Need help deciding future career!

[nemonemo]

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I am a junior in college and need to start making some decisions about my future. I have a 4.0 (have yet to get anything less than a solid A) throughout two years at a smaller private liberal arts college with rigorous science course work... o chem, genetics, bio etc. As odd as this may sound, I actually enjoy school to a certain extent. Ever since I was a kid I have always wanted to become a physician. I am in a family where I have several uncles who are very successful doctors and have greatly encouraged my to apply to med school. However, I really enjoyed organic chemistry and am thinking pharmacy might be an easier career path for me. I have two major concerns with med school. First, I have always been successful in my life and I am afraid of failure. Even with a 4.0 I am afraid I will not get in. I have yet to take the MCAT but on the ACT/SAT I did only average. I have very little clinical experience, shadowing a few times, and not an abundance on volunteer hours. I do not do much outside of school, however, I was recently elected president of the pharmacy club... which could be applicable to both med/Pharm school. My second concern is that I am not overly fond of the physical aspects of medicine such as blood, needles, procedures, surgeries. I can view procedures just fine without getting queasy but I don't know how I would feel doing one. I really don't envision myself drawing blood from someone, which I will have to do in med school. I have had professors tell me that it would be "a waste of talent" for me to go to pharmacy school. I have also had other professors say there will always be a need for top pharmacists.

What should I do? Apply to both? Apply to just pharmacy school which I would most likely be able to get in and get a pharmd/mba and live a stable, happy life? Apply to just med school, either MD or DO, and risk not getting in or, if I do get in, do something that I am not 100% comfortable doing but do it anyway because I am "destined and meant" to do it with my talent? Or, some other option. Please help, thank you!

 

[futuresomething_]

I would recommend you shadow or work in a pharmacy in a community setting as that is most frequent employer for pharmacists. Other pharmacists go into hospital systems and take on residencies much like a physician would, and others choose other paths in pharmaceutical development. The pharmacists that I work for in my pharmacy tell me horror stories of pharmacists who chose to go into pharmaceutical development and end up writing monographs for drugs, which frankly to me sounds horrendous.

Anyways, with those marks and that family history for physicians, it seems like you are truly bound for any medical profession that you set your mind to. There is no lesser craft. Becoming a physician, pharmacists, optometrist, or anything else isn't out of your reach, what you really need to consider is your life values. Do you in the future value your career over relationships? Do you want to spend holidays with your future family and see the sunlight or do you want to make 300k+ a year but have only a hand full of days off. You need to do some real soul searching and some real shadowing before you make this decision. What the biggest factor was to me was whether I would want my career to be my life or my future family be my life.

 

[pms_testosterone]

There is only one way to decide this. You need to get clinical experience (as well as pharmacy experience, as @futuresomething_ suggests). You may think blood makes you queasy, but how do you know without actual experience? Try to find a volunteer job that allows you to have some direct patient care experience (obviously not drawing blood, but...)

Fear of failure is not a good reason to shy away from med school. Many students apply for several years before getting an acceptance. I really don't think patients care whether their doctor had to apply to med school 5 times, had to take the MCAT twice, or got in off a waitlist.

Lastly, and probably hardest: don't live by other peoples' values, or the values that you grew up with. It seems (at least based on this post) that you are more interested in pharmacy than medicine. If that's what you still feel after getting more experience, then find a way to be OK with that. The professors that think your talent would be wasted in pharmacy probably don't know much about current pharmacy practice anyway.