Without Wax

"So what are your plans?"

This seems to be the question I've been getting lately, along with, "Where are you going to school?" Although they see like pretty straight forward questions, the answers are anything but. At this exact moment, I'm not in classes [although I will be in a few weeks at good ole ICC]. But I'm looking into programs at other schools for this fall.

As for my plans, well let's just say plans change, especially when you're me.

I've wanted to be a doctor for as long as I can remember. A few years ago, I was at my aunt and uncle's house and started reading a book my aunt had called "Baby ER." After reading that, all I wanted to do was be a Neonatologist. It was a perfect fit, I knew I wanted to work in an intensive care unit and I absolutely love babies. A lot of people commented saying it would be so hard to see babies that small, that sick, and to see them die. But I had a different mindset. I knew that those would be hard, but saving just one baby would make it all worth it. So Neonatologist it was. I was accepted into Saint Louis University with a major in Biology/Pre-Medicine and I started shadowing a few different types of physicians just to make sure I liked the hopsital environment. Shadowing the physicians confirmed some of what I already knew, I wanted to work with kids and stay away from adults [as patients] at all costs, but I also found a new love in the form of the Pediatric Intesive Care Unit. This made me want to work harder and do my best so that I could finally be doing what I loved.

Well, as it seems to always be with me, things didn't pan out quite how I'd hoped. I loved SLU, don't get me wrong, but ever since the day I unpacked freshman year, things just weren't clicking. I had a great group of friends who I love dearly, was pretty involved in a great organization on campus, and loved the SLU community, but I still looked forward to going home and dreaded going back when the weekend was up. To this day, I don't know why I felt like that. I think it may have been a combination of missing family birthdays/get togethers, being away from friends that had all been through an experience that bonded us in a way that no one else understood, and just plain homesickness. Whatever it was, it disappeared as soon as I packed up my room junior year. Now that I was home, all I wanted was to go back to SLU.

Now that I've been home for a little over a year, I've had a lot of time to think about what I want to do with my life, and I'm pretty sure I want to be Super Woman, because that's the only way I'm going to be able to accomplish all of this. My first love is and always will be medicine and ultimately I think I will end up doing something in healthcare. What that will be, I'm still not sure. I've tossed around the options of being an Athletic Trainer or Physical Therapist quite a bit lately and have been looking into some schools with those programs. Of course, SLU has fantastic PT and AT programs so I may very well end up there again. Medical school has still been on my mind as well, and although it would take more time for me to get there now, I'm more than ready to accept it as a challenge and do whatever it takes to get there.