Have you ever been driving on the freeway, distracted by a conversation or your new favorite song blasting through your speakers? You think you`re going the right way until you suddenly notice the green sign that sped past you on the right was indicating an exit your exit. You suddenly experience a sinking feeling as you realize you missed your exit, and grapple with the fact that it`s going to be hard to get to where you were originally supposed to be.
That is how I felt when I faced my most difficult academic problem. I`d wanted to go into the medical field since I was about 3 years old. But during my sophomore year of high school, I began to read articles about how badly Christians were treated for their faith in other countries, often receiving long prison sentences simply because of what they believed. I wanted to change that, and soon wanted to become an attorney with a focus on international law. And, if I`m completely honest, the coursework required to go into medicine intimidated me. So law it was.
I loved my college Political Science classes (my major), which only encouraged my pursuit of becoming an attorney. Every once in a while, I realized I still loved the medical field and the idea of a vocation within it, but I was now on a different path one I enjoyed and had planned out. But then everything changed December 2016, a year and a half into college. I witnessed someone have a seizure.
At first, I didn`t know what was happening. When I was finally told what was going on, I realized I had no idea what to do. My roommate, a Nursing major, instructed me how to assist her in helping the man who was having the seizure, and thankfully he would be okay. But that incident awoke within me something that has always been there: a desire to help people with their medical conditions.
That experience created the greatest academic problem I`ve had, hurling me into the strongest feeling of indecision I can remember ever experiencing. I was entirely torn between law and medicine. I felt like I`d missed my one and only exit on the free way the exit to the medical field. Should I have gone into medicine at the very start of college? Wasn`t it too late to change my academic focus?
Two of my life goals are to help people and show Christ`s love to others, and both vocations would allow me to do that. Should I stick with law, which seemed to come easy to me, but would lead me to a career I realized was my second choice? Or should I completely change my focus and work toward medicine with classes that required more work on my part but led me to the career I realized I`d loved all along?
I thought about it, prayed about it, talked to my roommate and a science professor, asked my parents for advice, and discussed it with my extended family over Christmas break. After much deliberation, I decided to go into medicine.
Today I am so excited to say I`m going to be a Physician Assistant (PA). Yes, it`s going to take a lot of work, time, dedication, and studying, but I can and will do it with the Lord`s help. I can`t wait to fuse together my two areas of study (Poli Sci with critical thinking, and medicine with knowledge of how to help treat people`s medical conditions) to be the best PA I can be.
