Passion

Please be advised that the following will be very corny and quite possibly full of bad metaphors and cliches.

I consider myself a passionate person in regards to how I live my life, value the people in it and interact with the world. I believe that everything that we do in this life deserves to be done with passion. I realize that can be a bit tiring, quite exhausting, in reality. However, I couldn't imagine being happy any other way. It has recently caused me to make some fairly difficult decisions, like move half-way across the country away from all of my family and friends in order to experience life in medical school completely. But I wonder if it is such a good thing to think that passion can exist in everything.

Since a young age I have been particularly fond of saying that I will only participate in those activities in which I can dedicate myself completely instead of only half-heartedly doing a little of everything. I have very specific standards for what I will claim that I helped out in, regardless of others' opinions. I value my time, even though it may appear that I waste it in front of the television, or reading (like my mother sometimes claims), or talking to my friends (on the phone or anywhere for that matter) or sleeping. But I consider those activities completely valuable and irreplaceable because they help me maintain my sanity. So if I am going to do something that takes me away from my sanity, I want to do it because I couldn't imagine spending my time any other way. For example, some of my friends would say that in high school I had to much school spirit for my own good, but that was the way that I could express my desire to be at school (aka: my passion for school) because it made me happy to learn and see my friends and do all those other school activities that kept me at school for many many hours. One of the consequences to my being passionately involved in things is that I end up micromanging, but that is a whole different story (mostly has to do with my desire to be in absolute control of everything in my life.)

Point being, in my surgery clerkship, I felt that same passion that I had with all the other things in my life that take up any significant amount of time. I wanted to wake up early and be in the hospital all day. I wanted the residents to give my assignments for either floor work or research (even though I did a good job of avoiding ever giving presentations). I wanted nothing more than to be in the OR day in and day out. It was something that I had not expected (or had done a good job or denying). So I entered my next clerkship with a bad attitude right off the bat.

The first morning, once I was introduced to what I would be doing, I got really excited. Because that is what I do, I submerse myself into things because if I don't do it whole-heartedly, I might as well be at home sleeping. Problem is that even though I can be passionate about pediatrics while I am in the clinics or on the floor or talking to my pregnant friends about their children, I have a difficult time maintaining that passion once I go home. With surgery, even though I had to get up really early in the morning, rarely had time to eat, and some people were not so nice and really competitive, I looked foward to the great majority of the days. In the past week or so, I haven't had that same feeling. I dread going to clinic (and yeah, sure, once I am there I have a good time, but I would still rather be sleeping). Don't get me wrong, it is a great life. Pediatricians are fun, really nice people, that give you more than enough time to eat, go to the bathroom, ask questions, go home early and the best part, they don't yell at you. I get to wake up later and come home early, but I still don't really want to go to work the next day. But the funny thing is that I can read for hours and hours about peds and pseudo-force myself to keep this ridiculous study schedule that I made for myself. Which is completely different from surgery because I always put off studying b/c I could learn it later. However, I do not know how much of this discrepancy is because peds is half the amount of time as surgery (6 wks vs. 12 wks). One other thing is that I feel like I could actually fit in with this group of drs. I don't feel completely out of place or awkward. Unlike how I felt with all the surgeons. Their attitudes, their behavior, it was all so different from my own personality.

I always thought I wanted to be a pediatrician or at least that is what I told people. And no matter what I say, I don't really hate kids. They just kinda scare me and I really want them to like me, so it is easier to make them into little demons than actually feel rejected (whatever, once again, that's another blog). What I really want to figure out, is if my need for passion is good enough of a reason to help determine my choice for a career. I have a very long way to go before I am done sampling all different aspects of medicine, but I want to know if this a good ruler to use for comparision or if I need to find another way. Am I still naive about the realities of medicine and the real world? Can I hold on to my ideals long enough to help others the way I always dreamed of?