I decided I wanted to be a doctor when I was in 5th grade. I was reading a novel about someone with a disease. At the time I aspired to be a famous author, but by the end of the book, I wanted to be the doctor instead. He was such a minor character that, rereading, I have no idea what drew me to his role.. But something about it really stood out to me, and I decided to educate myself about medicine. All of my teachers and family members thought it was a cute fad, because I'd alwaysalways loved English, theatre, writing, and art and never had an interest in science. But I stuck with it -- I started volunteering at a hospital when I was 14, and made charts of red blood cell development in the bone marrow for fun. In my junior or senior year of high school, people finally started to take me seriously and believed that I was going to become a physician
I had a few doubts along the way, for sure, especially because so many people didn't believe in me due to my lack of science / math background. But whenever I faltered in my future plans, I immediately refound my passion for medicine when I stepped in the hospital that I was volunteering at. I honestly and truly cannot see myself doing anything else now.
So I guess I found out about my interest in medicine fairly early, at 10, but it wasn't exactly through conventional means. Nobody expected it, that's for sure! I guess it was just a powerful calling that ignored preconceptions
These are really fun to read!!