When I Grow Up

I want to be a doctor when I grow up.

I didn’t used to think I wanted to be a doctor. I thought the opposite. It was all gore and obsession with success and constant stress. It never even crossed my mind, except on its way out. I wanted to do biological research because I did well on tests and thought I could be good at it.

Then I decided that I wanted my life to be about helping people in meaningful ways, spiritually and otherwise. And I didn’t want a degree and career track that weren’t related to this. Of course biological researchers can help people too, but if I was going to put in all the years of school I wanted them to play into my future aspirations more than just tangentially.

I decided that I wanted to live overseas, but I’m holding that with an open hand. Nonetheless, if that was in the plans then suddenly a new track made sense: Medical missions.

All of a sudden it went from “Oh, I’m one of the few biology majors not thinking about med school” to “Well, I’m keeping that open as an option but not stressing about it” to “Heck, I might as well take the MCAT just to see how it goes” to purchasing an 1100 page MCAT study guide and 400 flash cards and starting studying three months in advance.

The more I sit down and think about who I want to be in 15 years, the more I realize that I want to be involved in medicine. But it’s not that clean cut. There are a ton of factors besides ignorance that made me hesitate for so long and that still make me uneasy. Here are the big ones, not in order of importance:

1) The fight for medical school admission – the stress and competition and résumé-building and worry over GPA and quality of extracurriculars and MCAT scores.

2) The torture of medical school – long hours studying, hard tests, the persistent competition, lacking time to pursue other areas of life like hobbies or wife-getting.

3) The length of medical school – four years of school and three years of residency, piling up debt and fatigue the whole way. I probably wouldn’t be finished and debt-free until I was at least 30.

4) The patient interactions – having to listen to a pestering, ignorant patient begging for unnecessary attention when I’m at the end of a ten hour shift. I don’t know if I enjoy people enough to treat patients well when they don’t deserve to be treated well.

5) The gore – even though I definitely wouldn’t become an emergency room surgeon, there would be times when I would be looking at mutilated insides. I haven’t been exposed to much gore and while I don’t get nauseous from the sight/thought of gore, I don’t know if I have a strong enough constitution to deal with a ruined, dying person and pieces in the wrong places.

6) The nakedness – routinely seeing and touching naked people. I can’t begin to get comfortable with the idea of this. And while it sounds trite, this is a nagging fear.

And the weight of all of these factors makes me wonder if I wouldn’t be better suited doing research or construction and helping people in my small way. Maybe medicine is meant for people with more resolve and vigor.

But a few days ago I got to go to the hospital where my aunt works and I got to see what primary care looks like from the side of the medical professionals for the first time. There wasn’t any flashy gore or nudity to test my stomach, but it was a chance to see what being in medicine is about. And I loved it.

I won’t share any details because I’m scared of HIPAA and I don’t know its boundaries, but I loved the whole experience. I loved trying to understand what was wrong with hurting people and finding out how to fix their problems. I loved the phone calls and the teamwork and informed opinions working together. I loved hearing that contrary to what I read, no one was making decisions based on money. I loved medicine.

I don’t know if that emotion is realistic, or enough to surmount six huge arguments against med school. But something vigorous inside of me wants to help people how doctors help people. I want to help poor people and dying people and sick children in third world countries. I want to fix broken bodies and give hope.

This is so dramatic.

But on some level, I think dreams should be.

Anyway.
I want to be a doctor when I grow up.

Why I Hate Facebook Likes

Things have gotten out of control with Facebook Likes lately.

 

Back in the day, Likes were a way to let someone know you read and appreciated their post or thought their picture was funny without having to write out a comment which would notify all other commenters and get the poster excited only to find that your comment was “LOL”. Brilliant.

 

 

It was a way to say “hey this was funny or cool or remarkable and I connected with it in some way.” And most importantly, it wasn’t that common. Posts would circulate that only got like 2 Likes but they were still pretty good posts. And people would post profile pictures that didn’t get any Likes at all. Funny, creative profile pictures, but no Likes. Likes were exciting. Likes were flirty.

 

If you don’t believe me, go look through any of your friends’ profile pictures and get back into 2011 or earlier. This will work unless you picked a really popular friend. Pick like an average friend. Even remarkable pictures have like two or three Likes. What the heck. Were we all just unlovable?

 

Now flash back to the end of 2012. Scroll through your newsfeed. If you find a post with no Likes, the poster is probably either old or making an inside joke that hasn’t been noticed by the inner circle yet.

 

 

Or the post is 6 seconds old. Boom. Now it’s got a Like.

 

Everyone gets Likes. Even the things that don’t really deserve Likes get Likes. And this inflation has carried right on over so that an average post with a bit of thought had better clear 8 Likes. And if you posted a Bible verse and got less than 10 Likes, you must have accidentally mis-transcribed some blasphemy.

 

 

And on the upper end, remarkable posts and pictures will clear 40 or 50 on a regular basis. 50 Likes. That’s unheard of. And the really amazing posts and pictures can shoot up past 100 Likes. We’ve all seen it. Ridiculous. That’s like a standing ovation in a crowded room full of everyone you like.

 

Okay and here’s the thing. This Like inflation is just a fact. It just happens. There were probably two main causes:

1) People learned that if you Like other things, people will Like your things.

2) It became friendly and not weird to Like posts by people you don’t know that well. Instant harvesting territory expansion.

 

But while this inflation is just a fact, the unfortunate problem is that humans love statistics and numbers. News, Sports, Shopping, Weather, Academics. Numbers are easy to obtain and use.

 

And here’s the bottom line: Numbers are easy to compare.

 

And that’s where friendly back-scratching Likes turn into monsters. Even people who aren’t that competitive get to see their Likes and everyone else’s Likes and they notice these things. Everyone notices Likes. They get an encouraging red number asserting their value on the top bar of their screen.

 

 

And no matter how quietly it comes in, everyone hears that little voice that goes, “Man, everyone liked that picture of yours.” Or, “Geez. That guy has way more popular statuses than you.”

 

And maybe for some people it doesn’t matter that much. They shrug off the comparison. But for competitive people like me, it can be immobilizing. Why didn’t people like that comment? That was funny.

 

I don’t think there will be a critical point where we get bored of Likes and they tail off. We might plateau, but it’s going to be at more Likes/post than 0.7.

 

And I think that’s what really gets me -- that before an average status and a dumb status both got between 0 and 3 Likes. But now the average one gets 13 and the dumb one gets 2. You know when your joke wasn’t funny.

 

I don’t want that information. But I think I just need a thicker skin.

 

 

**

 

 

I have more to say because I’m traveling and when I travel I feel vulnerable and dramatic and profound. But the other things I want to say are all about me and sometimes you just want to read a blog post about Facebook Likes. If this is you, stop here. Or three sentences ago.

 

I’m on the Megabus and it’s my first time. I’m on the top level in the front row which means that I can pretend that I’m driving and also if I stretch my arms up it feels like I can just about touch overpasses, a thrill I should exhaust now because I’m headed to the land of rural flatness, Nebraska.

 

It’s hard to say good-bye properly and it’s hard to realize how much I’ll miss people even just for two and a half weeks while we’re still together. Then I get on the Metra and listen to The City Harmonic and realize that I like my friends a lot while the strings sound more profound than they ever do on Spotify in my room when I’m procrastinating writing a paper.

 

I want to write about a bunch of my friends’ likable characteristics that I’ve never mentioned to them but I feel like I would miss more than I remember.

 

I want to write about girls and flirting and how sometimes I think I just live for positive attention and how I’m tired of acting how I would hate for other people to act.. but I don’t want to be that vulnerable.

 

I want to write about how much I want to be disciplined but how by the end of every quarter I always end up sleeping in too late and eating less healthy and wasting time on the internet but I’m in too positive of a mood right now to dredge that cycle up. I might come back to that.

 

This last quarter was hands down the best quarter of college I’ve had to date. I feel like I came into college with big expectations that were decidedly not met right at first and even as I settled more into place I was self-conscious and stressed and struggling to find my groove. By spring quarter of last year I feel like I broke even and was finally living the socially connected college life I had expected. This year blew those expectations out of the water.

 

I have more friends now than I’ve ever had in my life. Incredible, loving, hilarious people. I don’t know what to do with this wealth.

 

I started taking pictures this quarter. I told myself I would take 2 a day, even if that meant that I forgot all day and ended up taking 2 pictures of Danny sleeping before going to bed. It worked great. I took over a thousand pictures this quarter, almost 800 of which made it onto Facebook. That’s over 250 pics a month. That’s information density.

 

I took these pictures so I could remember things (you might recall my nostalgic post on memories) and I think it’s worked great. I’m going to remember this quarter better than any other period of my life, as long as Facebook doesn’t crash and my harddrive doesn’t get wiped.

 

And it’s become sort of routine now. At first people got camera shy when I would pop out the camera at dinners but now all I have to do is shout “Mems!” and the group braces themselves for hideous candids to be posted later that night. And since I tote my rugged, battered Sony point-n-shoot in my pocket everywhere I go, I’ve gotten used to popping it out at almost every social event.

 

I don’t remember to take 2 pictures every day, or at every event. Lately I’ve settled into a less frequent routine that probably won’t continue to yield 250 pictures a month, but it’s consistent. Definitely the most successful habit I’ve developed this quarter.

 

That’s enough about mems.

 

I’ve been less stressed this quarter. Sorry that I’m using the word “I” a lot in this post. Usually I try to tell stories, but this is my post-quarter, post-blog-post-drought processing.

 

I used to worry a lot about tests and assignments and making sure I had things done on time. I have a little less work now because my classes are getting harder but giving less homework. But mostly I’ve learned to work on this week’s assignments without worrying about the paper in three weeks. It used to hang over me like a palpable cloud. It’s not as strong anymore. I don’t know how this came about.

 

This mindset broke down a bit over finals week. I got pretty stressed about my two finals, which I didn’t study enough for. But I never study enough for tests. In retrospect I don’t know why I was so stressed. Note to future Nolan: cool your jets during finals.

 

In general, stress has been way lower than ever before and I don’t know why but I hope it stays.

 

That’s enough about stress.

 

This quarter has been pretty spiritually dry. And it’s weird because that’s in the midst of this being the most fun and least stressful and the most generally successful quarter I’ve had. Does that suggest that spiritual discipline and fun are mutually exclusive? I hope not.

 

I haven’t read my Bible much. I don’t have time for it, between homework and music and uploading pictures to Facebook. I haven’t spent much quality time with God.

 

I don’t expect every episode of my life to be spiritually exceptional. But this quarter could have been a lot better and it’s definitely my fault. I get hung up on Jesus saying things like, “Live righteously if you want to enter the Kingdom.” And then I let my confusion be an excuse to avoid using time on God that I could be using to mix beats or stalk friends on Facebook.

 

I don’t want that to be my life, but I don’t know what my motivations are for desiring change. Do I want to be spiritually better so that I can live consistently with my beliefs or so that I can tell people I am spiritually better?

 

Why do I do the things I do? Or want the things I want?

 

That’s profound.

 

I want to know God better, but my priorities are in the way.

 

I’ll end on that note.