I have spent the past 5 years of my life, chained by expectations. I needed to figure out what I wanted as a career, what field I was interested in, where I’d go to college. As I was growing up, I was not exposed to very many career options and thus my knowledge of the future was very limited. I had an older cousin who was studying to be a doctor plus two parents and countless relatives who were in the technology field. For me, I had no interest in technology but I liked the idea of helping people so I latched onto the possibility of becoming a doctor. I took AP biology because doctors should like biology and looked at colleges that could help me with that goal, which led me to consider Hopkins (which I eventually loved despite its pre-med reputation, hence why I’m here).
At Hopkins, I came in declaring molecular and cellular biology as my major because I figured I should like biology if I was going to be pre-med. I took courses in hard sciences, health, and medicine as well as got clinical experience. I convinced myself that that was what I wanted to do with my future and that everything I was doing was helping me get there. I was passionate about helping people in regards to their health so being a doctor was the natural thing to do.
But at the end of freshmen year, I reevaluated my life and realized that I wasn’t super crazy about biology, and the lab research credit requirement for the major was also putting me off. I knew Hopkins had a great public health program and that public health had a clinical aspect and also helped people through a health lens. I was really intrigued by the idea of public health and switched my major.
In sophomore year, I started to take public health classes and started to fall in love with the mission of public health once I started getting more and more exposed to it. I was becoming more disillusioned with medicine and starting to reconsider whether or not I wanted to dedicate another eight years of my life to medical school and residency; not to mention the monetary commitment as well as the incredible stress that medical school inflicts. I wasn’t so sure anymore that I wanted to sacrifice so much for medicine when there was another field that was less soul-sucking and that I loved more.
As I’m wrapping up my sophomore year, I am becoming more convinced that I will be dropping my pre-med label and focusing on public health. I have also become more honest with myself. Why do I need to delude myself and pretend that biology is my favorite science when I’m no longer shackled by the expectations of medicine? With this epiphany, I have come to realize that I really like statistics and chemistry (yes, even organic chemistry) and working in environmental health. These were things that I had known all along but buried deep within and ignored because they did not fit the idea of medicine. It felt like a massive weight had been lifted from me when I shed myself of the shackles of medicine and expectations. I may be just a statistic, one of the large percentage of people at Hopkins who drops pre-med, but I am more than just a number; I am a person who has found my passion.