Damning realizations

When you're looking into a career, you have to take something that you like, and try to think of what would make you leave that. For example, when I was younger, I loved to draw and write, and I wanted to be a comic artist, but I needed to interact with people, and the interaction with people is what I was willing to give up art for.

In college, I liked playing with chemicals, but I was pretty sure I wasn't going to do that for a living. I liked history a lot, but again, I wanted to work with people, and so I left that by the side to pursue medicine.

And now, I'm in internal medicine, and chomping at the bit to go into outpatient practice. But I realized that I like working with medical students. And I mean like like, as in I'd give up working with patients to work with students.

oops

Because now I'm in a bit of a pickle. I never thought I'd really want to go into academic medicine, and my CV shows that. But without medical students, this would just be a job. And I don't want a job; I want a profession.

I guess I took that whole docere (to teach) thing pretty seriously, because now that I've become a doctor, all I can think of myself as is a teacher.