When you’re young and people consider you to be a smart kid, it’s generally assumed that you’ll go into something like law or medicine. Going by this logic, I always assumed I was supposed to be a doctor. I grew up with a health teacher for a mother and I was always on the honor roll. Boom. Doctor. Future career decided. However, throughout my life, there were several obvious signs that this was a horrible plan.
The first sign came before I was even in kindergarten: I hated doctors and hospitals. And when I say, “hated,” I mean that I would rather have died than gone anywhere near a place with doctors. In third grade, when I had come down with the flu and when my fever was approaching 105 degrees, my mom suggested that we go to the emergency room. In a moment of panic and without my mother knowing, I took drastic measures to ensure that this would not happen. I drank water like I had been stranded in a desert for a month, had cold cloths on my forehead and neck, and submerged myself into a frigid, ice-filled bath. I was like Jack Dawson in Titanic, minus the romance; a shivering poster-child of determination. And I did all of it to avoid visiting a place that I hoped to work in one day.
I found out later that people can die from shock when they do something like that. But I didn't die, so it's fine.
The next sign came five years later in my eighth-grade health class. We were in the middle of a unit on first aid and were watching a video about cleaning open wounds. Yeah. Let's get one thing straight: If you get a piece of glass stuck in your arm like the girl in the video, I won't be able to help you. I will make it worse. I'll faint and then it will look like a murder scene and people walking by will think you killed me and I fought back with a piece of glass. And they'll call the cops.
I knew the video was fake, but it just made me sick. I felt my hands get sweaty, my body went cold, and my vision started to blur. You know that transition on PowerPoint called honeycomb? It's like that. Except, instead of transitioning to a new slide, you transition to lying on the ground. I slowly walked across the back of the room over to my teacher to ask if I could leave to see the nurse. She said yes, I took one step to leave, and I woke up on the floor of the classroom. I looked at my teacher’s face blurred by the bright lights behind her. Everything felt like it was moving in slow motion as she yelled, “WAS IT BECAUSE YOU SAW THE BLOOD OR HAVE YOU NOT EATEN?”
Guys, I love food and I have no sense of portion control. If I faint, the chance of it being caused by not having enough to eat are one in a million.
I mumbled back, “It was just the blood. I’m terrified of blood.” And somehow, I didn’t see that experience as a giant sign that this was not the career for me. I laughed it off and saw it as a fear that I would just have to get over. In case you’re wondering, that brilliant game plan didn't work out very well.
The biggest sign that I shouldn't be a doctor took place during my junior year of high school. I took a class on anatomy and physiology, and I loved it. Behind my fear of most things associated with medicine, I had a strong, genuine interest in health-related topics; I’ve always been fascinated by how our hearts and brains worked. However, that fascination did not transfer over to the topic of bone fractures. My teacher had prepared a powerpoint with pictures of compound fractures, stress fractures, and, my personal nightmare, open-bone fractures.
For your own safety, never google “open-bone fractures.”
The lecture started and, for the millionth time, I felt everything start to go blurry and cold. I thought, “No, you’re fine. You’re not going to faint. You’re better than that.” I was not better than that. I woke up with my biology teacher beside me, who had apparently caught my head and shoulders as I started slipping out of my chair. She called the nurse into the classroom, I went to the nurse's office, and within an hour, I was able to go on with my classes like it had never happened. But something about it stayed with me. I became anxious to go to the class. I began reading about the courses I would take with a pre-med major and slowly accepted that there was no way this was the right career for me. It took me seventeen years to admit to myself what everyone around me could have predicted a decade before.
At that point in my life, I had no clue what I wanted to do, or rather, what I could do that wouldn’t result in a life full of fear. However, at the same time that my life hinted (or screamed) that I shouldn't be a doctor, it gave me a big hint to go into communication studies.
My sophomore year, I decided to join the speech and drama team and had a great first season, making it to sectionals in dramatic duet acting. The next year, I decided to work even harder and to set my goals for state, and I qualified in the category of Oratorical Declamation, which is essentially a recitation of a speech delivered by someone else. That “someone else” happened to be Nancy Frates, the author of the speech “Meet The Mom Who Started The Ice Bucket Challenge.” I decided to email her to tell her how inspired I was by her family, and she replied the next day. She wrote the speech to tell the world about her son’s battles with ALS and as we wrote letters back and forth, I realized that we had a common goal: We both wanted to share her family’s story and to create awareness about this disease.
The week of state, I sent her an email to tell her I had qualified and she replied saying that she appreciated the good news because her son Pete was in the hospital with pneumonia. I competed knowing that winning would not only mean so much to me and to my team; it would mean so much to the Frates family. Winning did not just mean getting a medal and a title; it meant getting to tell Nancy’s story in front of two-thousand people at the awards. When I stood on that stage and heard my name called as the state champion and knew that I had fought for it for the right reasons, I knew that I wanted to chase that feeling my entire life. I wanted to tell stories, create awareness, work hard, and use my talents to do something special.
I might not be able to be a doctor who treats patients with ALS, but I can help to give those patients a voice. What I have to offer doesn’t come in the form of medicine. It comes in the form of communication. It might not sound as glamorous, but I'm okay with that.
Today, I would encourage anyone struggling with a career decision to do what they love and to not be so concerned with what will appeal the most to others. You will be the most competitive and you will give your best effort when you love what you do. Want proof? Think of your favorite teacher or your favorite doctor or your favorite coach. I’m willing to bet that they loved what they did. I still have my anxieties about a future career, but I’m reminded during every communication and media class that I'm on the right path because I’ve chosen to do what makes me happy instead of what makes me pass out.
