The REAL reason I want to go to med school

One of the many place I pretended to care about people.

I have several friends going through the med school admissions process this year. Just having finished it, I am extremely worried for their mental health.


The process is a lot of acting. There’s a vague template that med schools want, and there’s unbelievable pressure to dress in suits and say cookie cutter snipits to please the all-powerful admissions committees. 


In order to appease such bureaucracy, I wrote a post last year [link to med school personal statement here] that evolved into my med school personal statement. To summarize: I want to be a doctor because I had been privileged and given the opportunity to flourish, so I wanted to lead a life where I could give other people that same chance. Medicine seemed perfect – I could turn people’s lives around. 


The personal statement is part of the reason I want to be a doctor, but it’s also the “best sounding” reason. Now that the powers-that-be have signed my acceptance letter, I can give you the top 3 REAL reasons why I chose med school: 


#3) The results are tangible. In the lab, I constantly struggle to sustain intrinsic motivation through countless failures. SO MANY long days are meaningless.  The clinic provides a lot more extrinsic motivation – patients come in, you try to help them, rinse, repeat.  

#2) My favorite show growing up: Scrubs. I'm hoping if I become a doctor I will become JD from Scrubs – over-the-top introspective, selfishly cares too much about other people, slowly develops as alpha male. So far it's working. I seriously debated for at least seven minutes the pro/cons of putting this as #1. 


Sidenote – Sandeep Jauhar wrote one of my favorite medical memoirs, Intern. Jauhar used to be a physics PhD student, but decided there wasn’t enough meaning in PhD research so he changed tracks to med school. The book is about his intern year, the first year of training after medical school. It’s infamous as the hardest year of medical training, and Jauhar writes a hilarious and honest record of the year. 


He describes one scene when he and the fellow interns are burnt out and giving all the wrong answers on rounds. The attending physician walks them over to the window, and points to the river, at a guy looking up at the hospital. He says: 

“That guy in the boat, looking at the hospital, do you know what that guy is thinking? I should have been a doctor.” 

#1) The scene struck a cord with me because the #1 reason I want to be a doctor is that I need my life to have meaning - I never want to be the guy in that boat. My life is a never-ending balance of comfort and meaning. Whenever life gets too easy I always question if my life is meaningless, and whenever my life is involved in too much stuff I feel like I'm teetering on the edge of sanity. 


Sacrificing time and mental sanity sucks, but I would rather struggle with burnout than meaninglessness. 


Sidenote – this desire to have a meaningful life is the #2 reason why I got married, but that’s a whole different post. 


See you on the other side, 


from ken 


Feel free to comment! I would love to hear your thoughts.