“And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.” – Robin Williams as John Keating, Dead Poets Society.
I seemed set on becoming a physician as soon as I was able to talk, and (aside from a brief consideration of an acting career around the fifth grade) did not change my mind until halfway through my freshman year of college. Up until that point, I had no real doubts about pursuing a track through medical school. My ideas of medicine were mostly colored by television shows like NY Med, the pediatricians that I adored and respected and a long-running interest in subjects such as anatomy, biology, and psychology. I enjoyed my Advanced Placement courses in high school, as well as a medical-themed summer program in Boston. There was no question about whether or not I was dedicated to the idea of becoming a doctor. The issue, however, was that all of this dedication surrounded itself around an idea, rather than a reality.
When I started college, I was faced with more advanced chemistry and calculus concepts than what I was taught in my high school AP classes. I sincerely tried, spending countless hours on practice problems and in study sessions. But none of it changed the fact that I was absolutely miserable. I passed calculus by the skin of my teeth — it took me three years of work to reach that sort of minimum standard, though it was clear that I wasn’t excelling. Chemistry, on the other hand, slipped through my fingers. Unlike some of my peers, I chose not to drop the course. Despite my efforts, my test scores stayed roughly the same throughout the semester. I walked out of my final exam with a D+ in the class, a grade that put me on the borderline of losing most of my scholarship money. While I knew I liked biology, and the humanistic side of medicine, I realized that a track that focused so intently on the more mathematical and chemistry-oriented ends of the field was not truly my fit.
This realization was coupled with some startling statistics and anecdotes I had read online about doctors. A study of seven medical schools across the United States, published in 2008, found that nearly half of students reported burnout. A more recent study, from 2015, found that 29% of medical students displayed clinically significant symptoms of depression. Those symptoms were found to potentially worsen during residency. The darkest findings of all showed that physicians have a higher rate of suicide than those in any other profession — a rate that, for women, is more than twice than that of the general female population. While no career is perfect, it became increasingly clear to me that having those prestigious M.D. letters following my name was not worth me pursuing a track that I wasn’t really passionate about.
It wasn’t that I didn’t like science, and it wasn’t that I didn’t want to help people. While I had some interest in medicine, I realized I also had interest in other fields, such as writing, education and Jewish studies, all which could be used to change the world. I still have an interest in health, but more so in the preventative and holistic ends of the field, and not in a track that focused so intently on chemistry, physics and a disease-oriented approach. As Dr. Ashley Winter, my favorite physician from NY Med, once put it, “A lot of us don’t think very, very critically about where we’re taking our lives — not only the content and the feasibility of our careers, but also the emotional satisfaction.” While medical school was the right path for her, I had to admit that it was not where I, personally, would find my balance.
It has taken me about two years for me to be able to say all of this without guilt. As confident as I ultimately was about dropping the pre-med track, the decision had plagued me with doubts. All of this is a reflection of the STEM crisis we need to be talking about: the nagging feeling that there is something wrong or “lesser than” about pursuing anything other than the “hard sciences.” I like to refer to this as “STEM guilt.”
Every year, countless students drop out of majors and tracks such as pre-med, engineering, computer science, physics and chemistry. While some of those students might feel completely satisfied when doing so, many more will first face a personal sense of defeat. It’s one thing to think you wanted to pursue a certain field, only to realize it was not your fit. That alone is disappointing. But it’s a whole other ballgame when you live in a culture that too often pushes students toward certain fields in ways that make other tracks seem less important. The almost obsessive societal focus on STEM can turn a student’s changed mind into a crushing sense of failure.
These same students were often once made to believe they were capable of anything. I’ll never forget the sparkle in my mother’s eyes as she picked me up one particular kindergarten day. I told her that my teacher had sent me to another room with a nice lady who gave me some sort of funny test with pictures, puzzles, and blocks. “You’re going to be in the gifted program!” she burst with excitement, while my six-year-old mind was still thinking about how fun it was to stack those blocks in a little tower at the end. In the years to follow, I’d go through many gifted and honors classes, where we were constantly portrayed as the academically brightest of our peers. In 5th grade, I’d be given a spot on the math team. In 7th grade, I’d be administered an SAT test, and told that my scores matched those of the “average student applying to enter college.” In high school, I’d enroll in as many advanced courses as possible. And at college orientation, I’d be shuffled into the first set of calculus and chemistry courses, after an advisor took one quick glance at my records. “Oh, I see you were accepted into the Honors Program,” she noted. “You’ll be fine.”
With those words, she pushed me into truly rigorous classes without taking a second to explain. It turned out that I wasn’t “fine.” College was where I was thrown into a roughly even playing field. I was suddenly in a world filled with tens of thousands of academic equals. I had to define myself in ways that didn’t rely on my intelligence and talent alone; the “gifted” label would become an almost lost memory from my grade school days.
I had incredible teachers in my gifted programs, and I made some great friends. However, after all of those years of being viewed as a child with virtually boundless potential, I now had to face being an adult with limits. I thought I had some “gifts” in mathematics and the sciences, so when I dropped the pre-med track, it felt like I was somehow wasting away talent. What I realized in the long run, though, was that I had even stronger gifts in the verbal realm. It all made sense looking back. As a child, I had resolved to read every book in my elementary school’s media center, and as a high school student, I competed on the debate team. My test scores in reading were always off the charts, while it was starting to become clear around middle school that math wasn’t such a strong suit in comparison. However, when so many students who initially pursue STEM grow up feeling that they’re capable of anything, it can be crushing for them to realize that they’re not particularly drawn to what are seen as some of the most prestigious pursuits. It certainly was the case for me.
We also really need to consider why STEM is so often seen as “the best.” The idea of pushing more women into STEM, as we all know, is a hot topic. The Washington Post considers the low rates of women in 2014 earning bachelor’s degrees in engineering and computer science (19% and 18%, respectively) to be “a bit discouraging.” Forbes called comparable statistics “grim,” and decided to declare the STEM fields as having “always had a woman problem.”
The truth is, for the most part, this isn’t really a problem. While we should fully support those women who do choose to pursue STEM careers in doing so, need to provide equal opportunities for both boys and girls to explore math and science, and absolutely need to correct the sexism that’s too often present in fields such as engineering and medicine, there is no inherent need to push more women into STEM than those who are already naturally interested in it.
We don’t see nearly as comparable of a push, if any, for men to consider careers in nursing, education, and the social sciences: fields which are all disproportionately dominated by women. (In fact, male students who decide to focus on “soft sciences” or traditionally feminine fields are often looked down upon for pursuing something that’s perceived as “less manly,” and thereby less important — but that’s a heavy discussion for another day.) Instead, most people only discuss putting more women into engineering, computer science, and medicine, as if those fields are the only ones that hold the key to our future. I sincerely question if part of the perceived prestige of these fields is due to the fact that they’re considered “traditionally male” professions. As Dr. Kate Bahn, a blogger with a PhD in Economics, once noted, “Do other fields perceived as masculine also attract a certain type of woman, like me, who is drawn to the power and seriousness connoted with masculinity? And what does it say about me, as a staunch feminist, if I’m relying on masculinity to convey my worth?”
Dani Beckerman graduated from the University of Maryland as a pre-med student. Instead of continuing on to medical school, however, she decided to pursue a different path: one that involved selling cake in little glass jars. Her enterprise proved to be wildly successful. During a 2015 interview, when questioned about her doubts after having dropped medicine, Beckerman stated, “[My brand] JARS by dani escalated so quickly I had no time to look back — and now I am so happy that I didn’t.”
One of my lines of thought toward medicine used to be, “If I’m capable of being in a profession that directly saves lives, why shouldn’t I?” Over time, I’ve realized that there are going to be many people in this world who fulfill the roles of saving lives. My role, instead, might happen to be to improve them. While it’s clear that running a dessert business doesn’t carry the same prestige of standing over an operating table, or wiring the latest computer technology, it still carries its own special power to brighten the world. A few months ago, a couple got engaged in Beckerman’s flagship store in New York. This could’ve only happened if that couple felt some sort of sentimental tie to those little glass jars. Beckerman’s entrepreneurial decision to pursue her passion has changed people’s lives. Cake and icing might not seem too special to some, but for that one couple, they’ll always carry a sweet memory.
I don’t plan to run a bakery. As of now, I’m planning to become a nurse practitioner — which, granted, is still a STEM profession, but not one viewed as being nearly as prestigious as a medical doctor. I’ve been asked why, particularly given my intelligence, I would ever want to “settle” for being “just a nurse.” However, I see the immense value in the field of nursing, and I don’t discount it for not generally being as heavily focused on the more technical and mathematical sides of health as some other medical professions. And even if I don’t pursue nursing, I realize that any other field I would consider carries its own value. The most important consideration in my choice of career shouldn’t be my academic merit, or my gender. It should be where my strongest talents and passions happen to lie.
While some say that “a woman’s place is in science,” I say that a woman’s place is wherever she truly wants to be — and so is anyone else’s.
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