Being "Cool"

The other day I found myself lounging at my favorite coffee shop, listening to a couple physicians and a 3rd year med student chit-chat about specialities, the future of medicine, etc.  The third year was eliminating specialties and residency programs based on the relative proximity to a coastline (is there time to sit on a beach as an intern?).  It's fun to play a mental "choose your own adventure" game as a means of procrastination. One of the physicians was trying to get the student to realize her true potential by taking the Internal Medicine route through to Hematology-Oncology or Neurology. This quickly turned into "picking a career path via the process of elimination." Dermatology has too many pimples, Internal Medicine rounds take too long, I'll become a drug addict if I become an Anesthesiologist, and so on and so forth. I stayed mute during most of the conversation, because recently I've realized that I really have no clue... about anything.

My Asheville application is a perfect example. There were three short answer questions and an essay. What is your name? Do you speak any other languages? What specialities are you interested in?  Then there was the long essay about "Why Asheville?"  Robert, No, and then the third question gave me pause. After much thought, I decided to go with, "Emergency Medicine, Pediatrics, and Pulmonary & Critical Care Medicine."  I think this is a nice way of saying, Well it's not like I haven't been paying attention at all!  Because I do have interests.  Yes, see!  I have lots of interests!  But in reality I have no freakin' clue.  I like EM. There are some really cool things about it that would fit my personality. Research in pre-hospital care would be ideal. But then I hear this or that from an ER doc or some other physician and it makes me think twice. I love kids too. At some point down the line I'd probably pursue a subspecialty in Peds, but not for a while.  And then there's Pulm  Of all the organ systems and pathology that we've done over the past year and a half, there's only system that I've truly enjoyed. One Block where I really looked forward to studying  I even read the textbook twice (Yes, Mom. I read it twice, even though you scoff).  And the best part is, I have absolutely no idea why I like it so much. It wasn't even my best Block this year. I don't know; the lungs just make sense. They're just... cool?

So what I guess I've come to realize is that I really won't know what I want to do until the end of third year, or maybe sometime into fourth  I'm certainly glad I'm taking a year off, because I'm probably going to need all of that time to make a decision  But will it really be a process of elimination  Do I literally go through each rotation and check them off the list? I've already done that with a few. Radiology? Too much time in a dark room. Dermatology? Too many pimples (I was serious about the pimples; I want none of that)  Optho? The one thing in EMS that I couldn't stand was when eyes were mangled  If I have to deal with it I will, but not on a daily basis please. Psychiatry? Well, I'm crazy enough, thank you  And then other things that I didn't even know could be cool I'm now considering, simply because one physician talked a good talk about it. The Chief of Anesthesia at UNC came in to chat with the class about a career in Anesthesiology, and I came out of there ready to go throw in some nerve blocks ASAP (NB: that didn't happen with most other speciality lunch meetings, believe me).

Bottom line: I literally will have no clue until I've done all my rotations. And neither do you.

Being around all this career talk has made me introspective. I started thinking about why I really came to medical school. Was it a process of elimination too?  I remember working in my Dad's law firm as a kid, sorting and alphabetizing client folders. A-k comes before A-l. Yes sir, I know my alphabet. I checked law off my list quickly after that, even though I think lawyers do do slightly more than alphabetizing and file now that we have computers. I nixed "scientist" off the list when I exploded my first thermometer in Organic Chemistry lab (with the help of my partner Becky Smock), because I was too impatient to wait for the compound to boil. I turned the dial up to 10 and mercury went everywhere (instructors said to use between 2 and 3 as the setting). I also can eliminate "rap career" pretty much every day when I look in the mirror. So why am I here?  I certainly came up with good enough reasons to get in during my interviews. I can go to the top of this Blog's page, just under the title "Language of Medicine," and reread part of my Personal Statement. Just based on that, it looks like I signed up to be a doctor only because, well, the profession looked... cool. Too bad I couldn't just say that during interviews.

Now I know it's more than that. I know there are a lot of reasons why I want to be a physician, but perhaps the most important one is that I think being a doctor is "cool." Everyday I can wake up and enjoy what I do because it's cool, and therefore, fulfilling. Traveling abroad to work with the underserved is cool, potentially affecting health policy is cool, and building relationships with other people every single day is cool too. So if I should do things that are cool, sign me up for Pulm & Critical Care I guess?

Time has gone by so fast, and we're almost to the half way point. I'm almost 25 years old and I thought I had it all figured out. But I guess I still really don't have a clue... about anything.