Yup, you read it right! I’m starting medical school this Thursday. I’ve heard so many things about medical school so far, mostly people saying how challenging it is. I’m a little worried to say at the least, but excited to be in a place where I can learn and grow tremendously.

My journey to this point

To say that I have always envisioned that I would study medicine is a false statement. I’m the type that was never really too certain about what my future career direction would be. With minimal pressure and/or career guidance from my parents, I have always entertained the open-ended nature of my options and found a sense of thrill from the prospect that I could end up in a myriad of potential paths. The various stages that I have gone through illustrate this point. I studied education in college. It was my goal from my later years in high school that I would become a high school principal one day and the way I would get there was through studying education and teaching several years before moving on to principalship.

Secondary Education: I wanted something more

Toward the end of my journey in college, something in me led me to think that I did not want to continue to pursue education anymore. At every stage of the journey, there were things that didn’t fit well with me. Perhaps it was me being overly particular about all of my inconveniences, but I just didn’t sense a peace about moving forward with education. During my junior year of college, after completing many hours of classroom observations, I had decided that I no longer wanted to pursue education. I mustered up the courage to go and talk to my academic advisor and let her know that I would be dropping the Secondary Education part of my degree and just keep the Integrated Science portion. I was afraid this would be met with discouragement from my advisor, but a reluctant admission to my newfound desire. However, very straightforwardly she told me that this was not possible because Integrated Science without Secondary Education did not exist as a major; it was specifically a major created by the education department for the purpose of allowing for a diverse study of the sciences to teach broadly at the secondary level. I resigned myself to my fate that I would simply finish the degree, because at that point, to switch to a different major would require me to spend more than the expected 4 years. I went on to complete a semester of student teaching, obtain my degree, and then even teach for a year in Korea. Through it all, the question was always in the back of my head, “What would I do after this?”

After Korea: What Now?

It’s easy to keep living in a fantasy when the future is always open-ended. As I neared the end of my year of teaching in Korea, I was faced again with the question of what I would do after my year. I moved back home with my parents in the summer of 2017, and I felt directionless. Purposeless. I hadn’t seriously envisioned what I would be doing at this point in my life. If teaching was out the door, and so was living in Korea, then what was I to do? Things became extremely quiet at home. I had been around people all the time throughout high school and college, and even though I was by myself quite a bit in Korea, I had a lot of new experiences and things to do. Moving back home while most of my friends were in school felt odd. I felt like I wanted to take on a new endeavor, to go in a new direction, but what direction? I did not know. I have many interests, but not much conviction in any particular one of those interests. I felt like a true jack of all trades, but a master of none. In order to get somewhere in life, at one point or another, we need to focus on one particular thing. The idea that one can effectively multitask is a flawed notion and one that I desperately wanted to be able to accomplish. I kept myself busy by helping out in different programs during the summer of 2017. Once those programs came to an end, I found myself becoming very contemplative and anxious about not having any future plans. One evening, while mulling about my options, I asked my dad what he thought I should do, and he suggested looking into taking some classes at the community college which was right in our neighborhood. I figured that this was a good idea since I didn’t know what I would want to do anyway, might as well be productive. I ended up signing up for general chemistry because I had not taken the class due to my AP credit that I had obtained. However, I figured that if I would move forward in the direction of any professional program, I would need it, so I just decided to take this class.

7/28 8:50-10:14am

(to be continued)