Friday, July 11, 2008 @11:34 PM
I wrote this on the 8th of May, 2008.
2 months on, much is the same. But I am seriously considering giving up the idea of medicine - even if I THINK I still want to do it: learn about how we work, how to heal, how to help. Yes I still very much want to walk this path, but I am on the verge of turning away.
***
I don't know how I feel today. Precision of words would be good for me.
I'm unsettled, I think. Caught between shores and strangely emotional. Lost because I don't know where I'm heading.
Direction. There's a thought.
Argh not happening. I still don't know how to deal with the ... everything.
---
Moving on.
I don't think I can perform under pressure. I mess up, I forget, I look for help - I don't have the confidence to trust my instincts so I look to another person who might not be better than me anyway.
Doctors don't do that. Doctors can't afford to.
I don't know if I can make it and I don't know if I want to risk people's lives on my ability to perform. There are so many occupations which don't decide people's lives right there and then. They're not as vital and not as heart-stopping and somehow they don't make much sense to me. Sure, money is important to me - I cannot live without knowing I will be well provided for, I think - but working for money by itself? I don't like the idea, honestly.
So I was thinking about actuarial science. It's supposed to be about risk management, right? Insurance companies want to know whether it'll be worth it to give people insurance. But the thing is, it's the sick people and the poor people who need treatment and can't afford it. If the risk-calculator says the company will lose money if you give them insurance, then where's the good in that? It hurts people, frankly. It's completely opposite of any ideals people hold to.
The counsellor asked why I want to go into medicine. And right then and there, I had no idea. My brain stopped working.
Now I'm searching for one.
I think. My whole life I've been used to being better, if not the best. It's not (I hope) arrogace, just habit. Now I'm scared - what if I mess this whole thing up? This is not school. This is what you are going to do with your life. This is the rest of your sixty or seventy or eighty years, if you get that far. And there is no blueprint of your life somewhere. We make it up as we go along.
I wish for the passion and the drive people who
know what they want have. And thinking about it, not many people have that sureness. Angeline Lee, extraordinary girl - she knows she wants to be a doctor and a lecturer. She may have her doubts but I don't see them. I wish I could commit: this is what I
want. I'm thinking about Jason and Chee Kong. How driven, passionate and competitive they are. They're both in it to
win. No doubt about it. I admire them.
Chee Kong told me once that girls have it easy: if he were a girl, he'd just study till pHd level because they're not expected to be the one bringing home the money. Now it sounds sexist. But at it's basest level, it makes sense to me - girls don't have it easy, this I am quite sure of - but girls have so much more to consider. Family, time. Medicine will take forever. Medicine will be all the time. Getting to the highest level and staying there will take everything.
How much am I willing to give up?
Labels: confessions, education