Do you change your personality for your love (or career)?"

[davong18]

They say that you should not change who you are for anybody especially your significant other. What if your career asks of it? Becoming a doctor requires students to buckle down and study regardless of race, creed, and gender; obedience does not discriminate. The public perceptions characterize doctors as wealthy, snobbish, socially inept, knowledgeable, and altruistic. Do you have to be a certain person beforehand in order to be a successful doctor?

The qualities of a person could pertain to outlook, perspective, cynicism, athleticism, psychological-balance, and outward personality? Who determines and judges this subjective opinion. Success can be defined as happiness, awareness of oneself, spirituality, social enlightenment. As a result, do all physicians fit this mold?

What do you guys think?

I do not believe that a particular personality is required of a person in order to be a successful doctor. I do believe that professionalism dictates how people should treat each other in the office which, in turn, reflects maturity. Maturity is being happy with oneself regardless of outward presentation. What matters is "am I happy with myself?" Have I accepted the decisions I made in my life and sacrifice that I am going to make for my future. Am I wrong?

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[floatingsponge]

Reading your post is like reading the highest level of Verbal Reasoning. I don't understand the main message.

My recommendation is to drop the "significant other" and concentrate on medical school.

 

[davong18]

Sorry, the title should read: Do you change your personality for your lover or your “love”?

 

[QofQuimica]

Reading your post is like reading the highest level of Verbal Reasoning. I don't understand the main message.

My recommendation is to drop the "significant other" and concentrate on medical school.

OP, I don't think there is only one personality type that makes one a successful doctor. For any quality you can think of that doctors "should" have, some have it and some don't. There is even a signficant minority of misanthropes in medical school, in my experience.

 

[njbmd]

Sorry, the title should read: Do you change your personality for your lover or your “love”?

I changed the title of the thread to reflect the content more acurately. If you do not like this title, send me a PM and I will change it back to the original which was apparantly confusing to some.

 

[Law2Doc]

They say that you should not change who you are for anybody especially your significant other. What if your career asks of it? Becoming a doctor requires students to buckle down and study regardless of race, creed, and gender; obedience does not discriminate. The public perceptions characterize doctors as wealthy, snobbish, socially inept, knowledgeable, and altruistic. Do you have to be a certain person beforehand in order to be a successful doctor?

The qualities of a person could pertain to outlook, perspective, cynicism, athleticism, psychological-balance, and outward personality? Who determines and judges this subjective opinion. Success can be defined as happiness, awareness of oneself, spirituality, social enlightenment. As a result, do all physicians fit this mold?

What do you guys think?

I do not believe that a particular personality is required of a person in order to be a successful doctor. I do believe that professionalism dictates how people should treat each other in the office which, in turn, reflects maturity. Maturity is being happy with oneself regardless of outward presentation. What matters is "am I happy with myself?" Have I accepted the decisions I made in my life and sacrifice that I am going to make for my future. Am I wrong?

There is no one correct model of physician. However if you are suggesting in the first paragraph that "buckling down and studying" is not part of your true "personality", you are going to have a hard time with this path. I also would suggest that you not focus so much on what the "public perceptions" are.

However, there are certain expectations in a profession as to how you conduct yourself, so I'm not sure I agree with your sentence that "Maturity is being happy with oneself regardless of outward presentation". While that may be true, it will, taken to the extreme, get you booted out of an interview or other professional setting quite quickly, if the way you are happy with yourself doesn't comport to professional expectations. No point being the most mature person in the unemployment line...

 

[RxnMan]

...There is even a signficant minority of misanthropes in medical school, in my experience.

Dangit! Don't blow my cover!

There's a book out called "Snakes in Suits" that talks about psychopaths being attracted to the business environment because it rewards ruthlessness. Similarly, I've met physicians who, in another life, might become serial killers. What other field gives you the ability to cut into others a socially acceptable manner? Gives you access to others' very personal secrets, or the power of life and death? People with all sorts of personalities have all sorts of motivations for becoming doctors, and not all of them are as pleasant as the ones you describe.

 

[QofQuimica]

Dangit! Don't blow my cover!

There's a book out called "Snakes in Suits" that talks about psychopaths being attracted to the business environment because it rewards ruthlessness. Similarly, I've met physicians who, in another life, might become serial killers. What other field gives you the ability to cut into others a socially acceptable manner? Gives you access to others' very personal secrets, or the power of life and death? People with all sorts of personalities have all sorts of motivations for becoming doctors, and not all of them are as pleasant as the ones you describe.

Now YOU have blown MINE.

 

[thirdunity]

I totally understand this thread.

I do not have a typical "type-A goodie two shoes" personality and struggled for years because of people channeling me into "eccentric" professions such as the arts. I wanted to be a scientist as a teenager, but kept having people tell me "But I thought you wanted to be a rock star!!" as if one can't be a scientist and a rock star at the same time. I did not succeed either as an art major or artist. Nobody had a database for a science person who was extraverted and creative, though reality shows there are plenty of these people - an example is my hero, the physicist Richard P. Feynman.

Later, I tried to work in computers because people said, more or less, "you'll fit in with all the weird computer types" - again, nobody had a database for "tech/science oriented but EXTRAVERTED". The work was miserable. I was always walking around looking for someone to talk to.

The decision to become a physician strangely to me has been kind of the "middle ground" between scientist and rock star, if you can imagine that. I am too outgoing to be stuck in a lab, and have too much need of novelty. I need constant human contact. There seems to be room for all kinds of personalities in medicine and working with patients meets my human contact need.

I expect I will have trouble with some physicians because of my personality because people say I'm too odd to relate to everyday people - but this is usually my coworkers who say this, not everyday people themselves!

Instead of changing my oddness, now I embrace it. Part of my oddity is that I have a lot of passion for whatever I'm into, and I *can* fully devote myself to sitting and studying all day, every day. This will be what carries me through.

My fantasy car once I'm making the bucks isn't a Mercedes. It's a hot rodded dark purple hearse with green flames. But money and responsibility changes people, so I expect I'll end up just like all the others.