At some point, I think every student who gets into Hopkins encounters questions along the lines of:
“So, you’re going to be a doctor?”
“Don’t they have a good med school?”
“Didn’t Dr. House go there?”
Hopkins’ reputation precedes itself. For most people, the name of our institution conjures images of sleek research facilities and cutting-edge clinical trials. At the start of my freshman year, I experienced some degree of (mostly self-imposed) pressure to go into medicine; it seemed sensible given the resources available. Being surrounded by droves of peers already committed to medicine only heightened this feeling. Looking back from the position I’m in now, it’s kind of funny to recall the little interest I had in medicine at the time. In fact, most careers were of little interest to me. Beyond ill-defined interests in international studies, history, literature, cognitive science and statistics, I was at a loss for what I wanted my future to look like. The thought of choosing a long-term vocation felt daunting.
When I signed up for my first classes, I chose to procrastinate on any specific career plans — at least for the time being. I simply picked whatever classes sounded (sufficiently) interesting. My first-semester schedule was a confused mix of courses in math, English, chemistry, psychology and cognitive science. I eventually settled on a double-major in cellular and molecular neuroscience and English. I liked wet lab research and thought about a Ph.D. in molecular neuroscience, but a career in science writing also appealed to me because I enjoyed writing for The News-Letter. Yet, something about these choices still didn’t quite sit right with me.
Approaching the halfway point of college, I was indecisive again.
At the end of sophomore year, I did a spring break service trip with Habitat for Humanity in rural West Virginia. My week in the town of Huntington was amazing. The people I worked with were down-to-earth and the work felt meaningful. Yet sometimes, subtle glimpses of unspoken tragedy cut through the sunny aura of an otherwise carefree week. Used needles could be seen strewn across the floors of the abandoned homes we cleaned and renovated. In hushed tones, local volunteers would broach the topic of an overdose that just happened across the street. These harrowing personal accounts of the opioid epidemic left a deep impression on me.
Coincidentally, I did a National Institutes of Health summer internship at the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) in Baltimore shortly after. Research at NIDA presented a different view of human pain than the one I witnessed in Huntington. Our lab investigated neural pathways involved in addiction by analyzing brain images from rats exposed to cocaine. As I continued working there during subsequent semesters, I began to draw connections between my time in Huntington and work at NIDA.
Through these experiences, I’d encountered two views of addiction. In West Virginia, I witnessed its human and social costs. At NIDA, through sophisticated arrays of confocal brain images and meticulous experiments, we studied addiction as a mechanistic pathology. Addiction was an ailment revealing the patient as a double-sided entity — one whose being is defined both by that of a person and that of a body. My studies in English and neuroscience paralleled each other in an analogous way. Literature studied human experience through the “data” of words, syntactic structures and narrative constructions within a social context; neuroscience studied human experience through “stories” about the structure and function of the nervous system.
I began to develop an interest in medicine, which I felt involved the marriage of two kinds of understanding — one that viewed people as human beings with rich interior lives and another that viewed people as intricate biological systems. The most compelling thing about medicine to me was its end-goal: to relieve suffering, which made my interest in understanding people both humanistically and scientifically all the more meaningful. As I mulled over these thoughts, I started seeking out clinical volunteering and shadowing opportunities. I applied to med school and am now almost through my third year.
Until my junior year, I’d viewed a career in medicine with a critical eye given Hopkins’ reputation and unspoken peer pressure. I didn’t want to force myself into it. In my English seminars, my professors stressed the importance of focusing on what the text is actually saying by evaluating concrete evidence rather than formulating a premature judgment or theory about what it’s saying and seeking evidence to confirm that. In the same way, I felt that I couldn’t just assume that I was supposed to do medicine and go through the motions of doing the “right” premed things, all while deluding myself into enjoying it to placate that initial belief. Yet somehow, through exploring my personal interests and values through classes and clubs — gathering concrete evidence from meaningful experiences — I was led to it all the same.
Premed at Hopkins was challenging, and in some ways, even more challenging than med school so far! Balancing curricular and extracurricular activities with my personal life was hard, and I made some sacrifices to make up two years of being indecisive about my career. But I don’t regret that I took my time to be intentional about my future. In fact, I can’t bring myself to regret my choice because ultimately, I tried my best in making an informed decision.
I’ll also never know the counterfactual. Would I have been even happier doing something else? It’s possible. Sometimes I wonder what life would have been like working at a publishing house. But I could have also been less happy doing something else and regretted never pursuing medicine; I’ll never know. For now, I’m beyond grateful for my decision.
Of course, life isn’t perfect; overnight shifts can be tough and our role as students can be limited (rightfully so) and less exciting at times. However, zeal, like any other feeling, waxes and wanes by nature. At the very least, I’ll always hold medicine as a deeply meaningful pursuit and that’s what makes it most worth pursuing. I’m glad my dazed freshman self initially chose against hastily anchoring himself to a career. That’s one kind of procrastination I can get behind.
Jae Choi graduated from Hopkins in 2021 with degrees in Neuroscience and English. He is a medical student at UT Southwestern Medical Center. In the column that Choi created as a Hopkins student, he enjoyed making sense of extended stays at home during the pandemic and finding significance in everyday activities.
