According to CNN, more and more people are making a career change to medicine later in life. I’m one of them. And although I’m only 36---which is smack dab in the middle on the older student age range – I still feel a little out of my element. What follows is a top 5 list of what it’s like to be in medical school a little older in life.
#5: You’re in age purgatory.
Like I said, I’m 36. Still fairly young by society’s standards. I’m not partying every night like I was in my 20s, but I’m still young enough to be found drinking at the bar. But for medical school, 36 is like 36 was in the stone age. Freaking old.
I feel this on a daily basis. During my first and second years, I’d glance around the lecture hall and see reflections of 20-something faces, soft, round, and line-free. Which can be terribly confusing by the way. Because looking at people 10 years junior on a daily basis can stimulate deceptive neurological age pathways in the brain that make YOU believe that you’re actually in your 20s too. Ever hear of the mirror pathways in the brain? The ones where you reflect in your expression someone else’s reflection? Well, that’s what it’s like to be older amongst a bunch of youngins. It makes you think that you look young, when in fact you don’t.
Which brings me to the material of the real mirror – the one I look upon on a daily basis. My real reflection tells me I look pretty damn good for my age. I’m still lean with just a few more eye wrinkles. I maybe look 32/33. Still damn old for medical school.
Where does that lead me? In a state of in-betweenism. In between a previous world of expensive restaurants, interesting adult conversations, life enrichment and the current world of ketchup condiments for your potato, youth colloquialisms, and deep insecurities about grades and studying. According to Erik Erikson, 20th century philosopher who came up with the stages of psychosocial development, my age puts me in the middle adulthood stage of life. But my environment puts me in the young adulthood one. Each age group struggles with different aspects of ego development. I’m in age purgatory.
#4: Who you were before seems totally lost.
On a daily basis, I ask why? Why am I torturing myself and my husband going back to medical school – laboring through the material, exams, boards, cost? I was doing just fine in my previous career. However, the question of why put me here in the first place. I asked why too much in my previous career to the point of a major life upheaval. Now I’m in the land of the lost. (For the majority of you who didn’t grow up in the 80s to watch that show, it was about a group of modern day homo sapiens who got stuck in the dinosaur age. Totally lost.)
But my world is not fictional. It is, though, confusing. Instead of enjoying good literature, going out to shows, and drinking at dinner parties, I’m laboring over various pathologies and working as an officer for student clubs.
And then there’s the friend element. Do you know how difficult it is to explain the trajectory of medical school? My husband doesn’t even get it. Explaining this concept to friends – friends who graciously try to understand and sympathize with my scenario – halts conversations into blank stares. It’s downright boring. My husband is a CPA, and medical jargon is just one notch above tax jargon on the boring scale.
So I juggle my worlds. I see my old friends on the weekends, and leave medicine behind. During the week, I engage in medical speak with my current medical school friends, talk about their struggling relationships, where we’re going to apply for residency, and get my nerves tangled up in things like grades, clubs, future endeavors.
In the process, I’ve lost the old me. It’s impossible to be regained. Right now I just feel like a bag of cerebral worms in an older body with life experience. Which in medical school just means you’re past your prime.
#3. Money becomes scarce again.
Summer before starting medical school, my husband and I bought a house in the Berkeley, California, area. So along with going into debt $40K-plus a year in medical school, we decided to take out a $500K-plus loan from the bank. And with just my husband now employed, we were quivering with debt fear.
Turns out we float pretty well. During that first year, we really watched our pennies, but we loosened up quite a bit after that. Or I should say, my husband loosened up. He kept up his $100 martini lunches, while I kept to a strict Clif-bar-and-water one.
Even though I worked all those years before med school, there’s something us older medical students deal with on a daily basis: guilt. Our spouses, even though they won’t say it, come to resent us a little. Here I am living out my life dream and you, husband, have to work for it. No way. I’ll deny myself other things to show you how much it means to me. Like eating out, going out, having any kind of fun necessary. That’s the gut-wrenching, self-deprecating guilt we’re talking about here. It’s downright masochistic.
However, even if the guilt factor didn’t play a role, there’s the fact that you’re going to school with other broke-as-a-joke comrades, who also know how to survive on ketchup packets and Clif bars. And every dinner party is pot-luck style. You bring the bean salad, I’ll bring the vinegary wine.
Then there’s the other half of friends, the pre-med school ones. They’re still spending money in earnest – on expensive dinners, good plays, quality booze. And when you come around asking for the 2-star instead of 4-star restaurant, your friends begin to resent you.
What happens when we graduate? When we become doctors? I get paid half what I would in my other job, get a huge mound of student loans, and pay annually into malpractice insurance. Whoever said medical school is about the money?
#2: Your preceptors will be confused by you.
The same thing is on the mind of your instructors, preceptors, mentors. How old is she really? Cause she sure as hell acts like a medical student – unsure and unknowledgeable. It’s true. I no longer carry the certainty I did in the past. In fact, I feel pretty inadequate. How do I use this speculum? Sorry I just touched you with my super icy hands. No, I have no idea what the risk factors for placenta previa are.
Do I tell my preceptors that I used to work? That I am in fact 36? Let ‘em know that hey man, I got life experience. I’ve traveled. I’ve sweated. I’ve received paychecks in the past. I’m whole! I so desperately want to connect with my preceptors in this way – mano a mano. During my family practice rotation, I even out-aged my preceptor. She and I connected when she bluntly asked, “How old are you anyway?” She actually started talking to me differently once I told her. Almost like a real person, connecting on politics and life events.
For the most part, I keep my mouth shut and try not to act stupid. Challenge failed. I act like an idiot most of the time. My past is completely irrelevant to preceptors. I guess that’s for the best, because in the end, I want to be treated like a medical student. But I also want to be treated like a whole person too.
#1: You’ll grow apart from your husband.
It’s inevitable. You’ll be sitting across from your husband at the dinner table with flat conversation, maybe even nothing to say at all. ‘Cause face it, you’ve transformed into a somewhat different person. This really doesn’t have anything to do with age. It has everything to do with being in medical school.
Medical students become saturated in medical material that completely re-compartmentalizes old brain space to make room for this new information. Meaning that the old information, the information you used to connect about with your husband, is gone. In its place is that dry, boring stuff I talked about before. The stuff no one wants to hear unless you’re a medical student. Yeah sure my husband is a CPA, but he doesn’t talk about that stuff with me. It’s boring! Plus he’s a whole person, remember? With other interesting activities and thoughts to engage in. But not me. My thoughts are consumed by medicine. it’s impossible for me to keep my flap shut about the subject. I’m not a whole person anymore, so it’s almost all I’ve got up my conversation sleeve these days.
“Did you read the news today?” is a common question from my husband. “Have you followed so and so?” Uhh, no. I did learn about the importance of the gallbladder, though. Wanna hear? No. He doesn’t. Ohh. Then tell me about that news thing, as I sit there dumbfounded searching my old brain compartments for the location of the Balkans.
And so you and your mate grow apart. Before medical school, this was my biggest fear. While contested, many studies pit divorce rates for medical students and doctors about 10-20% higher than the average population. Luckily my husband and I fit into the category of the percentage who stay together. Even though he’s essentially putting me through medical school – even though it’s “our money,” let’s get real, it’s really his working that keeps me afloat – he supports me emotionally too. I can’t talk at length about the upcoming presidential campaign like I used to, but at least I’ve learned to shut my trap about medicine and discuss the greater world around me. That’s the only way to keep it going, friends.
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