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What's your Profession/your planned course to take up in college?
Academic physician (undecided specialization at this point).
Your Current Status.
Student.
What made you choose it?
What is the meaning of a career? To some, it's a way to make money. To others, it's a way of life. To me, it is a means with which one can make a positive impact on the world. I see three general categories for how professions can have a positive impact:
1) Helping people/society here and now. (Nearly all jobs fit this role)
2) Indirectly helping people/society through others by teaching and instructing.
3) Helping many people in the future through research and development.
You maximize your impact by engaging in more than one category. I could think of many professions that hit on two of those categories, but medicine was the only one that would make all three a possibility and that would play to by interests and strengths.
Are you happy with it?
Since I'm straddling two fields (scientific research and clinical medicine), the answer is yes and no.
Yes for science. It has taken me many years, but I've finally reached the point where I know enough to do useful things, and where I can teach others. One is constantly learning in this field (ideally) and it's a bit of a struggle to always remain current, but it's rewarding to reach this point. Prior to this point, I was not particularly happy.
No for medicine, but this is because I'm new to it. I expect it to follow the same trend as science: there's a lot of knowledge to cover and new things to learn, and during this period I will constantly feel useless and unknowledgeable. In a few years I will not have gained mastery of anything, but I will at least have a solid foundation to work off of and to help others with.
I'd imagine this to be a truth for all fields, though. Nobody likes to feel that they don't know anything, or that they can't function autonomously in their work. The fields of science and medicine have a longer period of delayed gratification than many other fields, it seems, and the training is much less social in nature.
How do you see yourself in the future?
Academic medical center, spending most time with patients, part time collaborating with researchers, and part time teaching medical students, residents, and/or graduate students.
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