Today

I consider today a success because I was able to get out of bed. But other than that, it has been a real stinker.
The day I found out I got into medical school was definitely the most relieving, validating, sit-back-and-enjoy-it day of my life.
There are not very many of those as a Pre-med. Most of the time you feel like you’re doing all this work for nothing. Because you are failing, flailing, and have no clue what is going on. You run on auto pilot. Sleep, eat, study, repeat. Sometimes you are lucky unlucky enough that your tests line up all on one day and so that night you maybe have no new material to study, and you just go home and cry instead.
With all of that emotional instability going on, it hits you in the midst of your studying that you have anywhere from 7+ more years of this depending on where you are in undergrad. Seven years. At the least. You begin to understand more and more just what you are committing to. There is no getting around the fact that it sucks. It doesn’t sound fun to me. Does it sound fun to you? Putting off the “normal” life changes of your peers to stay in isolation, barely managing to take care of yourself.
On the days before being accepted to medical school, these crises take complete control and wreck any productivity momentum you had. After finding out I was accepted, I could cling to the joy of that day and remind myself that all my work has been validated and I will get to live out my dreams.
I am still feeling overwhelmingly blessed and filled with gratitude that I made it in, but my acceptance into medical school is also a four year extension of a sentence I do not want.
Nobody (sane) wants to go to medical school.
It is not a dream life. If there was an alternative career I felt I could manage, trust me I would be doing that. If there was another way to become a doctor besides going to medical school please, sign me up for that.
Even further, as a doctor it will not all be peaches. The doctors I’ve shadowed have days where they hate their jobs. Their patients frustrate them, they have crappy hours, their nurses are rude to them. Yes, even they are oppressed by the man. I was shocked.
The more I learn about this path I am on, the more I drag my feet. I don’t want to go to school four more years. I don’t want to take tests. I don’t want even more training after that for residency. I want to start my life. 
I feel like a sucker, maybe even like I’m getting screwed over, but I know I’m doing what is right. For everything I don’t want to do, I will sacrifice ten times all those things just to have been given the opportunity. For every year of school I have to give, I would give many more to be able to walk into your exam room, shake your hand, look you in the eye and tell you I’m going to do my absolute best to make you feel better. For every night I’ll be up studying, I will let you add to those sleepless nights when your baby has a fever and you call me in the middle of the night. For every miserable, make-you-slap-your-mama test I have to take, I will double it to remember your suffering with chronic pain, diabetes, depression, and so on.
You see, I do not want to do this. In any way, shape, or form. I would much rather take my nieces to the park, throw up everyday for 9 years in a row, bake cheesecakes, chop my foot off, sleep a full 8 hours a night, carry around a backpack full of bricks, go for a run, jab myself in the eye with a syringe.
This isn’t how I want to spend my next four years.
I do not want to do this. I have to do this.