A sane voice

I found the following comment on the blog Panda Bear MD, under a post about whether medicine is really worth it (http://pandabearmd.com/blog/2007/05/16/is-it-worth-it/):

I’ve been out of residency 12 years and love love love medicine, especially since the advent of Google. So take heart- I guarantee you will be so much happier when you never have to deal with the interior of a hospital…if you like people, you will love medicine once you survive the trauma that is residency.
Of course I say this because I work half-time in urgent medicine and have for years…whenever I work full-time I start to feel creaky and crusted over. So keep all your other talents and wits sharp, make money in other ways if you can, to get rid of the loan.
Learn to cook quickly, cheaply, and well. Shop at goodwill. Drive cars with salvage titles. Buy a fixer house and sand windowsills on the weekends. Take in short-term exchange students from cool countries like Japan. Maintain a massage table and chair if possible. You think I am kidding, but I am NOT.
Noone told anyone the best-kept secret in medicine- 30 hours a week is what most people thrive on. Beyond that, it’s diminshing returns on your personhood.

I've already been wondering about my decision to go to medical school, and reading things like this gives me heart. It's pretty much the angle I'm playing, that basically, medicine is a great job, but in limited doses with plenty of free time (so surgery, as cool as it sounds, already is a hell no).

I'm finding that culturally, I already feel very out of place in my class. About 80 -90% of people have 1.) either come straight from undergrad or 2.) taken time off to do research and then came to school. The two are almost equivalent in my mind, since biomedical research doesn't give one a break from the achievement focused culture prevalent in the medical sciences. As a result, most of the folks I'm going to school with are pretty ambitious, and willing to put in the hours to do well (although there are a fair number of lazy folks too). Additionally, many people have little exposure to peoples and countries beyond their own. Most people are upper-middle class (or straight upper-class), have lived in the US for the vast majority of their lives, and frankly, don't seem to have a lot of exposure beyond their upbringing. I don't hold this against them, I honestly don't. If my background is different, it is much due to chance and I think, good luck.

However, the sum of this to me (and I may be a total douchebag for making judgements like this; feel free to comment to that effect if you think so), is that people have had a chance to find out what's really important to them, and to explore additional dimensions of their personality. That'd be fine for most 22-24 year olds, but not this bunch. I say that because the next 4 years don't seem like they allow much room for exploration beyond medicine, and I think what makes a lot of my peers really tick is probably outside medicine (not to say that medicine isn't right for them, but hey, a lot of people work jobs that have little/nothing to do with their happiness). And so I wonder what's going to happen to everyone.

As for me, I've decided I find the social and cultural atmosphere of the school a little too intense and removed from my own values. As such, I think I'm going to shoot for a 70/30 balance in my personal life, with 70 being devoted to non-medical school friends/activities to keep my even-keeled, and the remaining 30 so I don't cut myself off entirely from my class (plus, most people in class are genuinely quite nice, and there are a rare few I can really have fun with).