State of Me

In the new year spirit, this is a good a time as any to put down some of my thoughts about where I am in my career in my life, etc both for friends and family and just to have some sense of where I am and where I’m going.

It might just be me, but does the idea of 29 years old scare anyone else? Its like I can still remember being 21 and having my whole life ahead of me and suddenly I will be in my 30s and in the stage of my life where my career, family and all of those things are supposed to all come together. In psych we talk about resolving “crises” which for those in “mid adulthood” is supposed to be career selection and advancement and social relationships the resolution of which takes us either in the direction of fulfillment and purpose or bitterness and despair. I guess this makes me pretty par for the course.

As I think about my career thus far, I am pretty satisfied in the grander picture. The MD/MBA will be all that I hoped for. It will give me flexibility to be able to keep learning, help people, make an impact on people’s health and the health of organizations and contribute to the betterment of the human race either through development work, teaching, research. However, getting through the program is a bitch . . .

By this point, I am 75% done with the “hard part” by which I mean the endless hours of lectures about disease mechanisms, drug actions, physiology and pathophysiology all of which sound a lot cooler and you appreciate a lot more when you don’t have to be tested on them. Whats worse is that med school makes you feel like there is only one path and that path leads to an increasingly competitive milestone like top percentile board scores, research fellowships, competitive residencies, and the like. So as most in my position would do, I am trying to hedge my bets IN CASE I do want a career in clinical medicine which means I need to match in the most competitive residency possible to assure a life of reasonable hours, interesting cases, flexibility in finding jobs. Unfortunately in the short term, this means exercising that part of my brain that I really don’t like exercising and in fact feel downright incompetent about: my ability to memorize lists of seemingly irrelevant minutia without a sense of its application. My bad memory in turn leads to me feeling like the dumbest member of my class (which btw, I can kinda back up with my test scores) which stresses me out and makes me study harder which makes me do less the things I like doing (extracurriculars, interesting talks with people, watching movies, having good food etc) which then stresses me out even more and makes me feel even more inadequate. The most frustrating part of course, is that I KNOW that in the grand scheme of things, none of my med school grades even matter but it doesn’t really matter. I suppose its really an issue of self-expectations, I expect that if I do something, I will do it well.

That said, the bright spot has been that I think I have started to narrow down the realm of possibilities for careers IN medicine. First, I have become enamoured with the idea of neurosurgery and surgery in general as a field where you can actually DO something for patients by performing procedures instead of just talking about what might be wrong with them, adjusting their medications (which they don’t take) and doing paperwork (which sometimes takes up the majority of a doc’s time). In addition to this, you DO get to interact with patients (apparently 2 days out of the week at a minimum are clinic days for most surgeons) and much of the time counsel them on non-surgical techniques, deliver good or bad news. And contrary to popular opinion, you do manage patients over the long term for example after they have had a surgery. Philosophically, the idea of being for a patient at the most harrowing times of their lives (the idea of having someone else cut into them) is a perfect mix of challenge, responsibility and purpose. Finally, it also is perfect fit for a lot of the “other” things I want to do with my career such as do international health work, run a business etc. Being able to cut through all the bull of talking a lot and just getting a procedure done, and having an impact on someone’s life is exhilarating. Anyway, so I will probably be shadowing some docs in the near future to further explore this interest.

On the life front, I have lately been feeling a bit inadequate socially, much of this is due to the stress I feel of not having enough time outside of studying to live or enjoy life much and I really feel it has limited my ability to explore and interact with other people around me. For example, I really haven’t gotten to know a majority of my classmates as well as I would like yet barring some obvious common interest, I do not have the time or inclination to make time to get to know them. This as well as my inability to make more of an impact on making DMS a better place has also been weighing on me.

That’s about it for now in terms of an update. More later, hopefully after the board exams in June!