surgical fields (Urology, ENT, Neuro, Cardiothoracic, Plastics). Except I could do without the OR, I don't feel the need to be there...so that means that I shouldn't do surgery, right? I hear people say to do surgery only if you can't imagine doing anything else and if you NEED to be in the OR.

Also, I was listening to the TUMS podcast episode with a pathologist (Ep 054 – Anatomic & Clinical Pathology with Dr. Leal Herlitz) and it sounded like you could be creative within pathology (specifically clinical path, but I'm sure other types of path as well).

--

Sorry for the long post. I have a tendency to write too much because I want to be thorough, but I know it's overwhelming. Thank you to anyone who was able to read or at least skim it all.

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If you like food and medicine, pathology might be your passion.

Keyword nutmeg liver.
 
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Just do Family Medicine. Easy match, easy schedule as an attending, short residency, and you can cook your staff all sorts of weird food and they’ll pretend they like it.
 
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Consider Radiology. Apple core lesion (colon CA), coffee bean sign (sigmoid volvulus), popcorn calcifications (pulmonary hamartomas), etc
 
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People are going to give you a lot of $hit on this thread, but a lot of what you said resonates with me (I'm an MS4).

I'm an introvert, so I like my alone time to think about things, but I also enjoy interacting with people, especially in one on one conversations. So for a while, I also thought psych could be a good fit...but I thought about it some more, and listening to people's problems all day sounds really draining. Now, I figure I can do a non patient-facing specialty, and get the social interaction that I need outside of work. I also was drawn to medicine partially by outside influences, and I think that's another part of the reason why I didn't enjoy my clinical rotations much -- you really have to be here for the right reasons to enjoy that stuff.

I'm probably going into pathology, and I think it could be a good fit for you too. I'd schedule an elective in it and check it out. As a bonus, it's not a particularly competitive specialty, so your scores shouldn't hold you back too much.
 
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Can you think of anything that might have some similarity with what I do with food, i.e., combining and adjusting all manner of things to make a new/interesting/weird concoction (or, not so weird as it relates to people, since people aren't trying to look or feel "weird," they're probably trying to feel "normal"!)? I keep thinking of some kind of subspecialty within plastics (or ENT, or some kind of surgery), but 1. I'm not sure if this is accurate, 2. there must be other areas that I'm not thinking of, 3. I don't like being in the OR (or maybe that's because I don't do anything but stand and watch as an M3), and 4. I have a low step 1 score.

*Holds up spork*
 
If you like mixing stuff up and seeing how it turns out you should consider anesthesia.
 
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You’ll be happiest in Path. You can be a clinical dunce in Med school and end up a superstar pathologist. Totally different world, very fun work of visual pattern recognition. Studying and learning the practice of surgical pathology is actually interesting and motivating as there is direct correlation between how good you are and how much you know, unlike in clinical medicine where there are way too many variables.
 
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I wonder if there's a way to relate my food experimentation tendencies to the medical career.
I don't see why anyone would pay you for any of this food stuff, so it doesn't seem relevant to a career discussion to me. The rest of your post certainly lends itself to a good discussion of specialty choice.
 
You’ll be happiest in Path. You can be a clinical dunce in Med school and end up a superstar pathologist. Totally different world, very fun work of visual pattern recognition. Studying and learning the practice of surgical pathology is actually interesting and motivating as there is direct correlation between how good you are and how much you know, unlike in clinical medicine where there are way too many variables.
Can you expand on this?
 
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Can you expand on this?

Path is more like second year of medical school in the sense that the job functions like a “researcher”. You have your slides, staining, biopsies, etc. You’d be evaluated on your medical knowledge versus clinical skills, judgement, how affiable you are, etc. It’s kind of why that and Rads are the top recommendations for students that can pass tests and are smart, but struggle on the wards.
 
I don't see why anyone would pay you for any of this food stuff, so it doesn't seem relevant to a career discussion to me. The rest of your post certainly lends itself to a good discussion of specialty choice.
Sorry I wasn't clear, I didn't mean literally making food for people, I meant more the mental exercise/feeling I get when I'm adding/subtracting or adjusting ingredients.

There's something about adding one thing, then realizing that was too much so I stop that and add something else...remove another thing...until I have a final product I'm happy with...

I liked the way my brain felt when I was doing this, so I wanted to see if I could replicate that feeling of flow within my career ("which specialties should I consider?").

The more I think of it, I think psych is where I should be looking, specifically psychotherapy (or maybe CL also). I think I get a similar feeling when I'm talking with someone, because I'm thinking about what they're saying, what they REALLY want to say, how I should reply, how I should adjust my body language...my mind is working furiously to add information, process it, and make adjustments in my behavior - just like I do with my food-creating.

I'm sure one could say that people do this within any specialty (process data and respond to it), but what's specific to me is that I don't want to do this with "medicine" (medicine as in IM or even gen surg).

Other things that push me toward psych:
I was also not very good at the first two years of med school, I have a quiet/soft-spoken aura/energy about me, I'm good at listening, and I'm empathetic and like caring about feelings/emotions more than medical conditions. It's hard to remember everything about medical conditions, and I'm sure I'd pick up on it over time with lots of practice, but it's a big struggle for me (more than other students it seems), and I feel like I'm forcing a square peg into a round hole. I also think I'd prefer to deal with mental health more than biological health.

It's still early on in my third year, but I've rotated through and ruled out IM, neuro, and surgery. I really want to commit to some goal and feel a sense of purpose for M3, and for now, psych might be the thing that gives me a sense of direction (at least for now - I know this could change). I could tell myself that psych is the reason for why I'm going through all the suckiness of rotations.

I feel a little guilty for being someone who wasn't good at M1-2 and who is disliking the rotations I've done so far (I'm a bad student book-learning-wise, and I don't have a passion for medicine/surgery). I guess I say this because it's a little shameful to be someone who lacks knowledge and passion in a field that requires a lot of both. I hope that I'm not the only med student who is like this, though...
 
tl;dr: Did anyone else feel during clinical rotations like they don't belong in medicine because no rotations interested them, or they felt lazy and like they wanted to avoid doing hard work (the required level of passion for medicine wasn't there)? What did you end up doing? Do you see a future for me in medicine, or should I look to leave after med school/not do residency? Can you think of any fields where I can exercise the same creativity that I like to do with food?

----

Hello,

I'm an M3 who's finished IM/neuro rotations and almost done with surgery. I am a way-below-average med student, based on pre-clinical grades, my step 1 score (209), and comparing my amount of knowledge to that of other students. I'm also hiding in the library typing this instead of trying to find some random surgical case to watch (because there's nothing for me to do on the floors, and there's no case on my service to watch. Or rather, I'm not making more of an effort to find something rotation-related to do).

I was terrible at IM, pretty much have ruled out surgery:
I HATED IM and got a grade of "conditional pass" for "some struggles re: obtaining, interpreting, and organizing data." I hated IM because it was just walking and talking, I hated following up on labs etc in the afternoon, and maybe most importantly, I realized that I don't enjoy thinking about people's medical conditions.
- And yes, people have been questioning why I even went to med school in the first place. I thought I would enjoy the intellectual aspect of it, and to be honest, there was a bit of "the draw of prestige" involved, even though I thought I was mature enough (I started thinking about med school at age 26 and entered at age 30) to make this decision without outside influences.

The only thing I enjoyed about IM was when I got to talk to patients, not about their medical conditions but about their lives, how they're feeling emotionally/mentally, etc.
- This got me thinking about psych - specifically psychotherapy, not CL. But in psych residency, you still have to do the medicine-related stuff, and I just worry if I'd be able to do well enough for them to let me become a psychiatrist.

Anyway, when I entered med school, I was thinking I'd do EM, but now I think it would bore me because I'd have to deal with medical conditions all the time.

So now, these are the specialties I'm considering:
- PMR/sports med: I'm passionate about exercise so it's personally relevant, and I want to help people return to or start an active lifestyle.
- Pathology: a pathologist came by to read a biopsy on my surgery rotation, so I talked with him, and I want to explore it more. Sometimes I've been tired of seeing patients, so maybe path would let me work in my own quiet space (I like that it's quiet down in the basement) while still being able to have human contact with other pathologists or through talking to docs on the phone.
- Psych: again, I like the idea of doing talk therapy. I could also go into private practice, work 4d/week, and have time for my hobbies (exercise), which are super important to me.

I know I said I get tired of talking with people, but I also want to do talk therapy. Maybe I sometimes feel drained because I don't enjoy the other work (like on surgery), but I also notice that talking to people rejuvenates me (as long as we don't talk about their medical conditions). So, the work may be a drag depending on what it is, but when I can connect with someone, it makes me happy and excited.

--

Is there a way to connect what I enjoy doing with food to a medical field?
I also wanted to mention something that I've noticed about myself that's NOT related to medicine...but maybe I can find something in medicine that uses the same thought process or gives me the same feeling.

Ever since I was little, I've been really into combining foods to create a new/different/interesting concoction:
- Bread, sandwich meat, cheese, mayo, ketchup, mustard, peanut butter, jelly, lettuce <= I called it my "Super Duper Amazing Delicious Sandwich" or something with a really long name
- Milk and orange juice before I knew Orange Julius was a thing
- I split baby carrots in half, made the butt ends touch, and microwaved it to create sparks. Same thing with grape halves (I didn't know this was a thing, I just happened to try it on my own one day)
- Microwave chip bags to shrink them down to miniature versions
- Created tumblr blogs (though never posted) where I would microwave various things and show what happened
- Nowadays, I get really into combining into one bowl foods that don't necessarily seem to go together. I like to combine random things, or microwave things that aren't usually microwaved, and see what they end up looking and tasting like. Sometimes I feel like I achieve a mini-"flow state" when I'm cutting things up and going back and forth in the kitchen and throwing this and that into the bowl, adjusting the amount of this or that ingredient
- You might notice I'm really into the microwave, it's much faster than using the stove :)

I wonder if there's a way to relate my food experimentation tendencies to the medical career. I don't know, they seem pretty unrelated. Maybe I don't need to try to connect them, maybe they can just be separate.

Or maybe, the things that I find interesting about my food experimentation, the things that I enjoy about doing it…maybe there's a certain feeling I get when I do that, or a part of my brain/heart that gets tickled when I'm doing that stuff…maybe there's a way to relive that feeling somewhere within the medical field…

Can you think of anything that might have some similarity with what I do with food, i.e., combining and adjusting all manner of things to make a new/interesting/weird concoction (or, not so weird as it relates to people, since people aren't trying to look or feel "weird," they're probably trying to feel "normal"!)? I keep thinking of some kind of subspecialty within plastics (or ENT, or some kind of surgery), but 1. I'm not sure if this is accurate, 2. there must be other areas that I'm not thinking of, 3. I don't like being in the OR (or maybe that's because I don't do anything but stand and watch as an M3), and 4. I have a low step 1 score.

I googled "medical specialty where you can be creative" and SDN and Reddit (which I try to take with a grain of salt) said surgical fields (Urology, ENT, Neuro, Cardiothoracic, Plastics). Except I could do without the OR, I don't feel the need to be there...so that means that I shouldn't do surgery, right? I hear people say to do surgery only if you can't imagine doing anything else and if you NEED to be in the OR.

Also, I was listening to the TUMS podcast episode with a pathologist (Ep 054 – Anatomic & Clinical Pathology with Dr. Leal Herlitz) and it sounded like you could be creative within pathology (specifically clinical path, but I'm sure other types of path as well).

--

Sorry for the long post. I have a tendency to write too much because I want to be thorough, but I know it's overwhelming. Thank you to anyone who was able to read or at least skim it all.

Psychiatry - the microbiome and it’s relationship with food is an untapped opportunity to improve care/ outcomes. Check it out:
 
Honestly the "flow" and creativity you talk about reminds me of bench work. Whatever field you go into, you may want to explore some basic science research in that area. It's hands on work and assays always need adjustment. You often have to find creative solutions to problems in the lab, and you get to do so without someone's life being on the line.
 
Honestly the "flow" and creativity you talk about reminds me of bench work. Whatever field you go into, you may want to explore some basic science research in that area. It's hands on work and assays always need adjustment. You often have to find creative solutions to problems in the lab, and you get to do so without someone's life being on the line.

Kind of along the same lines as this, but have you ever tried coding, OP? Definitely possible to get into flow state while coding, and it can definitely be useful in research.
 
Psychiatry - the microbiome and it’s relationship with food is an untapped opportunity to improve care/ outcomes. Check it out:
Oh wow, this is awesome.

From the paper:

Considering the numerous illnesses that are impacted by the microbiome, it is hard to argue against further research to establish the precise underlying mechanisms involved. A comprehensive understanding of the mechanisms regulating the gut-brain axis in health and disease would be of tremendous benefit in predicting the efficacy of novel psychobiotics as well as potential off-target effects of traditional psychotropics. Developments in artificial intelligence and modelling seem promising in this regard. Techniques like flux balance analysis have been implemented to predict the growth medium required for 2 given microbiota to co-occur. There are still many challenges ahead of us, like how to handle the massive amounts of data that will be generated from mechanistic studies of the complex microbiome community.
- "A comprehensive understanding of the mechanisms regulating the gut-brain axis in health and disease would be of tremendous benefit in predicting the efficacy of novel psychobiotics as well as potential off-target effects of traditional psychotropics" - how interesting to be able to predict the effects of things we ingest on the mind! Combines my interests of food + the mental self
- "Developments in artificial intelligence and modelling seem promising in this regard" - related to coding (if I got interested in coding)
- "Techniques like flux balance analysis have been implemented to predict the growth medium required for 2 given microbiota to co-occur" - sounds like how I combine ingredients to come up with my desired result/concoction

Thank you so much for sharing!
 
Honestly the "flow" and creativity you talk about reminds me of bench work. Whatever field you go into, you may want to explore some basic science research in that area. It's hands on work and assays always need adjustment. You often have to find creative solutions to problems in the lab, and you get to do so without someone's life being on the line.

It's funny, my therapist suggested research as well. I'm a little hesitant about research because my one and only past bench lab experience was so-so (pipetting, cell cultures, ELISAs/qPCR/Western blots), but this was my first lab experience (for my postbac), AKA several years ago at the start of my science journey. It was boring, but maybe it's because the topic wasn't my passion.

I had a 2-week research experience related to microscopes that was more interesting. But again, this was at the beginning of my science journey.

I worked in a lab related to MR spectroscopy, which was boring because so much physics and I was mostly analyzing data.

So since I hadn't LOVED my past research experiences, I have this idea in my head that it's boring, but I know there's lots of types of research that I haven't experienced, and probably am not even aware of. Also, maybe I just haven't worked on a topic that's interesting to me (past research experiences were chosen because I was offered the opportunity to work there, and I just wanted to get ANY research experience (yay premed years), not because it was necessarily a topic I was fascinated by).

Maybe a topic I'm fascinated by could be microbiome stuff, like @Medic741 posted - I do feel like I talk about poop more than the average person... :D

Anyway, thanks for mentioning research. Since people have mentioned it to me recently, I won't rule it out despite past experiences :)
 
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Kind of along the same lines as this, but have you ever tried coding, OP? Definitely possible to get into flow state while coding, and it can definitely be useful in research.

I tried coding (community college hybrid online/classroom class) to see if I wanted to go into computer science, but it seemed a little dry for me, even though I love learning languages and they were my best subject in school/languages seemed to come relatively more easily to me than to my classmates. Also, the idea of sitting in front of a computer all the time for work turned me off from it.

But I didn’t get into coding too deeply (the class was very basic). Maybe if my coding efforts had an end goal/purpose that I was passionate about, then I might be interested in learning coding? Like I said above about research, I won't rule out coding forever either!
 
Interesting question. Not liking to think or talk about medical problems is indeed a real problem for any field in...medicine.
Who gets to talk to people the most about their general lives, thoughts, etc... ones that come to mind that you haven’t mentioned are geriatrics, palliative. Psych if you did a lot of therapy. Slow paced primary care. The financial incentives are not to spend a lot of time doing this, but you could in exchange for less money. The people would still expect you to care about and do something about their medical problems, though.
 
Specialize in primary care (IM/FM) and work as a medical director in a hospice. Most of the patients are close to non-verbal. Their families will see them less than you will, so you likely won't have to deal with them either. The patients that are verbal will probably be more interested in small talk rather than the medical issues that they have basically resigned themselves to, and old folks love talking about themselves because nobody else bothers to ask. You'll be making people more comfortable as they transition on to death and will make a personal impact by showing warmth and interaction they likely don't receive day to day.

Overall, it sounds like you're just burnt out or there's a mental health component that should be addressed first before picking what specialty you want to go in.
 
Interesting question. Not liking to think or talk about medical problems is indeed a real problem for any field in...medicine.

Yeah. This is what gives me a lot of pause about whether I should be pursuing medicine. And I've definitely heard this from preceptors/attendings/school admin already. I don't know if I should be listening to them, or to people who encourage me to stay in med school, or to people who think that a certain specialty could be for me, or to myself - I don't know who's right and who's wrong, or if there even is a right or wrong answer...

If I can't develop an interest in medical problems, what should I do?

I am trying to finish med school at least, but it's not great for my chances of passing that I've been growing to dread going to the hospital during each rotation I've done so far (IM, neuro, gen surg). My next one is EM, which is the specialty I thought I wanted to do, but having done consults in the ED while on IM and gen surg, I'm less excited about EM now. I've had a hard time with organizing my thoughts when I report about the consult to the intern, having an idea of the ddx, and asking all the relevant questions based on the ddx (I probably leave out some important questions). Of course, most of these consults were done on 24h shifts, so maybe it was the fatigue? Plus, I don't know if this is super important, but when I imagine the physical space of the ED, it seems kind of blah. I don't know why I care so much about the physical space of where I am, seems unimportant...maybe I'm just actively looking for signs that medicine isn't right for me.

EM seems like IM-lite (watered-down version of IM). I don't know if it's because I'm really not excited about these things, or if I'm feeling tired (burned out?). Maybe my brain isn't smart enough in the way that it has to be to be a good doctor. By that I mean that I'm smart about certain things, but maybe not about medical things.

I am most excited about psych right now. I like the idea of going to mental med school, as one psychiatrist put it. But, if I can't even pass the other stuff, I'll never get to psych.

Who gets to talk to people the most about their general lives, thoughts, etc... ones that come to mind that you haven’t mentioned are geriatrics, palliative. Psych if you did a lot of therapy. Slow paced primary care. The financial incentives are not to spend a lot of time doing this, but you could in exchange for less money. The people would still expect you to care about and do something about their medical problems, though.

Specialize in primary care (IM/FM) and work as a medical director in a hospice. Most of the patients are close to non-verbal. Their families will see them less than you will, so you likely won't have to deal with them either. The patients that are verbal will probably be more interested in small talk rather than the medical issues that they have basically resigned themselves to, and old folks love talking about themselves because nobody else bothers to ask. You'll be making people more comfortable as they transition on to death and will make a personal impact by showing warmth and interaction they likely don't receive day to day.

Thank you for mentioning geriatrics, palliative, and slow-paced primary care/hospice.

The people would still expect you to care about and do something about their medical problems, though.

Overall, it sounds like you're just burnt out or there's a mental health component that should be addressed first before picking what specialty you want to go in.

I really hope I can develop a strong interest in medical problems. What if I don't, though?

I don't know if other stuff is influencing how I feel about things, like living in a new city where I don't really have friends (I'm doing all my rotations except EM at one hospital, which is great for not having to drive far but terrible for my social life). I do my hobbies (AKA, I'm around non-hospital people) as my schedule allows (not that often right now on surgery), but most of the time, I'm at the hospital or at home studying/sleeping. But even in M1-2 when I was around friends and classmates all the time (though I have just a few med school friends; I'm not close with most of my classmates) and did my hobbies very often, I still feel like I kept to myself a lot. I think that's just how I am. As mentioned earlier, I have more of a quiet/soft-spoken energy. I probably should've worked more on developing my social support network wrt med school (don't feel like I have a mentor yet either).

At least I'll be doing EM back at my school, so I'll be around friends for the next three weeks.
 
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