Did You Want to Be a Doctor?
Tue., October 16, 02:29 PM
The question came up on a recent meme: Did you ever want to be a doctor? Yes, I did; I was a little surprised that there weren't more affirmative answers. And I found myself remembering, what happened and why did I change my mind?
From third grade on, I knew I wanted to be a scientist. That was pretty vague, but somewhere before junior high, doctor was at the top of the list. (I had yet to meet a stupid or incompetent doctor; I thought they were all as smart as the ones I knew.) But this was the fifties, y'know. Girls seldom chose careers that would tie up their lives for years after high school and college. They were supposed to get married and have babies; it was no disgrace to drop out of college to get married.
So I shifted my focus to nursing; research revealed that training through a good hospital cost much less than going to college. I had been saving my money since I was a little girl, but college… My mother kept insisting that I should go to college, but it did not seem the right choice to me. Meanwhile, I foresaw another problem.
The more I read about nursing, the more I realized that it was the science that interested me. I absolutely hate to see people in pain, to the point where I would rather take the pain myself. I didn't know what I was going to do.
Even if I were to go to college, I could not think of any subject that I liked well enough to concentrate on it for four years. I was beginning to realize that I am a generalist in a world of specialists. I had already heard that higher education meant learning more and more about less and less, and I really didn't want to do that.
Two converging events in my senior year of high school helped me make up my mind. Well, maybe three if you count that I was working — part time, of course — at a fairly decent job, so that I had a bit more money than I thought I would. But I had started studying chemistry, in preparation for nursing, and I discovered that I loved chemistry. It might make a suitable major. Meanwhile, a representative from the state university came to talk to seniors; his explanations helped me see that I could indeed afford to go to college. (Would you believe: tuition was $75 a semester, or $15 a credit if you were a part-time student!)
As it turned out, I didn't major in chemistry either, but it is part of my minor. I would have liked to work with scientific literature, especially as a translator, but the rules of our university did not allow designing a specific major/minor. Nevertheless, as annoyed as I was with that particular rule, I bless the guidelines that made me take a variety of courses. I learned that I liked history after all, as well as sociology and anthropology. I was not going to major in a language, because I did not want to study literature. (I would rather read it by myself; I got the reading lists of some English courses and just borrowed the books from the library…) I finished my language requirement with scientific German, but I took another year of German conversation because it was fun. I learned enough French to translate some scientific papers for academic credit. Russian — I think the most important thing I learned from studying Russian is that we just don't think alike! I did like philosophy and psychology, but once again, not enough to make them my life's work. I hated political science, but at the same time I was developing an interest in current events. (For some reason, many of the poly sci majors never looked at a newspaper; I still don't understand that.)
It was the generalist in action; I had plenty of credits, but I had barely enough major credits to graduate. This mindset, unfortunately, was going to be uncomfortable as long as I remained in the academic world.
After college, I went back to work at the public library where I had worked since high school. I wanted to learn cataloguing; meanwhile, I had to ability to catalogue non-English books. But what I kept hearing was, “you need a degree in library science.” No one's degree or experience was good enough; whatever we had, there was a higher level we should have attained. It made it easy for the director to keep our salaries low.
Going to business school gave me an opening to the corporate world, where, as any academic would tell you, “you are only a number.” Let me tell you, the number meant I got paid on time; the woman who delivered my check knew me by name. Starting salary was about 20 percent more than the library. That was nice, but the best part of working in a large corporation was that I was appreciated for what I knew instead of being humiliated for what I didn't know.
Being a generalist was starting to pay off. I worked for a bunch of journalists in a chemical/pharmaceutical conglomerate. I could never do their jobs (no journalism degree), but I did't mind. I got to read everything they wrote, and I learned from it. Understanding the business and the way it worked was good; so was the procedure of how to publish a periodical.
There is no doubt that available choices shape your life even more than your intent. My way of thinking and working made me an excellent office manager, because I knew how to run a business — how to deal with vendors and shippers, for example. I could sell the product, talk to clients, direct questions to the proper person if I couldn't answer them myself. I could train new employees.
Well, what about being a doctor? I am most certainly glad I did not take that route. However, I do know more about medicine than the average layman. I use that knowledge to monitor my own health, and I also used it to keep my children well. You know why?
