how it feels

The past few days as I've been taking my study breaks and reading med blogs, something has begun to weigh on my mind: how will I feel 5 years from now when everyone is done and I still have 5 more years to go? I love medicine now, but it's dawning on me just how long everything is. I read a lot about second thoughts when it comes to medicine, and I think that having serious second thoughts in which you question and answer yourself is important. Why? Because if you never honestly think about what you really want and don't want out of all this, it's my opinion that you're doing it for the wrong reasons. We who want to help people realize that there are many other ways we can help, ways that don't consume so much of our lives; we can become social workers, nurses, teachers.. Even if they take several years of schooling, they don't usually take several years of working 80+ hour weeks. It's a little intimidating. Medicine isn't a dogma, it's something I think you should question yourself constantly about whether you're worthy to do it. Think of all the people who have proved to you that you could trust to put your life in their hands, I'm sure there are few, even few doctors. And that's another scary thing, even if I work tirelessly on learning science, even if I build the best bedside manner in the world and want to help everyone I can, I'm not sure that will be enough. Granted, these are all ways that are important to helping a lot of people and being a good doctor, but there's something else that I haven't figured out yet that I'll need to be a great doctor.