Should I Be A Doctor Or An Engineer?

Wanna hear the truth?

Sorry kid, You're Asking The Wrong Question.

If your life has brought you to a place where you are so constrained in your choices that they only two professions you are considering are engineering and medicine, then it might be time to pause for a few moments and ask yourself who is influencing you the most to make this decision? Is it your mother or father? Is it your whole family? 20 years down the road when you figure out your mistake, will they be there to support you? I first realized my mistake towards the end of my education and then for the second time I realized my mistake about mid-way through my life, and guess what? I was all alone. All those people that pushed me in a corner to make my career choice were nowhere to be found. They handed the responsibility for my happiness back into my hands - which is exactly where it belongs.

It is unfortunate that this world constrains bright young adults to such a degree that they have:
(a) completely suppressed their interests and passion
(b) have no choice but to please authority figures around them
(c) aren't given the honest truth about both these professions

Am I being too harsh? I don't think so.

What are your interests?

Engineering and Medicine couldn't be farther apart in what is achieved or performed on a day-to-day basis. As an engineer you build things. As a doctor you heal people. Do you remotely want to do either? What motivated you to ask the first question?

I had a friend who said her brother wants to be a doctor because he liked blood. I was taken aback at the sheer stupidity of that sentence. I knew their parents were pushing them to do medicine, so I realized they had to come up with some reason to justify taking pre-med courses. But liking blood? It was absolutely bizarre. Even hematologists don't just like blood... they get into hematology out of their interest to cure blood-related diseases.

I honestly never wanted to build anything. But I became an engineer because I was told it was a sure-shot thing. Sure-shot at job satisfaction, happiness, wealth, respect, growth, social standing. But did I really want to build anything? No. Was I remotely interested in electricity? No. Did I develop an interest towards it as my career progressed? Yes, but not enough to keep me in the field. I love to read stories of Tesla, I love to find out why we ground electrical systems (most electrical engineers will give you the wrong answer to this question), I think it's fabulous that we're living in what I call "Tesla's Age" where everything we do is inherently dependent on electricity (AC). But I am done satiating my curiosity. There is no drive inside me to follow this path any further. I will still gladly help people with the knowledge I've accumulated in the last 13 years. But there is nothing more for me here, and I think that's because I never was truly interested in electrical systems nor was I interested in building anything.

So let's answer your initial questions here.

Should I go into Medicine?

Ask yourself these questions:
Do I want to heal people? When I see someone suffering, does my heart fill with empathy? If medicine was an underpaying, under appreciated field, would I still go into it to help people? Would I travel to foreign places to help the underprivileged sick to get better? Would I live out of my pocket to develop a cure? Do I feel that my mind is so sharp that I can really help this planet and vast numbers of people by sharing my intellect and time in developing a cure?
Is there someone sick in your family that would benefit from someone like you in the medical profession?

If you answered yes to any of the questions above or any questions remotely similar, then you should go into medicine. If you don't care about people but want to enter the field for money and status, be prepared to hate your job every single day of your life.

Don't lie to yourself today. I know scores of people that concoct lies in their head to pass the interviews to get into med school. I can guarantee you those lies will end up costing you dearly in the end as you spend countless hours in the hospital doing something you hate, facing patients who do not appreciate you, potentially giving a wrong diagnosis and killing someone or battling colleagues that do not respect your work. Be Honest with yourself TODAY. Be Honest with yourself. You're going to be with one person for the entire journey of life. And every minute of every day you will be left with one person to answer to: YOU.

Should I go into Engineering?

If you've read my other posts you will know that there is no use for math in engineering. So the questions you need to ask yourself are these:

Do I like building things? Am I going to be happy collaborating with people from multiple engineering disciplines to coordinate and compromise to build something? Do I want to go to site and inspect what I built? Do I want to learn from my mistakes and build something better? Do I want to test my code to make sure it works properly during run time? Am I comfortable having my design scrutinized by multiple people who will give me feedback on my work? Am I comfortable having tough discussions with management that do not understand all the aspects of design? Am I willing to stand by  my cause to build something well? Do I feel like the world could use someone like me to build a better, more robust system?

If any of those questions lights a spark in your heart and brain, Engineering is for you.

But if you don't know what I'm talking about, then spend a few weeks participating in different activities to discover what it is you do like to do and what it is that you have skills for.

I encourage you to broaden your perspective. Scores of intelligent people are regretting their career decisions later in life because they've realized that they were lying to themselves and that journey has to come to an end. It's like judgement day: the only thing is that there's no God to judge you - just yourself. Be Truthful to yourself. No magical path or single career is easier than another. Making it in engineering is just as hard as making it in arts or finance. What will truly help you make it in your field is your interest in that field. When you follow your curiosity, you will naturally develop an acumen for it. Research your area of interest. If you enjoy writing and want to be a journalist, don't go into newspaper journalism; an industry that's coming to an end... be smart. Find out what's up and coming: Get into freelancing or television. Love the movie industry and would do anything to be a part of it? Again, do your fact finding. Be prepared to move to a city with an active movie industry. You can't fulfill your dreams of being a special effects artist if you're stuck in Dayton. Move to Hollywood.

If you fake your interest today, you're going to have to fake it tomorrow and the day after, and the day after that, for years and years. It's hard to stand up to your parents... it might even be impossible. But at the very least, be honest with yourself. If you're forced into engineering school, then keep your eyes open to other interests and opportunities and keep toying with the idea of transitioning into your fields of interest. You might not believe this now, but your parents are going to lose interest in you after a couple of years. So you may as well do something you love for the rest of your life.

Think about it.