What made you want to be a doctor?

[wasabid]

I'm just curious, there's so much talk on the boards about who's applying and interviewing and getting in where and what people's odds are and what their GPA and MCAT score are...I think these things are worth less than we want ourselves to admit. If medical schools are really serious about what they say about wanting people of diverse backgrounds, then there has to be some distinguishing factor that will stand out. Have you always just been interested in it? Did you have an epiphany after some great tragedy? Did you take come sort of circuitous path to get to where you are now?

For the record (in case I get flamed for the notion), yes, I have already written my personal statement AND applied AND done my secondaries. I'm not here to steal ideas; I really am just curious.

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[Playa]

Well it works if your trying to pick up chicks and they ask you what you do for a living, so I stuck with it. That, and the fact that I find medicine to be really interesting.

 

[VikingLegacy]

baleeted

 

[ILikeDrugs]

I'm in it for the money. I'm not joking either.

 

[CaliGirl14]

So I can become a brain surgeon and after explaining something say "well it's not brain surgery!"

 

[jm192]

I really just wanted a white coat.

Now everyone has one.

 

[drdandelion]

Since this isn't a personal statement, I'll tell it to you straight:

At first it was typical "hurr, I'm interested in medicine." I realized at some point that my lazy arse needed to work quite a bit harder than I was at the time if I wanted a shot in hell at becoming a doctor. I just started working hard because it sounded cool, and then I ended up getting good grades and succeeding, getting into a nice university and so forth. Now I've checked out the schools, the field, the laws and everything else you could wonder about, and I've shadowed doctors until I was blue in the face. Years later, the reality is that I am chasing this dream because I've been chasing it for so long that I don't remember what it feels like not to chase it - and that's okay, because I haven't seen anything I dislike. If I wasn't "so and so, that guy who's studying really hard to be a doctor," I'm not really sure who I would be, or why I would get up in the morning. My original assumptions about medicine - that it's something I can do well at and that I will not get bored of it - still ring true, but by now pursuing medicine has just become part of my identity, and I can't see myself pursuing anything else. It would probably take years of soul searching to find something else to be as passionate about as I am about medicine, so I just don't mess with it. I'm happy here and I don't have anything to prove to anybody, so I keep doing what I'm doing.

While, I didn't get interested in it like VikingLegacy above, I do share the notion that it is just part of my identity. I don't see myself being happy in another field, or doing anything else with my life...and I've seen many other fields and opportunities! Many people (including instructors) have strongly advised me to go into law because I have very strong writing and argumentative skills, but law is just not me...

Medicine is a part of my soul. I think that it is difficult for anyone genuinely interested in medicine to put their reason for being so into words. It's a feeling I can't truly describe...aaah...Medicine...I love Medicine!

And by the way, do you really think someone is going to be so foolish as to put down what they put in their personal statement and what not? You can claim to have done "secondaries" and what not, but no one has any proof of that...plus people viewing this forum can also steal ideas! LOL! But I'm not mad at you...

 

[hoot504]

Wayyyyy too many listenings of

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCpGy3pwkKM

 

[Playa]

Yea I would def have to go with chicks.

 

[RogueUnicorn]

i used to work in the ER of a large urban hospital. things were going pretty good, but one day about 3 months in it all got blown to hell. i remember the day pretty well. it was about 10pm on a monday night and a guy was being flown in on a medevac chopper, call-ahead report for gunshot wound. trauma team's on standby, and the resident running the team that night (never liked him to start with) is already rubbin me the wrong way, making bets with the interns on who's going to get to the slug first. well the patient gets in, we rush him off while the paramedics are yelling their report at us as we shoot down the hallway. story's pretty gnarly, some sort of drug deal gone wrong. the patient's a junkie, and it's obvious. he starts screaming and resisting, flailing about. I get a shot of haldol ready along with a vial of morphine, ready to go and look to the resident for the verbal order. The punk doctor says NO! I stare at him incredulously and say "Mike, the haldol and pain meds are good to go, I'm ready to inject." To which he says "What part of no don't you understand?" Again the incredulous look on my part. He goes "I'm not going to be a part of helping a junkie get his fix." I can't believe it, but I shut up and hold the patient down. He starts trying to get an IV in, but obviously it's hard as hell since the patient's flailing his arms all over the place. Frustrated, he takes it out on me, saying "What kind of stupid untrained monkey do you have to be to not even hold down an arm?!" At this point I'm up to my elbows in this patient's blood, probably contagious with god knows how many diseases, and I've just had it. I can't take it anymore, so I walk out and call a cab. when it came near the license plate said fresh and it had dice in the mirror. If anything i can say this cab is rare, but i thought naw forget it yo homes to Bel Air. I pulled up to the house about 7 or 8 and i yelled to the cabyo homes smell ya later. I looked at my kingdom I was finally there to sit on my throne as the Prince of Bel Air

 

[VikingLegacy]

baleeted

 

[jokes of life]

I can't see myself being an engineer or architect or almost anything, my mind already have engraved vision of long roads of pain but doing something I wanted to do, despite of the grueling residency training or sleepless night spend studying anatomy. And once some people have set their mind on something no matter how hard it is, ending up doing something else will never satisfy them.

 

[Wolfman89]

The idea was always there, but I would reject the idea of being a doctor out of hand. I would tell myself that I was not smart enough or talented enough or wanted to spend 10 years in school. I tabled the idea and kept pursuing the idea of going to grad school and getting a PhD. in psychology.

But then things started to change, I had a very short but shall we say turbulent relationship with a girl who had both bipolar disorder and borderline personality disorder. (I knew about the bipolar before we dated and the borderline after we dated. If you were to ask me why I dated this chick, I would say that I do not know exactly.)

And that relationship at the beginning of my sophomore year of college began to slowly kill my interest in clinical psychology. At the same time I was taking a 200 level psych class called Brain and Behavior. In that class I developed a strong interest in neuropsychology and decided to focus more on neuroscience and the idea of working in a hospital as a clinical neuropsychologist.

I also began to spend a lot of time with my friends who are pre-med, and the desire to have a common identity, to belong to a tribe per se, brought the idea of becoming a doctor, or do a MD/PhD. to my mind again. But once again the thought of residency kind of killed the idea, but not as throughly as my mind had killed it before.

Soon enough I realized that I would need to know some basic biology to understand the brain, so I decided to switch my minor from evolutionary anthropology to biology.

And I as I started to look over the recommended courses for graduate programs in neuropsych, I realized that I would be taking pretty much the same course load as a premed.

In addition around Christmas '09 I discovered this site which should be self-explanatory.

That next semester I took a wieghtlifting class. One of my classmates was a student at my med school and he encouraged me to think about and consider med school. And this time the idea never left my head.

This semester was when I first started to take a more rigorous courseload. During this time I began to see myself as a doctor more and more to the the point where I could not see myself as a psychologist of any variety any more.

I guess I should also say that this is when I started working in a lab and made biology my second major.

 

[DancingThruLife]

In a nutshell:

I like science + I'm good at science + My life "purpose" is to give back to the community by working with it = something in the healthcare field.

Something in the healthcare field + I like being a leader + people like me leading them = physician.

Physician + I grew up underserved + I am URM + Spanish is my native language = physician working primarily with an underserved, Spanish-speaking population.

The end.

 

[traitorman]

i used to work in the ER of a large urban hospital. things were going pretty good, but one day about 3 months in it all got blown to hell. i remember the day pretty well. it was about 10pm on a monday night and a guy was being flown in on a medevac chopper, call-ahead report for gunshot wound. trauma team's on standby, and the resident running the team that night (never liked him to start with) is already rubbin me the wrong way, making bets with the interns on who's going to get to the slug first. well the patient gets in, we rush him off while the paramedics are yelling their report at us as we shoot down the hallway. story's pretty gnarly, some sort of drug deal gone wrong. the patient's a junkie, and it's obvious. he starts screaming and resisting, flailing about. I get a shot of haldol ready along with a vial of morphine, ready to go and look to the resident for the verbal order. The punk doctor says NO! I stare at him incredulously and say "Mike, the haldol and pain meds are good to go, I'm ready to inject." To which he says "What part of no don't you understand?" Again the incredulous look on my part. He goes "I'm not going to be a part of helping a junkie get his fix." I can't believe it, but I shut up and hold the patient down. He starts trying to get an IV in, but obviously it's hard as hell since the patient's flailing his arms all over the place. Frustrated, he takes it out on me, saying "What kind of stupid untrained monkey do you have to be to not even hold down an arm?!" At this point I'm up to my elbows in this patient's blood, probably contagious with god knows how many diseases, and I've just had it. I can't take it anymore, so I walk out and call a cab. when it came near the license plate said fresh and it had dice in the mirror. If anything i can say this cab is rare, but i thought naw forget it yo homes to Bel Air. I pulled up to the house about 7 or 8 and i yelled to the cabyo homes smell ya later. I looked at my kingdom I was finally there to sit on my throne as the Prince of Bel Air

great story!

 

[DancingThruLife]

i used to work in the ER of a large urban hospital. things were going pretty good, but one day about 3 months in it all got blown to hell. i remember the day pretty well. it was about 10pm on a monday night and a guy was being flown in on a medevac chopper, call-ahead report for gunshot wound. trauma team's on standby, and the resident running the team that night (never liked him to start with) is already rubbin me the wrong way, making bets with the interns on who's going to get to the slug first. well the patient gets in, we rush him off while the paramedics are yelling their report at us as we shoot down the hallway. story's pretty gnarly, some sort of drug deal gone wrong. the patient's a junkie, and it's obvious. he starts screaming and resisting, flailing about. I get a shot of haldol ready along with a vial of morphine, ready to go and look to the resident for the verbal order. The punk doctor says NO! I stare at him incredulously and say "Mike, the haldol and pain meds are good to go, I'm ready to inject." To which he says "What part of no don't you understand?" Again the incredulous look on my part. He goes "I'm not going to be a part of helping a junkie get his fix." I can't believe it, but I shut up and hold the patient down. He starts trying to get an IV in, but obviously it's hard as hell since the patient's flailing his arms all over the place. Frustrated, he takes it out on me, saying "What kind of stupid untrained monkey do you have to be to not even hold down an arm?!" At this point I'm up to my elbows in this patient's blood, probably contagious with god knows how many diseases, and I've just had it. I can't take it anymore, so I walk out and call a cab. when it came near the license plate said fresh and it had dice in the mirror. If anything i can say this cab is rare, but i thought naw forget it yo homes to Bel Air. I pulled up to the house about 7 or 8 and i yelled to the cabyo homes smell ya later. I looked at my kingdom I was finally there to sit on my throne as the Prince of Bel Air

LOL.

<3 your story.

 

[Ischemic]

the 3 bs: bitches, bling and b(p)restige

 

[Nilf]

I'm just curious, there's so much talk on the boards about who's applying and interviewing and getting in where and what people's odds are and what their GPA and MCAT score are...I think these things are worth less than we want ourselves to admit. If medical schools are really serious about what they say about wanting people of diverse backgrounds, then there has to be some distinguishing factor that will stand out. Have you always just been interested in it? Did you have an epiphany after some great tragedy? Did you take come sort of circuitous path to get to where you are now?

For the record (in case I get flamed for the notion), yes, I have already written my personal statement AND applied AND done my secondaries. I'm not here to steal ideas; I really am just curious.

Overwhelming majority, myself included, are in it for money, relative job security and (distant third) prestige. #1 and 3 are going away fast.

 

[Cleavername]

Overwhelming majority, myself included, are in it for money, relative job security and (distant third) prestige. #1 and 3 are going away fast.

ugh why #1.

 

[orthomyxo]

the 3 bs: bitches, bling and b(p)restige

 

[SusGob711]

Because I can't convince myself I'd be happy doing anything else and I love school so what better combo