“What do you want to be when you grow up?” is the quintessential question of every family gathering. For the longest time, I always had the same answer: a doctor. However, I could never really give a proper reason why.
I have this one memory of an old conversation I had with my dad, and at times I feel unsure of whether or not I made it up.
“Pa, wala akong sagot (Father, I don’t have an answer),” I said, ashamed. “Sabihin mo na lang muna, doktor (For now, say you want to be a doctor),” he replied. At that time in my life, uncertainty seemed to be an unacceptable. “I don’t know yet” didn’t seem to cut it.
Record scratch. Freeze frame. This was the beginning of my adolescent-life crisis.
It would have been less confusing if I could isolate the influence from my parents, who had assumed the job of buying me medical-related toys to play with and telling me I looked like a doctor every time I tried on a white jacket or a pair of glasses. However, I was also developing my own interest in science, spending my free time reading encyclopedias. I wasn’t particularly good at science, nor was I the kid that had entire collections of books about animals or space, but it made me wonder if the budding desire to become a doctor was a result of my parents’ encouragement or rather, my own.
During college applications, I was too bothered by the anxiety of needing to pass into a college, so I settled into a pre-med course that would give me all the units I’d need for medical school. Throughout the first few years of college, I spent my time rediscovering art, which I undoubtedly loved the most. I invested time writing stories, making music, visiting museums, and watching gigs. It was then that I felt forced to put an end to my ambiguous position, and eventually teetered on a place where I could potentially lose my pre-med course. The desperation that came with my failure answered all my questions, so I scrambled to my feet and hit the ground running.
For the first time ever, three years into undergraduate science, I felt an undeniable passion to pursue medicine. I reconciled it with my love for art by deciding to become a doctor and to develop programs for science communication in the future.
This wasn’t meant to inspire people to test their desire for their course by consistently failing, but rather, it meant to say this: It’s all right to take your time in figuring out who you want to be in the future. It’s hard not to feel guilty when you see people around you who already have a straight-track mind towards where they want to be, but it’s easy to remember that you don’t have to be or think like someone else. College doesn’t have to be the place where you have it all together, but it can be the place where you explore all the things you might want to be. The time that you spend on your journey of discovery will be worth it.
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