October of 2004 I find myself walking into the UW’s ethnic cultural center for a packed orientation/seminar about being pre-med. The pre-med advisor — who I never actually met in my 5 year college adventure — stands at ease in front of the eager, studious bunch. He clicks once to start his powerpoint presentation, scans the bursting room, and asks rhetorically, “why do you want to be a doctor?” He continues quickly, “you’ll be asked that in your interviews, and, see… DO NOT be the guy who reads the script: I like science and I want to help people. I’d tell him, ‘go work as a receptionist at the pacific science center.’”
So for years afterwards, I take my classes, volunteer my time, lab the lab-work, save the world in Africa, and try to experience — in college — the college experience. It’s kind of sad that it’s possible to sum it up like that. But all the while — as I take pause between o-chem studying, as I listen to talks at my christian fellowship, as I update my incoherent (or well-rounded, depending on your lack of honesty) resume — I’m desperately snatching for a better answer to that cursed interview question. No, Dale, don’t talk about your science classes. Don’t say you like to help people. That’s lame, dude. Say something like you love health policy and rural medicine is your passion… those are home-runs. Say your dream is to find a cure for mad cow disease, who knows. Just ANYTHING besides a cookie-cutter, naive excuse for a life-goal.
But you, the reader, are probably shaking your head. It shouldn’t be that hard to fill in the blank after “want to be a doctor because…” Yet I’m now realizing that the whole hike through pre-med-valley was not designed for finding a better answer to “Why Medicine?” The pre-med ride was about finding sincerity. Because in my opinion, there are a lot of “good” motivations for pursuing medicine that are close descendants of that cliche, but accurate, template.
Jack Spicer, a poet from San Francisco, writes that all poets are just “patiently telling the same story, writing the same poem, gaining and losing something with each transformation—but, of course, never really losing anything.” A lot of us pre-med folk go into the interview and spew out a re-phrasing of the the “I like science and want to help people” poem, and the panel doesn’t care if you can rhyme single-payer-plan with CT-scan (although it counts for something). They want to know if I am just bullshitting when I, with different words, say what I swore I’d never say:
yes. fine. Science is cool. Helping people is cool 
AH. THE RELIEF… now, interview panel, please let me elaborate — about how I experienced the utility of epidemiology in East Africa, about how America’s going to need a Normandy-scale invasion of new primary care docs to treat baby-boomers and their wii-is-my-only-exercise children, about how a sloppy courtship with engineering taught me I NEED to work with people more than numbers in the future, about the awesome people at Country Doc Homeless Teen Clinic.
So I’m grateful that the pre-med advisor gave me that stern warning when I was a freshman. Yet I wish I had understood at the time what he meant: be unique, but more importantly think it out, live it out, and be sincere. To those of you who are pre-med: think it out, live it out, and be sincere … Easier said than done. But if it’s done, than it’s easily said with sincerity That’s cute, huh.
On a related note, I was applying to medical schools simultaneously with the presidential election getting in full, mud-slinging swing. Each candidate would often say what the other guy (guy is gender-neutral in this case) said, albeit with party-rhetoric attached. Being a maverick and being an agent of change are really getting at the same point. Putting country first and “Yes we can…” both basically say that unity is strength. So, not to diminish the content of their speeches, but look, earnestness is what a lot of people want to hear. And it’s what people will expect from their doctor after the 23095023 years it takes me to become one.
