Nov 24, 2006 12:30
The older I get, the more I begin to appreciate the value of each of my family members. It's like one of those novels, where all the characters are important, but every now and then some get forgotten while others take the spotlight. Last night I had a great conversation with my uncle Eduardo and learned a lot of parallelisms between our lives.
At some point during dinner, someone across the table asked me how I was liking PUC. "I love it there. These have been some of the best years of my life!"
"What are you studying?"
"I'm going to just take generals for now and get those out of the way until I can decide what I want to major in."
"Good move!" says Gaby.
Somehow I start a long conversation with Tio Edi, my uncle Eduardo. I tell him that I dropped out of medicine because it wasn't my dream. I was doing it for my dad, to make him proud, and to fulfill his plans for my life. But that I realized even if I pick the "right career," it's still likely I may not choose the "right wife," or live in the "right neighborhood." It's not his life, it's mine. Before I was able to say all of that he said much of the same, which left me unprepared for the medicine talk we were about to have.
I can't remember how it went where, but I remember him relating to me his experience as a doctor and how rewarding it is. The feeling of being able to help someone and make that sort of difference in their life is incredible. It's a wonderful experience of relating to people and meeting their needs.
I told him that I just don't have the competitive spirit to survive in a world of med students, and he says that it's blown up to be something huge and scary that it really isn't. He rants about how doctors like to make it sound that way to say that they worked hard for the life they live now, that they are the cream of the crop of humanity, the only ones who could survive such a journey -- when "anyone can do it."
I go on to say that I couldn't stand Biology. My uncle failed Biology in high school. The class most relevant to medicine is Physiology. That's the actual study of the processes in the human body. He said that if I give that class a try, I'll really know whether that's what I want or not. Gameplan: I'll sit in on Physio and not take it for credit.
I'm terrible at memorizing things. He tells me those who memorize answers without being able to apply them can't function outside of the classroom. It really should be about the concepts, not the lists. You just need to learn the lists in the early stages before you can learn about the concepts behind the lists.
I can't stand blood and guts. He says he got dizzy when he saw his first surgery. You get over that. A lot of doctors don't even need to deal with that anyways.
But I love math! So does he. He hearts Algebra. Math is the one subject he never needed to study for, he understood the concepts during the lecture and it all stuck. The body is very mathematical. Just like 2+2=4 and 4+4=8, the transfer of substances in your body always seeks equilibrium and your body strives for homeostasis, the balance of the equation. It's a big circle of understanding where one thing leads to another and the next, and that final thing leads to the first thing all over again.
I want to have time to be with my family. I see how busy my dad was in my younger years and I don't want to have to go through that. That can be a tough one, but there are less busy fields of medicine than cardiology. They all make much less money of course. I'm totally cool with the "less money" thing, that's not what I'm after in the first place.
Why does medicine sound so exciting? Something tells me I could never get sick of it. It's so... real.
I'm going to play it safe. Undeclared. Undeclared until I'm ready to commit myself fully to one plan of study.
Let's do this.
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