Why medical school?

I guess this is the first question you might ask of someone when you hear they want to go to medical school. It's definitely on a lot of med school interviews (probably all!).

So here's the thing: I have always wanted to be a doctor. Since I was 3 years old and could barely formulate a full sentence, I already knew I wanted to be a doctor, and incredibly, that has never changed. I tried to put it aside, I pursued other interests, other careers, graduated from college, learned a few languages, lived all over Europe and the US, traveled all over the world. Nothing was good enough.

About 3 years ago I realized that nothing I did was going to be good enough, if it wasn't medicine. I decided to bite the bullet and go for it. Of course, then came the questions:
Do I have what it takes? Am I good enough? Am I too old?

However, I am  going for it, and will be officially starting Medical School in March 2015, in Uruguay (my home country). I was supposed to start March 2014, but bureaucracy got in the way again.


So what are my reasons? Why do I want to go to med school? Why become a doctor and not anything else?

The normal answer is "because I want to help people". Yes,  I do want to help people. But that's not nearly all. I’m fascinated by it all. By the human body. By the fact that the large majority of people, if they take the slightest amount of care (i.e. don’t eat lard everyday and move around a bit instead of being a couch potato), don’t have many problems and live a reasonably healthy 60 or 70 years. Our bodies are incredibly good at keeping themselves healthy and regenerating.

Beyond that, I’m bored with most everything else. I’m not a math person… it’s not that I mind it particularly, but it’s not my thing. I want to do something meaningful, I don’t want to work just to get money, or fill the pockets of someone else. I want to do something that makes a real difference in the world TODAY. I like reading and writing and researching. I enjoy it for a time. Then I get bored. Does this make any real difference in anybody’s life? If I wasn’t sitting here correcting research papers, would it make a difference? would somebody live or die based on me going to work today? no. Nobody cares. There’s no purpose.

I guess what I want is for my life to count for something. I want to use whatever talents or knowledge I have to make a real difference in someone’s life *today.* Not tomorrow. Not in a general “I managed to pass a law that makes people pay less taxes.” No, I want something that I can see. That I can measure. Something concrete: they were in pain, now they’re not. They almost died, now they’re doing well. I need to know that I’m not just taking up space and oxygen in this world, but that my existence benefited humanity.

I guess that’s why I want to be a doctor.


This chart over at A Cartoon Guide to Becoming a Doctor hits it squarely on the head:

I cannot imagine doing anything else...