How to get mojo back?

[ArenaRock]

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Hey Everybody,

I am 28 years old and have lost most of my mojo. I was once a premed, but decided to go into engineering because I liked it at the time and computers were fun. Now after working for three years I hate computers and keep hitting the snooze button every morning. I have had two "gigs" in engineering which I thought would be temporary stop-offs on the road to entrepreneurship, but that dream is stuck in a pipe somewhere.

My ten-year HS reunion is coming up and lo and behold tons of people are going back to med school, which makes me wonder. A lot of these people did not really have viable careers before going back to school, and I do, however limiting and boring it may be. I know that if I leave engineering I will not recover lost wages for about 20 years. But medicine is a chance to start fresh whereas I can see the arc of my life right now in engineering.

One reason I did not go to med school straight out was that I was ambivalent towards the career. People say that if you should only go to med school if it's the only career you can see yourself in, but this strikes me as more slogan than advice. Is this really true? Because engineering can be pretty stressful and requires long hours too, for way less pay.

I know I have to do something scientific or technical because I'm a hard-***** like that and can't stand the social aspects of business. This doesn't mean I'm anti-social; it just means I prefer working alone on technical tasks to kibitzing. I'm also sort of antsy and like to be on my feet, and sometimes working at my cube can be excruciating.

So basically I'm still ambivalent towards medicine (and consider a lot of the training to be overkill) and am super-wary of lost income if I go to med school now, but at the same time I know I'll waste my life in engineering and would only stick to it to be safe. Also the compensation in medicine is enticing and the subject matter reasonably interesting, so it's not as I'd be shuffling into interviews with a shrug.

There's also the distinct possibility that medicine will sap me of all my remaining mojo 😡. What say you SDN, should I go for it?

 

[jd221b]

Hey Everybody,

I am 28 years old and have lost most of my mojo. I was once a premed, but decided to go into engineering because I liked it at the time and computers were fun. Now after working for three years I hate computers and keep hitting the snooze button every morning. I have had two "gigs" in engineering which I thought would be temporary stop-offs on the road to entrepreneurship, but that dream is stuck in a pipe somewhere.

My ten-year HS reunion is coming up and lo and behold tons of people are going back to med school, which makes me wonder. A lot of these people did not really have viable careers before going back to school, and I do, however limiting and boring it may be. I know that if I leave engineering I will not recover lost wages for about 20 years. But medicine is a chance to start fresh whereas I can see the arc of my life right now in engineering.

One reason I did not go to med school straight out was that I was ambivalent towards the career. People say that if you should only go to med school if it's the only career you can see yourself in, but this strikes me as more slogan than advice. Is this really true? Because engineering can be pretty stressful and requires long hours too, for way less pay.

I know I have to do something scientific or technical because I'm a hard-***** like that and can't stand the social aspects of business. This doesn't mean I'm anti-social; it just means I prefer working alone on technical tasks to kibitzing. I'm also sort of antsy and like to be on my feet, and sometimes working at my cube can be excruciating.

So basically I'm still ambivalent towards medicine (and consider a lot of the training to be overkill) and am super-wary of lost income if I go to med school now, but at the same time I know I'll waste my life in engineering and would only stick to it to be safe. Also the compensation in medicine is enticing and the subject matter reasonably interesting, so it's not as I'd be shuffling into interviews with a shrug.

There's also the distinct possibility that medicine will sap me of all my remaining mojo 😡. What say you SDN, should I go for it?

Don't do it. The saying is true. There are lots of other options out there that will allow you to work technically and get out of the office. Explore them till something fires up your mojo. Until that happens your better off staying put. You owe it to yourself to be passionate about what you do, whatever it is.

 

[Catburr]

Like jd said, you definitely owe it to yourself to be passionate about what you do. If you THINK you might be more passionate about medicine than you are about engineering, why not look into volunteering at a hospital or free clinic?

You can definitely volunteer while carrying on with your engineering gig, most hospitals have night shifts for volunteering.

This one's a little more wishy-washy, but if you're still real early in the thought process and totally on the fence about what to do, you can also read books and blogs by established doctors in different fields who write about their experiences, see what you think of their descriptions. Maybe it won't push you either way, or maybe you'll be totally moved and want to look into what else you can do (like volunteering/shadowing), or maybe you'll think, "ugh, this sounds sappy/annoying/boring/life-sucking."

Good luck figuring out what you want.

 

[Donald Juan]

I agree that you should volunteer, or if you want some adventure go do some hard corps clinical work in Africa or somewhere fun like that. Figure out what you really want to do, then you'll see...you'll see you never lost your mojo, you had it the whole time!

 

[teddy bear doc]

I know I have to do something scientific or technical because I'm a hard-***** like that and can't stand the social aspects of business. This doesn't mean I'm anti-social; it just means I prefer working alone on technical tasks to kibitzing. I'm also sort of antsy and like to be on my feet, and sometimes working at my cube can be excruciating.

So basically I'm still ambivalent towards medicine (and consider a lot of the training to be overkill) and am super-wary of lost income if I go to med school now, but at the same time I know I'll waste my life in engineering and would only stick to it to be safe.

These were the major problems I see with you shooting for med school.

From what I've heard/read/experienced, medicine isn't something to pursue if you're ambivalent AT ALL. Add to that the requisite training... Well, to put it bluntly, can you picture yourself manually removing poop from someone's @$$ for multiple years while not wanting to shoot yourself in the face and simultaneously trying (at least half-heartedly) to remember why in the world you got yourself into this mess? If poop doesn't gross you out (it should, IMHO), then what about other fluids (vomit/blood/insert whatever repels you)? Informing the families of those who don't make it? Kids dying from cancer that you can't do a damn thing for? People who abuse the system and themselves but somehow keep on trucking against all logic? Mounds of debt with YEARS before you see anything from all your hard work? If you can assess each of these items and still say, "heck yeah," go to med school. If not, why not look into a different field of engineering? Engineers certainly do non-deskbound fieldwork. Perhaps it isn't as common as life in a cube, but it is POSSIBLE.

The other thing is not wanting to "kibbutz" as you put it. Talking with patients is an integral part of the job, except for pathologists perhaps. They should trust you, feel comfortable telling you things they may never have told anyone else. Ever had a real jerk of a doctor who seemed like he couldn't wait to get away from you for a golf game? Is that what you want for your life?

I'm not trying to be inflammatory, just to point out some factors that you should consider a bit more deeply. And trust me, I feel you on the 10 year HS reunion thing. Mine would have been last year (I went to a small school and they didn't hold one). In the spirit of remembrance, I looked some people up on facebook. Business owners, attorneys, low-level execs, a couple residents nearing the end of training... I felt like a total loser that hasn't done anything with their life. But it's really counterproductive to focus on things like that. You're an engineer, and that's really something to be proud of. Best of luck to you in figuring out what you want to be when you grow up. I'm still working on that one. Well, past the whole "doctor" part, anyway. 😉

PS even if engineering is the "safe" career choice, you can make it more exciting. Also, I know you didn't say you felt like a loser for being an engineer and not a doctor. I was just relating my experience to commiserate on the 10 year reunion business. Best of luck.

 

[Torr]

These were the major problems I see with you shooting for med school.

Well, to put it bluntly, can you picture yourself manually removing poop from someone's @$$ for multiple years while not wanting to shoot yourself in the face and simultaneously trying (at least half-heartedly) to remember why in the world you got yourself into this mess?.

I don't think you have to be this extreme, and it is extreme to say I should be willing to do such a thing for YEARS and still be fully gung ho medicine. If this were actually the case, this place would be a ghost-e-town

The other thing is not wanting to "kibbutz" as you put it. Talking with patients is an integral part of the job, except for pathologists perhaps. .

There are several fields of medicine that require very little patient interaction/longterm care besides pathology. I think the important thing is to figure out what area of medicine really interests you as far as the work involved.

OP, I don't know if medicine is right for you but I agree with those that suggested more exposure to clinical settings. I'm sure you'll figure it out if you're willing to invest the time to do so. Good luck! 🙂

 

[teddy bear doc]

I don't think you have to be this extreme, and it is extreme to say I should be willing to do such a thing for YEARS and still be fully gung ho medicine. If this were actually the case, this place would be a ghost-e-town




There are several fields of medicine that require very little patient interaction/longterm care besides pathology. I think the important thing is to figure out what area of medicine really interests you as far as the work involved.

OP, I don't know if medicine is right for you but I agree with those that suggested more exposure to clinical settings. I'm sure you'll figure it out if you're willing to invest the time to do so. Good luck! 🙂

Yes, it is dramatic. I admit I'm not pumped about that either. And the "multiple years" bit was a compromise on my part. 3rd year/4th year/intern year at the minimum, and no not constantly, but occasionally I'm sure it will occur, at least during those time periods. I was being dramatic to make a point. I believe the literary term is hyperbole.

Anesthesiologists, surgeons, and some other fields (including pathologists) have limited patient contact compared to primary care docs. But you STILL have to talk to them. They STILL have to trust you enough to tell you the information you need to know in order to do your job well. Even if you're in a field with limited patient contact, there is STILL constant contact and interaction with other members of the health care team. Nurses. Other doctors. Technicians. You name it. Being a doctor is in no way "working alone on a technical task." That's all.

Good luck OP.

 

[EdLongshanks]

Hey Everybody,

I am 28 years old and have lost most of my mojo. I was once a premed, but decided to go into engineering because I liked it at the time and computers were fun. Now after working for three years I hate computers and keep hitting the snooze button every morning. I have had two "gigs" in engineering which I thought would be temporary stop-offs on the road to entrepreneurship, but that dream is stuck in a pipe somewhere.

My ten-year HS reunion is coming up and lo and behold tons of people are going back to med school, which makes me wonder. A lot of these people did not really have viable careers before going back to school, and I do, however limiting and boring it may be. I know that if I leave engineering I will not recover lost wages for about 20 years. But medicine is a chance to start fresh whereas I can see the arc of my life right now in engineering.

One reason I did not go to med school straight out was that I was ambivalent towards the career. People say that if you should only go to med school if it's the only career you can see yourself in, but this strikes me as more slogan than advice. Is this really true? Because engineering can be pretty stressful and requires long hours too, for way less pay.

I know I have to do something scientific or technical because I'm a hard-***** like that and can't stand the social aspects of business. This doesn't mean I'm anti-social; it just means I prefer working alone on technical tasks to kibitzing. I'm also sort of antsy and like to be on my feet, and sometimes working at my cube can be excruciating.

So basically I'm still ambivalent towards medicine (and consider a lot of the training to be overkill) and am super-wary of lost income if I go to med school now, but at the same time I know I'll waste my life in engineering and would only stick to it to be safe. Also the compensation in medicine is enticing and the subject matter reasonably interesting, so it's not as I'd be shuffling into interviews with a shrug.

There's also the distinct possibility that medicine will sap me of all my remaining mojo 😡. What say you SDN, should I go for it?

Here are my assumptions about you. If they are incorrect, then my advice will be skewed.

... If you spend an evening, or several evenings doing nothing for someone else, this doesn't make you nervous and unsatisfied
... There are long periods of your life in which you were not volunteering someplace
... The primary reason that you are thinking about medicine is because it's something that really intelligent people can do that makes lots of money.

Based on these assumptions, you are better off on another career path. I say this because you will become discouraged by the pre-med and application process before you ever get into medical school. If you trudge through and get in (which will not be as easy as you think. Your motivation will be perfectly apparent to adcoms) then you will find medical school to be mind-numbingly dull. It is almost completely rote memorization, which engineers and math-minded people hate hate hate. If you hang around SDN for awhile, you are going to read a lot of horrid stories of people who got into medical school for financial reasons and now hate it but are trapped for the rest of their lives.

Are you ready to be the anesthesiologist who walks out of the ICU to tell the parents that their little girl didn't make it? Are you prepared to be the radiologist who stands in a dark room all day identifying meniscous tears, but suddenly you are called in on a consult to discover that a young mother is riddled with cancer and will not see her baby grow up? Are you prepared to run a code on a 6 year old boy who was pulled out of water and barely save him, only to watch for the next 6 months as his brain-damaged body slowly decays?

If you are looking to use your mind to make money, then medicine is also wrong for financial reasons. It will take you at least 2 years before you apply to medical school. During that time your current career is going to suffer because you are not concentrating on it. Co-workers will get promotions and you will be left behind.

If you are determined to advance in another career, instead of your current one, then why not use your strengths. You have all of your basic engineering courses out of the way. Why not either get a graduate degree within your field, or switch your field just slightly to electrical engineering, or nuclear engineering. It will take less time. You can have a doctorate in nuclear physics 6 years from now. You could not be an attending physician for another 9 or 10.

 

[ArenaRock]

Thanks Ed. Your assumptions are correct, and I found your post helpful.

 

[duende]

If you are looking to use your mind to make money, then medicine is also wrong for financial reasons. It will take you at least 2 years before you apply to medical school. During that time your current career is going to suffer because you are not concentrating on it. Co-workers will get promotions and you will be left behind.

If you are determined to advance in another career, instead of your current one, then why not use your strengths. You have all of your basic engineering courses out of the way. Why not either get a graduate degree within your field, or switch your field just slightly to electrical engineering, or nuclear engineering. It will take less time. You can have a doctorate in nuclear physics 6 years from now. You could not be an attending physician for another 9 or 10.

THis. It reminds me of that Malcolm Gladwell quote about putting 10,000 hours into something in order to be really good at it.

I can relate to the OP because I am the same age and have been indecisive about med school for the last 5 years. It seems at some point each year, there is a moment where I am determined to go with it, and it fades in a couple weeks. Right now is one of those moments as I have been reading the board a bunch the last few days.

I feel as my career is suffering as I am still not driven in any direction. I have always enjoyed science and medicine, but the long medical training path always has scared me off. I did an MS degree and went into industry research afterwards for a biotech. I don't get any satisfaction out of my RA position working in a lab, and know that med school would provide more career options. I could see patients (I miss not interacting and helping people in my job) and I would have research options as well. I don't want to do a PhD because I don't want to be scratching my head for grant money my whole life, and the money in private industry is dwindling just as fast.

I do enjoy helping people, but not sure I have the patience for to be in the clinic each day. I truly believe the US healthcare system sucks for many reasons that I am not getting into now, and would love to get involved in economics or policy work. One of the reasons i want to leave pharma/biotech is because of the way they drive up costs with their constant "innovations." I feel like policy/health economics is something I could get a graduate degree for, or could do with a MD or DO. Basically, I enjoy aspects of healthcare, but not sure where my particular niche lies.

The plan now is to start shadowing this summer, and see how that goes before I start studying for the MCAT or anything.

Sorry for the long post. It's late, I'm tired and sick of worrying if med school is for me or if I should just look toward something else. Would love some feedback here.

 

[EdLongshanks]

THis. It reminds me of that Malcolm Gladwell quote about putting 10,000 hours into something in order to be really good at it.

I can relate to the OP because I am the same age and have been indecisive about med school for the last 5 years. It seems at some point each year, there is a moment where I am determined to go with it, and it fades in a couple weeks. Right now is one of those moments as I have been reading the board a bunch the last few days.

I feel as my career is suffering as I am still not driven in any direction. I have always enjoyed science and medicine, but the long medical training path always has scared me off. I did an MS degree and went into industry research afterwards for a biotech. I don't get any satisfaction out of my RA position working in a lab, and know that med school would provide more career options. I could see patients (I miss not interacting and helping people in my job) and I would have research options as well. I don't want to do a PhD because I don't want to be scratching my head for grant money my whole life, and the money in private industry is dwindling just as fast.

I do enjoy helping people, but not sure I have the patience for to be in the clinic each day. I truly believe the US healthcare system sucks for many reasons that I am not getting into now, and would love to get involved in economics or policy work. One of the reasons i want to leave pharma/biotech is because of the way they drive up costs with their constant "innovations." I feel like policy/health economics is something I could get a graduate degree for, or could do with a MD or DO. Basically, I enjoy aspects of healthcare, but not sure where my particular niche lies.

The plan now is to start shadowing this summer, and see how that goes before I start studying for the MCAT or anything.

Sorry for the long post. It's late, I'm tired and sick of worrying if med school is for me or if I should just look toward something else. Would love some feedback here.

For the OP I suggested he look at other advanced degree fields because he wants to be the egghead in the basement whose only evidence of existence is the list of profitable patents he produces and the huge check he cashes.

But that's not your dream. You want to see patients and make individual differences in people's lives. If so, then the long training path means little. You start seeing patients in the 3rd year of medical school and a resident is a doctor - just a very low paid one.

You've been "indecisive about medical school for 5 years" and "the long training medical training path has scared" you off. You do realize the contradiction of these two statements don't you? If you hadn't been indecisive about it, you would be a doctor now.

 

[ArenaRock]

For the OP I suggested he look at other advanced degree fields because he wants to be the egghead in the basement whose only evidence of existence is the list of profitable patents he produces and the huge check he cashes.

Whoa dude, that's a bit far afield. I'll have to reconsider what you said, as I'm beginning to think you have a streak of "altruism elitism".

 

[jd221b]

Whoa dude, that's a bit far afield. I'll have to reconsider what you said, as I'm beginning to think you have a streak of "altruism elitism".

Don't take offense to Eds hyperbolic statement. He had you pegged as someone who can live without med school and he was right. Personally I feel that the list of ingredients that make medical school a good option is complex. The ability to sacrifice yourself is certainly a requirement though. There are many professions that fall somewhere in-between self sacrifice and self servitude. Many of them are noble. I believe there's probably something out there that will rev your engines if you look hard enough. From your posts here, I think it's obvious that medicine is not that thing. FWIW I've had times in my life that I've thought I'd like nothing more than to be that egghead in the basement. Good luck.

 

[EdLongshanks]

Whoa dude, that's a bit far afield. I'll have to reconsider what you said, as I'm beginning to think you have a streak of "altruism elitism".

I was exaggerating for the picture's sake. In other words, I was describing the extreme of the person who wants to work on technical problems in isolation versus the "it takes a village" types. I understand that no one fits the prototype perfectly.

Yes, I plead guilty to altruism elitism.

 

[Eik Ooc]

I remember reading a post on this forum years ago in which the OP said non-traditional premed was really just an expensive hobby.

If you're just bored and/or unfulfilled there are many less risky and less expensive alternatives. Who knows...once you do find something you can be more passionate about maybe the enterpreneurial spirit of yours will rebound.

 

[NuttyEngDude]

OP, volunteer and shadow for a fair amount of time, try to get a taste of the bad as well as the good, then you will know for sure. Dont make any massive changes until a fair amount of time after the reunion -- those things have a way with messing with people's heads. 🙂

Also, keep these questions in the back of your head at all times: Why medicine and why now? Because until you are accepted to medical school this will be what everyone from family to friends to strangers to adcoms will ask, and if you can not clearly articulate why then they will all assume the worst things you can possibly imagine (school of hard knocks speaking).