Square One

I wish I knew how to convince myself that this is what I want with my life. I still feel SO incredibly conflicted about becoming a doctor. So often when I think about the future, I just can't see myself doing it. I feel like I'm giving up about half of my life's dreams to make way for this one, and I wouldn't even describe becoming a doctor as "my dream". I don't feel NEARLY that passionate about it. And it's not something I "always wanted to do", I didn't "always know" that's what I'd grow up to become. I just decided one day that that was what I was going to do. I always thought I wanted to be a biomedical researcher, but then I sorta got burned out on research so I decided that becoming a doctor was the obvious "other" medical path. You either go get a PhD or go get an MD. I've had my moments where I feel excited about my future as a doctor, but more often it just scares me senseless.

And it's not the debt that scares me, or the responsibility. It's the TIME. We have X number of years, days, minutes on this Earth. None of us knows what that X is, but what we do know is that X is all we have, and we only get it once. The idea of dedicating too much of that X to a job really upsets me. If you were to divide up my X at the end of my life, I'd want the biggest chunk of that pie chart to read "Family". I DO NOT want it to read "Work". That's just not me. But I feel like I've cornered myself into a career that will demand far more of me than I'm comfortable giving. WHY would I start down this path, knowing that I DON'T want to have one of those careers that requires more time and commitment than your average job? WHY?!?! And being a doctor isn't something you can just try out, decide it's not for you and then quit - if for no other reason than the tremendous debt hanging over your head that only a doctor's salary will pay off. There's a certain "point of no return" with this, and I know that it's fast approaching. I'm already tens of thousands of dollars in the hole, and I can't go much deeper before I will have fully committed myself (financially) to pulling down six figures for several decades to pay it off. And those years of hard work can't be postponed until after my kids are grown and I have all the time in the world to devote to work - they have to start as soon as I graduate, during the most formative years of my childrens' lives. I feel like the walls are very rapidly closing in around me, and it's essentially "now or never" if I want to get out of it.

Getting out now would still be a pretty serious financial challenge if that was what I decided to do, given the amount of student loan debt I already have. Not to mention, what would I decide to do with my life? We can't afford for me to stay home, so I'd have to either try to find a job now (with my BS in a scientific field full of PhD's... yeah, good luck!) or decide on a different educational path (requiring more student loans, of course). And honestly, I don't know anymore what would make me happy in terms of a career. I don't have the slightest clue. Physical Therapy? Physician's Assistant? Nursing? Who knows. Quite honestly, I feel like I don't even have the energy to start over. The whole prospect is so overwhelming - makes staying where I am sorta attractive!

Sometimes I think maybe taking a year off is the answer (because in medical school, taking a semester off isn't an option - it's all or nothing). Maybe I just need to take some serious time to think it through before I get any further into debt. Because like I said, the financial "point of no return" really is fast approaching, and I could put it off by taking some time off. But then I really wonder, would I EVER go back? I'd have to get a job in the meantime - would it just be too easy to stick with that and never look back? It's so scary to think about the possibility that I might look back on my life and wish I had stuck with it - that I may always wonder "what if..." and always feel like a failure for quitting. I've never just quit anything so huge - how would I feel about that decision 20 or 30 years down the road? Just as the "we only have so much time on this Earth" argument makes me wonder whether I really want this career, it also makes it painful to think about giving up such a HUGE opportunity to do something big with my "one shot at life". But then I think, at the end of the day, I know that my children will be the most important thing in my life - could I ever regret the decision to take a different path that would allow me to be a better mother, to spend more time with them, to coach their soccer teams, to bake cupcakes for their class parties...?

What I really need is a window into the future. I don't want to skip forward and GO to the future - I don't like to wish my life away like that - I just want to peer into it and see whether this is the right path or not. I pray about it ALL the time, but I just never feel sure. I just want to feel confident in my decision to stay or leave, and I don't know how to get there. I thought I was starting to feel better about things, and I really have been feeling better about the difficulty level and the stress and my grades. But as far as my feelings about whether this is what I really want, whether this career will make me happy, whether I'm giving up too much for something I don't feel 100% committed to... I just feel like I'm right back at square one. Or maybe I never even left square one. I don't know.

I understand that everyone just wants to make me feel better, when I start talking like this. People say "you'll be fine, you're just having a hard time adjusting" or "you're here for a reason" or whatever. And I appreciate the encouragement, but what if it's not true? What if I'm committing my LIFE to the wrong thing? My ENTIRE LIFE! It's KIND OF a big deal. I can't bear the thought of looking back on my life with that HUGE a regret. I'm so afraid that I've gotten this far by lying to myself and making myself believe that MY career as a doctor will be different. I'LL find a way to do it all and be happy. THIS doctor ain't workin' no 60-hour weeks. But what if I'm wrong? I do believe that picking the right specialty will help get me to where I want to be, and I believe that I'm on the right track with emergency medicine. Everything I hear from practicing EM physicians indicates that I'll be able to work 8-hour shifts, 14 or 15 shifts a month (about 4 days a week or less), with no call and the ability to swap shifts relatively easily with other people to make room for family events and such. Doesn't sound too bad - I feel like I can handle that. I just have to hope that I can handle EM!

I also have to keep reminding myself that what I just described is what I'll be dealing with for MOST of my career. My worries about 3rd and 4th years of medical school and residency - those are VERY temporary situations in the grand scheme of my life, and they are NOT good reasons to give up on this. Yeah, 3rd year will be long hours, constantly changing, hard work and lots of studying. But it's only 1 year. Yeah, residency will probably be 12 hour shifts, more like 4 or 5 days a week, and very stressful as far as being new at it, having to learn A LOT on the fly, having patients die and getting used to the work. But it's only 3 years. I also don't like to live my life under the assumption that "I have time", because none of us knows how much time we have, so I hate to say "well it's only X number of years, that's not much in the grand scheme of things."But when it comes to selecting and training for a lifelong career, I also can't operate under the assumption that I don't have enough time to make it all worth it (especially since I certainly hope that's not true!).

I suppose I've talked myself into feeling a little better. I just really hate this constant mental struggle - it makes me want to pull my hair out sometimes. It just happened to come to a head today, and for no real reason - nothing happened or anything, I just started thinking about it... again. And now I've set myself back on my studying for today. As long as I remain enrolled, I can't let myself get behind on that, so... until next breakdown!