Confidence is overrated.
This statement may seem absurd at first, but hear me out. Up until last semester, I'd felt certain that the surest way to pre-med success was a limitless supply of confidence. I don't mean the arrogant type that glosses over challenges with a sort of deluded, bullheaded faith that everything will turn out fine, but the type that sees a challenge, is scared of that challenge and takes it on anyway.
But for the first time in my life, I questioned my intelligence last semester. Enter organic chemistry. The tiny molecules I studied in the pages of my enormous textbook grew to be disproportionately hulking and intimidating in my mind. As I worked through problems and mechanisms, I lined molecules up and ordered them around, much as a small child might attempt to slap a herd of carthorses into obedience. This tactic, in case you haven't already inferred, doesn't always work.
Adding to my difficult situation was the fact that I'd idiotically scheduled in several time-consuming science electives with orgo lab and lecture - all fun courses, but nevertheless courses that tended to usurp any free time I may have had.
By the end of the semester, I was afraid to look at my final grades. Of course, eventually I did and, much to my surprise, they were just fine. All As and a B in organic chemistry lab. Still, I wanted to reconsider my attitude. My confidence had been shaken and I wanted to think about whether I should stay on the pre-med path I've always been on or switch to a career in writing.
I joked to my friends before leaving that during Winter Break, I was going to go on some sort of American Indian vision quest to figure out what I was going to do with my life. I didn't exactly do that, but I did go on a retreat, where I discovered the Ignatian exercises of discernment, which I used to help direct my decision-making. Although the four days of peace, reading, praying and meditating didn't produce an immediate decision, I began to come up with a plan.
When I returned to school, I talked to my adviser and a friend who had gone through a similar career-decision process. It took a tremendous amount of logistical imagining - if I went through with the medicine path, I wanted to also get a master's of fine arts. For all that reconsidering, though, I ended up with the same decision I'd made before - stay on the pre-medical route and keep my writing as a spare-time activity. I've talked to people who, upon parlaying an art into a career - even if that means teaching said art - begin to resent and even dislike what they once loved.
Life without the clinical-analytical challenge of medicine seems to me as if it would be missing something vital. The key, I think, is balance. From the outside, my months of soul-searching and answer-seeking might seem like a ridiculous runaround. Had I just kept my initial unquestioning confidence that I was on the right path, perhaps I could have saved myself some time and energy.
But that time was far from wasted. By reconsidering my career path and really asking myself if it was right, I strengthened my conviction that medicine was indeed something I want to pursue. By letting that confidence slip even a little, I was finally able to question, consider, decide and, ultimately, carry on.
Courtney's column runs biweekly Fridays. She can be reached at c.hartnett@cavalierdaily.com.
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