New Paramedic and Aspiring Doctor

I wrote in my last entry that I hadn't thought about medicine over my vacation. That isnt quite true.

While becoming a paramedic has dominated my thoughts these past few months, I often find myself looking back on it all- angry that I've let the greater goal slip from consciousness. I still want to go to medical school, to take my education further and move onward. Paramedicine is seductively interesting, though, and snares me each day with its excitement, newness, and promise of more. There remains a fantastic depth to this work that I am far from understanding, and yet the sum of it all is assumed - by my other mind - to be shallow at it's end. With so much new to me, I am supposed to prepare for the point at which it will no longer suffice.

I've found it incredibly difficult to put that effort forward, with each daily experience tingling with challenge and intrigue. I love the work. I learn something new every day, meet different people and experience scenes that I can barely translate to type. How could this ever come up short?

It will, though. I am tenacious enough for this kind of knowledge, eager enough about medicine that I can see myself stretching my capabilities out to their limits. I will continue to read, explore, and learn. I will become better, more experienced, more adept. At some point, I think, there will come a time when I want more. More medicine, more knowledge, more freedom, more money, more everything. Despite all of my excitement about paramedicine, that feeling is still there. Nagging.

Nothing is easy, though. I need to take a full time position at work, so that I can get health coverage and a regular paycheck. At the same time, I still have to take a year each of Chemistry and Organic Chemistry so that I can prepare for the MCATs and eventually apply to school. The two do not necessarily jive well. I am last on the seniority list at work, relegated to the last - least desirable - shift at work, which may or may not coincide with the lecture and lab classes I need to schedule. Fees at the college approach $1500 per 4-credit class, of which I need to take 2 per semester in order to finish within a reasonable time. Money is tight, time is worse. ...And all along, the siren song of EMS maintains it's relentless tug. Even after all of that: the idea of medical school scares the shit out of me.

And yet I remain firm. This needs to get done. I will put my head down, work my shifts, learn my lessons. Stay sharp and keep my eye focused on where I am headed.