HonuByTheSea
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Forgive the reflective ramble, but I'm curious how others are feeling about being a non-trad and making significant life changes. So sharing how I feel...
I was doing patient visits yesterday at a regional hospital. I do really enjoy the job. Given the demographics in my area, most patients are very old and very sick. And I feel like I'm making a difference in their stay by popping my head in and seeing if there's anything I can do - mostly I just listen and chat.
Some days I feel a bit like a ghost strolling through the halls. The clinical staff flows around me as I move between rooms with my cart of books and magazines in tow. Not that they are ignoring me - they just are busy with their work. But it gives me time to observe them, their interactions with each other, and place myself into their shoes - all without them noticing me. I think medicine is unique in that your future - as a doctor and as a human - is so clearly laid out in front of you each day, compressing time into discrete buckets. One day you are a student learning to take care of an elderly patient, then you're a resident teaching a student, and then sometime down the line...you're the patient!
I am so happy to be pursuing this dream that I've had for a long time. In the past couple of years, I feel like I've shaken off a lot of the inertia that kept me progressing down a path that wasn't personally fulfilling. And as a result, I feel much more confident that a life spent taking care of people who are sick is exactly what I want. But there's something both exciting and anxious in the realization that I've set sail on a journey that will see me well into the next phase of my adult life, that I've let go of a comfortable, well-worn sense of identity, and that I will spending precious time reinventing my life without knowing exactly where it will lead.
I feel incredibly engaged with my life and I have a deep sense of agency over the choices I am making. And maybe that's what is so new and uneasy!
I was doing patient visits yesterday at a regional hospital. I do really enjoy the job. Given the demographics in my area, most patients are very old and very sick. And I feel like I'm making a difference in their stay by popping my head in and seeing if there's anything I can do - mostly I just listen and chat.
Some days I feel a bit like a ghost strolling through the halls. The clinical staff flows around me as I move between rooms with my cart of books and magazines in tow. Not that they are ignoring me - they just are busy with their work. But it gives me time to observe them, their interactions with each other, and place myself into their shoes - all without them noticing me. I think medicine is unique in that your future - as a doctor and as a human - is so clearly laid out in front of you each day, compressing time into discrete buckets. One day you are a student learning to take care of an elderly patient, then you're a resident teaching a student, and then sometime down the line...you're the patient!
I am so happy to be pursuing this dream that I've had for a long time. In the past couple of years, I feel like I've shaken off a lot of the inertia that kept me progressing down a path that wasn't personally fulfilling. And as a result, I feel much more confident that a life spent taking care of people who are sick is exactly what I want. But there's something both exciting and anxious in the realization that I've set sail on a journey that will see me well into the next phase of my adult life, that I've let go of a comfortable, well-worn sense of identity, and that I will spending precious time reinventing my life without knowing exactly where it will lead.
I feel incredibly engaged with my life and I have a deep sense of agency over the choices I am making. And maybe that's what is so new and uneasy!
