Getting my groove back

So a funny thing has happened over the past two weeks. After my last post, I found myself battling some of the same feelings that I had addressed: Med school sucking, wondering why I would ever put myself through this, wondering what my motivation in all of this is, etc. The motivation problem is what has come to the forefront of my mind as of late. I just can't seem to come up with a single concrete answer other than the $94,000 that I've racked up in debt over the past year and a half.

Is it for my family? No, my parents are proud of me no matter what. Is it for my kids? No, I probably wont have them for a while thanks to the inter-state relationship that I'm in for the foreseeable future. Am I doing this for me then???

At one point, somewhere back in the application process, I was doing this for me, to give myself a solid career where I wouldn't just be a cog in the wheel of industry like my father and brothers, merely making a product to make a paycheck. I would much rather a career where I could look back at the end of every week of work and see that the hours of my life that I am investing into my career had a positive impact on the lives of others...and be compensated for my skills and time.

Well, I wish the naive younger version of me had known the sacrifices he'd be making in the near future for that fulfilling career and decent paycheck. I look at other people my age that are traveling the world in their free time, keeping themselves healthy at the gym, starting their marriages, starting their families, broadening their social networks, finding their niches in careers and generally living life.

And then I look in the mirror and see my life, filled with sitting in front of a couple of books, in a small group discussing that pile of books or in an auditorium listening to the highlights of those books. No impact on other people, nothing but the same 200 faces day in and day out, the same books day in day out, nothing to look back on at the end of the week to say to myself "wow, I actually contributed to humanity today."

I think the lack of a rewarding feeling in the pursuit that I spend the majority of my time in is the worst part of this whole process. I'm literally working my butt off, spending weeks of my life glued to a chair for nothing but a number on a piece of paper...ok so couple of numbers (Exams, USMLE, Clinical Evals and shelf exams, Deans letter, interviews and the actual match). My life for the next 3 years is lined up for me and I feel like a cog, just what I wanted to avoid... pointless, unrelenting, unrewarding toil.

Like I've said a couple of times now: It's hard to look past all of this to the actual practice of medicine when your head is burried in the pages of a book and won't be coming out for some time now.