Note 86

Today was my first day of class for the post bacc program. Honestly, it made me waver in whether or not I'll be a doctor. I realized that I still really enjoy research and pushing the boundaries of things. I think living a "mundane" life of working typical working hours doing operations or running clinic hours is fine, but I don't know if I'll ultimately be happy doing the same thing over and over again. Yes it's true that new techniques and methods will be shown over time, but I fear for my interest if it came down to it. I completely understand that the point is to provide care for patients, and that ultimately your job as a doctor is to give that care. It is a position where you're providing a service just from a place of great knowledge.

So now what I'm looking at is a computational biology PhD. I still really like and enjoy machine learning, and I've always had an interest in microbiology. I think this would be a good way to marry the two things that I've worked on in my past while pushing for something for my future. Granted I have quite literally 0 idea where it could take me, but I think the prospects are quite interesting.

I think something that I'm starting to learn more about myself is that I'm quite selfish. They say that surgeons have large egos. But I think I secretly, or honestly maybe even outwardly, have a really large one. Part of that is negative in that I'm not sure if I like helping people. I think I like coaching people from a knowledge standpoint. But I don't like teaching from 0. I think I like helping to bridge gaps. I think it's frustrating having to explain things to people who will not listen or just ignore my advice. I think it's frustrating when people just aren't able to do their job to a certain standard. I think people should be able to fully understand things and handle it themselves except for rare edge cases when they happen after a few months in a new role.

Maybe these are normal feelings to feel? Maybe they're also just not super important to whether or not I should become a doctor. I think I don't know enough A) about what happens after you get a phd and B) about the work itself and the opportunities to really make a clear judgement.

I suppose there always exists the option to go for an MD/PhD. But that feels... half assed? At least on the PhD side of things. I feel like you would get so sucked up into the medical degree side of things that you start to lose touch with the research. Although I know that everyone does research to get into good residency programs. I just feel like you should do one or the other, especially if you're going to do GOOD research.

The way things stand, I don't really want to do much volunteering. I don't think I'm a person who goes out of their way to help and assist people. I think I know that much about myself. I know I'm selfish and maybe that makes me a bad person. But I know I won't do it. Or at least, the amount of hours that I'll have doing volunteering work will be dwarfed by my other hours. I'll probably do max like 50. Which considering I can rack up shadowing/clinical hours with work, I'm not really worried about it.

idk :p