Doubts and questions about studying medicine.

Since the HSC finished I have had a lot of time to spend in my own thoughts, too much time in fact. And all this time has led me to come to the conclusion that I have absolutely no idea what the hell I'm doing. I have no idea why I want to do medicine, I mean sure there is the interest factor, the desire - no - the need for a challenging career, and the desire to do some good in my life. Yes this explains why, but it doesn't really explain why I want to do medicine. That sounds crazy I know, but to me it makes sense.

What on Earth is driving me to do medicine? The above reasons are all good but there are a billion other careers which would satisfy those requirements. All this free time has led me to seriously think about why I want to do medicine. And I think I've put it down to the fact that I need to do it for myself more than anyone. I'm not talking about the challenging career aspect here which I want/need. I've put it down to the fact that I need to prove to myself I can actually do something so challenging to feel a sense of worth. Put it this way, apart from doing well in school I don't really have anything to be happy about in my life. Everything I do I do for myself. I can count the amount of times I've seen friends outside of school this past year on my fingers. I don't know why it is but people don't like me when they know me for a long time, I've lost count of the amount of times I've met someone new, started to be really good friends and then over a matter of weeks I get completely phased out of their life, maybe to only get a pity text 6 months later along the lines of "omg haven't talked to you in ages". Maybe thats what happens when you completely ignore me for 6 weeks. No shit.

This puzzles me. For the life of me I cannot work out why, I consider myself a socially balanced person and don't see how I manage to scare people off. It has gotten so bad that I'm scared to meet new people because I know it's just going to end in rejection. Don't even get me started on the fact that I'm 18 and never had a proper relationship...

Well anyway this rambling is going somewhere. I think that this is the reason I want to do medicine. This constant alienation (Argh, flashbacks to HSC Belonging....) is driving me. I think that it is what is pushing me into medicine, to prove something to myself. I think I need to prove that I can do something which I will be valued for, to make up for how little I am valued by my friends. Something that will take up my whole life because I have nothing else to spend it doing. No one is pushing me to do medicine, not my friends, or my parents.

Now clearly I am not going to mention this in any interviews, because I probably won't get a place because they will think I am insane.

This leads me to think to myself, if I can't even manage to have decent friends then how in the heck am I going to cope in medicine. Clearly I am not the most socially adept person around. I think that not having a deep relationship with patients on a friendship level will make up for it, no one will get close enough for me to magically scare them off. I'm good at communicating with strangers, I even manage to get compliments from customers at work because of my 'great interpersonal skills'. So this is where the doubt comes from, not to mention the fact that I'm terrified of the workload as I feel I am a terrible studier, I have never felt ready for an exam the entire HSC but magically it has all worked out and I have ended up with better results than people I know who are relentless studiers and also who want to study medicine.. I'm also terrified of the pressure not to make mistakes.

Well that's a deep insight to the mind of me at the moment. Feel free to suggest good psychiatrists if you wish :P

Well that's it.

For me, the HSC ended yesterday. Only this morning has it really sunk in. I have nothing. No commitments. Nothing forcing me to do anything else. I just have, life. There is absolutely nothing stopping me from withdrawing all my uni applications and backpacking around the world for the next 10 years. Now that's a scary thought.

The past 13 years it has always been the same, the commitment has always been there. School was always there to go back to. Now it's not. It is really quite a weird feeling, not really happiness, kind of relief mixed with a slight sense of "WTF DO I DO NOW?!?!"...

Now of course I'm not going to backpack around the world, although I would really like to travel before I'm old and grey. For me, the past 13 years of education are coming to an end, and the next 13 (Probably more) are beginning.

On that topic. I finally had some good news in regards to getting into medicine, even with my UMAT I managed to get an interview for the Joint Medical Program!! I'm pretty damned happy about it, seeing as it was always my number 1 choice for medicine. UNSW interviews come out on Monday and I'm still confident I should get an interview for JCU. If I had more than one offer for medicine and had a choice I would be absolutely ecstatic.

In a couple of months the Uni life will begin for me. I don't really know what to expect. I've heard so many mixed opinions, some say it is easier than the HSC and others say that because I'm planning on Medicine it will be harder than the HSC. I'm just hoping I can stay motivated. Throughout year 12 motivation for me ranged so much. At the start I was telling myself that it's only a year and if I do well here it will all be better. Didn't work. Somehow I managed to scrape through and still have an estimated ATAR of 96, which with the amount of effort I put in is utterly unbelievable. I don't think there was one Assessment throughout the year that I thought I was completely prepared for, it always felt like it wasn't good enough and I could have done so much more. Somehow I managed. For example the physics HSC exam yesterday, I felt horridly underprepared and was expecting to do poorly, however I got in there and have never felt so confident about an exam in my life.... My mind works in mysterious ways...

Anyway here is a graph I made because I was bored to illustrate my motivation to do well in the HSC over the past year:

I think that gets my point across. The part where the rate of falling motivation starts to decrease represents the wake up call trials gave me.

Anyway, now I'm free. Kind of. I expect I will be able to write more interesting things up here more often now, so follow me! Tell other people to do so as well and make sure you check back regularly. I may delve into the realm of writing about my opinions on topical issues soon, not sure how that will go.

Thanks for reading :)