Archive for November 28th, 2009

I have been considering a question lately: is the road to success paved with working on what you love?

Some seem to believe that you should only do what you like – implying that  it is done to the exclusion of things you don’t like to do. In the abstract, this sounds about right – who would spend hoards of time doing something they hate? One argument is that anyone who has been forced to work out of some necessity will likely scoff, as necessity is the mother of the unpleasant.

However, if the work is to be tenable in the long run, it must be relatively pleasant, lest it become the bane of one’s existence – a situation that I could relate to, a situation that could hardly be defined as success in any way.

However, let us point out, success is NOT “doing your dream job.” There are not enough dream jobs in the world for that to work. For example, take writers. There are mountains of people who would love to write for a living, yet every major city generally only has one newspaper; every state only so many magazines. Only so many books can be printed as people will only demand so much. Thus, those who wish to write for a living are generally foiled. Some succeed; most don’t. Or take poets. Is it humanly possible to make a good living writing poetry? How about writing music? Even these pursuits must encompass some of the tedious, the belabored, the demeaning. And even those who find more ordinary jobs and manage to love them – can they really love every minute? If they don’t, are they a failure?

I wrote this post because I feel there is sometimes resentment against pre-med or Med, I suppose) students. We are seen as the opposite of those doing only what we love, instead we are sometimes seen as competitive raptors, chasing a high salary and relatively high social standing, those gods of men. We are narrow-minded, greedy even. We somehow choke down all the information we must know to proceed, all for a one-way path to financial success. However, there are other ways to financial success, ways that probably don’t require the entire decade spanning your 20′s to fulfill. It’s true, without having some toleration for the material and the work, one might be doomed. without aptitude for it, certainly. The chances of someone who loathes all things medical, biological, chemical, and statistical making it out of their residency at the usual age of about 30 are pretty slim. They might even be pitied, as their life, one of disliking their work, will not be success. On the other hand, one who loves those studies will likely still find they embark on unpleasant activities all the time.

Our decision to go down that path is multifaceted, bound up in interest for work itself, perhaps feeling a penchant for it based on experience. Yes, we know the other benefits, but that is not all we are after. For we pre-meds have a job in mind, one that we want, and one that we are pretty sure we’ll enjoy. We want to be doctors, and we do what we must to get there.