When the Talk is... Confusing

This week I had one of those conversations that starts casually and becomes suddenly existential.

I was talking with a grad student from my research group about my future, and he asked me a simple question every pre-med gets asked: Why medicine?

I gave the answer I was trained to give. I talked about helping people. About improving lives. About the privilege of being trusted with someone's health. Now, all of those things are true, and they apply to me because I'm a boss of course. But as the conversation kept going, I realized that wasn't the whole answer.

As we talked, I realized something that I haven't fully said out loud before. That the reason I want to pursue medicine is because... I can.

Don't get me wrong, I have really high self-esteem because I'm hot, smart, fantastic, amazing, but I didn't mean this in a cocky way. Not in a "this will be easy" way. If anything, the appeal or pull is the opposite. Medicine is infamously brutal. The training takes forever. The hours are exhausting. The responsibility is enormous. 36-hour shifts aren't something most people dream about.

Yet, when I imagine that life, I don't feel intimidated by it as much as I'm drawn to it.

It's strange to admit, but part of me feels like I'm built for that challenge. The long nights, the constant learning, the pressure of knowing people are relying on you. There's something in that intensity that doesn't push me away but pulls me in.

Is that a good enough reason?

"Because I can" sounds almost selfish when you say it out loud. Medicine is about service, about patients, and about responsibility. Wanting to do it simply because you feel capable almost feels like the wrong motivation.

But maybe capability matters more than we admit.

Medicine asks an enormous amount from the people who practice it. But if someone does feel called to it, if they feel like they can carry that weight, maybe that's not the worst reason.

As I say that reason out loud more, I flip flop over and over again between thinking, "Wow, this is such a philosophical and profound line of reasoning," and "Maybe I should never open my mouth again."

Maybe I'll look back one day and realize a deeper motivation that I can't articulate yet, but for now the honest answer is this.

I want to practice medicine because the work matters. Because people deserve doctors who care. And because when I look at the road ahead, as difficult as it is, I still think that it's the life I want.

Photo from TikTok