I gave my two weeks notice to my job last Friday.  I tell my boss I’m going to grad school. Business school? he asks.

No, a career change. I’m going to school to get me prerequisites for med school. Namely a lot of Biology and Chemistry. He’s pretty stunned. They really don’t want me to leave this project. I’ve been billable at this client for 9 months now. Racking in lots of money for my company. And I’m potentially billable here for an additional year. Me walking away means lost money for them. I’m not a cost. I am the product they are selling, and this nectarine just decided to roll off the stack of sellable nectarines and out the door.

He wants me to stay and work for the Company part time even if they can’t swing it to allow me to stay at the same client. I’m very cool with this. Especially if they can find me a local client or a client that allows me to work from home. I should hear within the week.  And it’s looking good so far.  If they can’t find me a client, I’m back to square one. No job. If that happens, things will get fun real fast. But it’s where I was going to be anyway if they hadn’t offered up the part time thing. NBD. I’d figure it out.

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This journey will last me 10 years. It will take my 2 years to get my prerequisites. 1 year to get into med school. 4 years of med school. 3 years of residency(at least). I’ll be 36.  Hopefully, This blog will take me through those 10 years.

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I’ve been pretty spoiled these last couple years. I make much more now then I will even in a residency program. This means I won’t reach my same income level till I’m 37.  I’m saying goodbye to massages and pedicures, to Lululemon and T h e o r y, to 4-5 vacations every year, to commissioning art, to collecting books, to putting money in my 401k, and to eating out for EVERY meal. I haven’t used a stove in over two years. I just hope I don’t have to say goodbye to my new Camry. But even that can go if it has to.  I’ll drive a Yaris in exchange for having a fulfilling life and and an exciting journey in pursuit of that life.  I’m happier with large goals in my life.

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I want to go on to explain why I want to be a doctor and why now. And I realized that this was the question posed to me on my application for the post-baccalaureate pre-med school program that I will be attending in under a week.

I’ll just post that essay.

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Personal Statement

I have been told to stay away from religious topics in personal essays, but I feel that I cannot stay away and still be able to communicate why I want to be a doctor and why I want to do it now.  I grew up in a very tightly controlled religious environment.  Among other topics, my science classes included a debate about which theological interpretation of Noah’s ark was most scientifically sound. My introduction to evolution consisted of a teacher telling us that since the most muscular (the fittest) squirrels could still get run over by cars that natural selection was therefore false.  Science was the enemy my entire youth.  I had little knowledge of real science, much less an appreciation of it.  I enrolled without hesitation to Bob Jones University for my undergraduate degree, an institution that guided the ideology of my high school. The ideology being, as Martin Luther says, "Whoever wants to be a Christian should tear the eyes out of his reason."  I lasted 2 years before being expelled for leaving campus with a boy without a university-approved chaperon.

By the time I was expelled, I was well on my way to opening my mind and rethinking my childhood upbringing. I decided forgo reentry to BJU and enrolled at a secular state university across the country. I continued my accounting/information systems degree at the University of Nevada Reno (UNR). I chose those fields chose because of the problem solving I have always been gifted at, not because of some deep passion for the subjects. In order to graduate, I was required to take a course in the natural sciences, and I chose an introductory course in geology. I remember hearing for the first time evidence that the earth was billions of years old. I was turning around in my seat with wide eyes going, “People have known about this and haven’t told me!”

From that introduction, it was just a short amount of time before I was in love with the sciences, especially biological sciences. Never having been exposed to religiously unbiased science before, I started reading book after book after book on psychology, evolution, and pathology.  Eventually, I picked up a book on discoveries that have been made since the mapping of the human genome, and I realized that knowledge in biological science is exploding and brilliant people are out there discovering it right now. Right now!  It got my blood flowing. I am lucky enough to be born in a generation where science can be embraced without fear of repercussions and also in a generation where increasing technology allows life changing discoveries to happen one right after another. The landscape as I enter the field of medicine will completely change by the time I leave it, and I am not going to let the chance to enter such an exciting field pass me by.

I graduated UNR and immediately took a position at a technology consulting company. I have worked implementing systems at large corporations and have done well, getting promoted consistently even while my company was drastically cutting jobs. My success has made me happy. Producing working technology for corporations at the top of their industry has made me proud, but I do not get that giddy excitement from building systems that I get from reading a book about prions.