- Joined
- Jul 5, 2011
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I figured I may as well get some opinions that aren't those of family members or friends here. There's a TL;DR version down there if you don't want to bother.
I've already graduated undergrad with a BA in writing, with an emphasis on creative and a liberal arts-heavy curriculum (yeah, yeah...). My major science was geology out of personal preference which would've been a minor if I'd taken an extra year, but I wanted to graduate on time at four years.
My only sibling is my sister, who is eleven years my senior, and currently an addictions psychiatrist married to a geriatrics psychiatrist. Both of my parents work in the hospital, my mom a nurse, my dad the path lab supervisor. There's certainly no familial pressure at all *cough*.
Originally, my life plan was to go on to an MFA program in creative writing and then a PhD program for English and go for a professorial position, but after my first round of MFA applications only accepted me into a small college in Pennsylvania, my parents began relentlessly talking up medicine. This is after I had adamantly told them throughout college that I wasn't doing medicine, no sir, not at all, even though I'd initially considered it when I first came in as a freshman. I did also fail calculus two straight semesters, which has tarnished my GPA to this day, and also first threw me off the medical path.
I graduated in May of 2010; in my year off, though, my parents successfully convinced me to drop out of the MFA program before I started, and start taking undergrad classes at the local colleges to pick up the science credits I didn't have, namely chem, orgo, and physics (orgo and physics still coming this fall, so far) while working at Borders.
They have gone off the WALLS trying to give me everything I need to succeed. They're paying for my additional classes, they bought me the Kaplan classroom MCAT course, they bought this extra physics tutor program, this $60 orgo model kit... They're making it impossibly hard for me to say, I'm still really not all that enthused.
It doesn't help that my parents have a very, very idealized version of what becoming a doctor entails, while my sister & her husband provide a more accurate contrast. It doesn't help that I normally live in a small Midwestern town, where all the doctors are big freakin' deals because they wouldn't be living out here in the boondocks if the hospital wasn't paying them big bucks. Apparently all the doctors everywhere work only four hours a day four days a week and all go to Las Vegas or on a golf trip or on a training cruise every other weekend. They're not all like my dad's boss, who's the assistant pathologist mostly because his dad's the senior pathologist, when they're the only two pathologists in the hospital.
Besides that, I'm not sure my reasonings for wanting to be a doctor are really strong enough to drag the rest of me kicking and screaming into all of this.
All I've really got going for me:
1. The $$$, of course. This is getting easier to look past, though, because of the debt and the other perceived disadvantages, even if the PhD programs are likely to have a similar amount.
2. The status a Dr. in front of your name entails, the ability to go "I'm a doctor!" when someone asks "Is there a doctor in the house/train/plane?" Very superficial, I know.
3. Getting my mom to shut up. My mom, I love her, but her perception of medical school seems to be in essence "Try it, you'll like it!", when I've been trying to convince her that medical school... is kind of expensive to taste-test like that.
4. My parents have spent such a ridiculous amount of money and effort trying to send me there that it'd almost seem like a slap in their faces to tell them halfway through a Kaplan course that I don't want to do it.
5. Job security. There'll always be a need for doctors, and even if you can't practice your specialty, you'll still be useful enough to not be perceived as dead weight in say, a zombie takeover sort of scenario.
But in all honesty, my heart, really, really isn't in it, and I'm not sure I can just go about forcing myself into it. I've been trying really, really hard to like it. My dad keeps going "You'll like it more once you get into medicine" but if I can barely even force myself to take the Kaplan full-lengths, I don't know how I'm going to even force myself to do the USMLEs.
My parents' standard responses are usually a variation on the following:
1. It's just a phase, you'll grow to love it.
2. There's so many specialties! You'll find one you like!
3. You're just psyching yourself out.
4. If you keep saying you hate it, you'll hate it. Be optimistic!
5. You can be a doctor and THEN you can do what you want in life!
#2 and #4 always get to me even though there's ostensibly good intentions behind them. I know my dad means that there's all sorts of grant writing and medical journal writing I could do to sate my writing muse, but... that's just not the sort of writing I want to do or really enjoy. I know life can't be all novel writing but I'd rather be writing articles or reviews about something I'm enthused about or editing someone else's writing than writing dreary jargon-filled medical journal entries. #4 always grates me, because honestly, when have you ever found a resident or any sort of young doctor really with enough time to write a novel?
This whole business hasn't helped my muse either incidentally; I've been almost completely unable to write anything decent because I've been subconsciously guilting myself away from writing because "I should be doing something medicine-y instead", thus playing exactly into my parents' thoughts that "writing really wasn't for me in the first place". It's a viscous cycle, with the net result that I've gotten almost nothing to show for the year and so forth I've been out of school.
I just think I'd feel a lot more at home on a college campus, in front of a class, or showing someone what's wrong with their short story in my office. I've just got to finish convincing myself that.
I don't know. I'm prepared to be torn apart and called a lazy wimp and run out of town, but I'll take it. I just feel like I'm forcing myself down a path I'd rather not go, and in the highly unlikely event I did get accepted despite my seeming subconscious self-sabotage, I wouldn't want to be stealing a spot from someone more enthused and wanting.
*****
TL;DR: I need something to convince me that I don't want to become a doctor and a way to stand up to my parents and tell them that, because right now it seems like I'm forcing myself to go into medicine and all I'll be doing is being unhappy and failing through medical school.
I've already graduated undergrad with a BA in writing, with an emphasis on creative and a liberal arts-heavy curriculum (yeah, yeah...). My major science was geology out of personal preference which would've been a minor if I'd taken an extra year, but I wanted to graduate on time at four years.
My only sibling is my sister, who is eleven years my senior, and currently an addictions psychiatrist married to a geriatrics psychiatrist. Both of my parents work in the hospital, my mom a nurse, my dad the path lab supervisor. There's certainly no familial pressure at all *cough*.
Originally, my life plan was to go on to an MFA program in creative writing and then a PhD program for English and go for a professorial position, but after my first round of MFA applications only accepted me into a small college in Pennsylvania, my parents began relentlessly talking up medicine. This is after I had adamantly told them throughout college that I wasn't doing medicine, no sir, not at all, even though I'd initially considered it when I first came in as a freshman. I did also fail calculus two straight semesters, which has tarnished my GPA to this day, and also first threw me off the medical path.
I graduated in May of 2010; in my year off, though, my parents successfully convinced me to drop out of the MFA program before I started, and start taking undergrad classes at the local colleges to pick up the science credits I didn't have, namely chem, orgo, and physics (orgo and physics still coming this fall, so far) while working at Borders.
They have gone off the WALLS trying to give me everything I need to succeed. They're paying for my additional classes, they bought me the Kaplan classroom MCAT course, they bought this extra physics tutor program, this $60 orgo model kit... They're making it impossibly hard for me to say, I'm still really not all that enthused.
It doesn't help that my parents have a very, very idealized version of what becoming a doctor entails, while my sister & her husband provide a more accurate contrast. It doesn't help that I normally live in a small Midwestern town, where all the doctors are big freakin' deals because they wouldn't be living out here in the boondocks if the hospital wasn't paying them big bucks. Apparently all the doctors everywhere work only four hours a day four days a week and all go to Las Vegas or on a golf trip or on a training cruise every other weekend. They're not all like my dad's boss, who's the assistant pathologist mostly because his dad's the senior pathologist, when they're the only two pathologists in the hospital.
Besides that, I'm not sure my reasonings for wanting to be a doctor are really strong enough to drag the rest of me kicking and screaming into all of this.
All I've really got going for me:
1. The $$$, of course. This is getting easier to look past, though, because of the debt and the other perceived disadvantages, even if the PhD programs are likely to have a similar amount.
2. The status a Dr. in front of your name entails, the ability to go "I'm a doctor!" when someone asks "Is there a doctor in the house/train/plane?" Very superficial, I know.
3. Getting my mom to shut up. My mom, I love her, but her perception of medical school seems to be in essence "Try it, you'll like it!", when I've been trying to convince her that medical school... is kind of expensive to taste-test like that.
4. My parents have spent such a ridiculous amount of money and effort trying to send me there that it'd almost seem like a slap in their faces to tell them halfway through a Kaplan course that I don't want to do it.
5. Job security. There'll always be a need for doctors, and even if you can't practice your specialty, you'll still be useful enough to not be perceived as dead weight in say, a zombie takeover sort of scenario.
But in all honesty, my heart, really, really isn't in it, and I'm not sure I can just go about forcing myself into it. I've been trying really, really hard to like it. My dad keeps going "You'll like it more once you get into medicine" but if I can barely even force myself to take the Kaplan full-lengths, I don't know how I'm going to even force myself to do the USMLEs.
My parents' standard responses are usually a variation on the following:
1. It's just a phase, you'll grow to love it.
2. There's so many specialties! You'll find one you like!
3. You're just psyching yourself out.
4. If you keep saying you hate it, you'll hate it. Be optimistic!
5. You can be a doctor and THEN you can do what you want in life!
#2 and #4 always get to me even though there's ostensibly good intentions behind them. I know my dad means that there's all sorts of grant writing and medical journal writing I could do to sate my writing muse, but... that's just not the sort of writing I want to do or really enjoy. I know life can't be all novel writing but I'd rather be writing articles or reviews about something I'm enthused about or editing someone else's writing than writing dreary jargon-filled medical journal entries. #4 always grates me, because honestly, when have you ever found a resident or any sort of young doctor really with enough time to write a novel?
This whole business hasn't helped my muse either incidentally; I've been almost completely unable to write anything decent because I've been subconsciously guilting myself away from writing because "I should be doing something medicine-y instead", thus playing exactly into my parents' thoughts that "writing really wasn't for me in the first place". It's a viscous cycle, with the net result that I've gotten almost nothing to show for the year and so forth I've been out of school.
I just think I'd feel a lot more at home on a college campus, in front of a class, or showing someone what's wrong with their short story in my office. I've just got to finish convincing myself that.
I don't know. I'm prepared to be torn apart and called a lazy wimp and run out of town, but I'll take it. I just feel like I'm forcing myself down a path I'd rather not go, and in the highly unlikely event I did get accepted despite my seeming subconscious self-sabotage, I wouldn't want to be stealing a spot from someone more enthused and wanting.
*****
TL;DR: I need something to convince me that I don't want to become a doctor and a way to stand up to my parents and tell them that, because right now it seems like I'm forcing myself to go into medicine and all I'll be doing is being unhappy and failing through medical school.
