In Which the Call is heeded mainly by others

I had two conversations last week, randomly, about the same thing, which I shall recount in reverse order (because when I wrote this I got totally carried away after explaining the first one and it's frankly easier to go back and put in what was meant to be my second point first).

So, secondly, on Friday we had our PBL tutor evaluations. Now I've been a bit stressed this last couple of weeks, because, hey, that's how I roll, so when someone asked me a series of leading questions about how she reckoned I was isolated (and apparently some kind of evil genius? More on this later) and then was very sympathetic, I did what any self-respecting person would do, and accidentally agreed that I was terribly unhappy and so on, and really believed it for a while there before I realised that I was acting like a crazy person. The unfortunate upshot of which was that it took flipping ages and I emerged looking all distressed, and feeling all fragile, and having been swept up into agreeing to talk to the sub-sub-dean or whoever it was. The really strange thing, though, was that she said she was worried that I "seemed ambivalent" about the whole Medicine thing.

Well, I mean. Yes. Like, it's a long tough uphill slog to qualify to be very junior in a stressful work environment to then hopefully ultimately do a very difficult and stressful and tiring but, like, enriching and fulfilling, job. Yeah? So: it seems to me that the more you think about it, the more ambivalent you'd inevitably get? Because there are obviously big things for and against it, as a lifestyle choice?

How can anyone have entirely unambivalent thoughts about something like that? Surely anyone that simplistic and naive in their views would've failed the interview process? Like, someone would've said "There are more than one aspects to most situations: true or false?" and then not let in the folks who were like "Man, once I've found one aspect to anything, I pretty much stop thinking about it and go for it! Things are black and white! And by that I mean that each thing is, itself, either exclusively black or exclusively white!". Those people are clearly better suited to Federal Politics, I'd've thought.

Probably that's an unreasonable way to look at it. Well, it obviously is. But the point is: ambivalence surely cannot, (by definition, practically!) be all bad. It just shows that I've got a grasp on the situation?

So that was the second conversation about that subject in as many days.

Also, Firstly, on Thursday, I went and saw Ross Noble (which was superawesomefantastic as always). Naturally, I was telling this to anyone who would listen on Thursday afternoon (because that is also how I roll), during the course of which I said "wouldn't it be great to be discovered or whatever it is that happens and get to be a comedian and a star [ideally without all the actual problems of fame, natch] rather than having to do all this work? I mean, Monty Python seem to have had a pretty ace time, and they were all doctors and lawyers and such, because of meeting through the Cambridge Footlights!" or words to that effect. We'd just been given this huge talk about how over the next couple of years everything would get harder and harder and more and more demanding, and the days would get longer and longer, and so on. So I do not think that "it would be pretty sweet to have to work for only a couple of hours per day and be paid in fabulous sums of money and adulation" was that unreasonable a proposition.

But it was weird; everyone who was there looked at me like I was insane. "But we want to do this," they said "we want to be Doctors." (You could hear them capitalising 'Doctors; in their minds, and although they didn't all speak together like possessed Doctor Who characters, that was kind of the vibe) "We treasure the opportunity to come in at 6 in the morning and not leave until 10 at night, every day. Who needs sleep or a social life or mental health when you could be decompacting bowels and experiencing the sheer intellectual stimulation of paperwork, the boundless joy of breaking terrible news to people?" I mean, these people all seemed to genuinely relish the idea of studying palliative care, while I for one can think of few things more depressing (although worthwhile, obviously).

Everyone else is apparently genuinely excited about the prospect of being woken up to come in at 2am after working until late. It apparently seems perfectly plausible that serious ethical dilemmas will have clearly-right answers, which it will be invigorating, rather than stressful, to deal with. A decade of instant coffee drunk cold out of styrofoam cups, until they've worked their way up high enough to merit better beverages, holds no terror for them.

They, uh, they all really really want to be doctors, is what I'm getting at.

Now me, I'm doing Medicine. Not because I was pushed into it (which was another thing my tutor suspected), but because I happened to get into it. So yes, I want to be a doctor. But a lot of that is that I want a job, I want a career in which I can take some pride, where I can help people and make a bit of money, and which won't involve me having to drop out of the medicine degree I've already started. I'd have difficulty with my self-perception, I think, if I gave up now, or "didn't make it", even if I didn't still think it would be an interesting, challenging, worthwhile sort of deal.

I feel like I'm doing it because I've committed myself. Conversely, everyone else seems to be doing it because they are committed. This is some kind of calling or vocation for everyone else, apparently.

I've never had any sensation of having any calling whatsoever. I really haven't. I feel a bit gypped about it, to be honest. Where the hell is my deeply burning internal fire of passion to do a particular job and No Other? Oh, I'd like to know all the things you learn in doctorin', like what to do if you wake up one morning and can't feel your entire left side, or whether echinacea will actually help fight colds, what to do if your kid falls out of a tree and their ankle swells up. I think it's all terribly useful, but it's not a Vocation. I don't know that I have any "calling" at all. I mean, the only thing I always wanted to be when I grew up was a princess or maybe a superhero.

The only thing I've ever felt any real calling to do was Live Happily Ever After. Sadly, this is no longer a recognised career choice, even for damsels such as myself. {Not only, it turns out, are you supposed to be your own damsel and your own knight, you're also expected to do your own dragoning and also have a Fulfilling Career. And don't forget to Live Your Dreams while you're at it! Woe betide the citizen who fails to Dream Big. (And, presumably, all those of us who dream about things like turning up to maths exams and realising you're naked or whatever.)}

My tutor had a theory about this too, apparently I'm too "gifted" to be able to "settle" on any one thing. This was like that blog post about "getting away with it" all over again. Apparently I accidentally totally convinced her that I understood everything we'd discussed in class, rather than none of it, which is rather closer to the truth. I remind her, I am assured, of someone she described as "brilliant and cruel" amongst a number of other less salient adjectives. When asked for clarification in re. "cruel" (because, man, if I've been mean to anyone without realising, I want to know so I can avoid doing it next time) I was given the ominous but largely unenlightening answer that "oh, it's not evil". Reader, no conversation where someone feels that it needs to actually be seriously noted that you are not evil is not a conversation calculated to help you relax for your upcoming weekend.

It really is terribly inconvenient, this lack of Career-Oriented Passion (also possibly being an evil genius of some kind), but I guess it could be worse: it must be terribly stressful for the poeple who desperately want to do something in particular but can't for practical reasons, like being an amputee, or not getting in to the NASA training program, or whatever. I can see that I'm lucky, honest I can.

It just bewilders me that apparently I'm the only person who's thinking about this whole thing from more than one point of view. I hope those guys are all ok when the novelty wears off, I worry about them. I hope that their Vocations are like a Religion, or like True Love, bringing them deeply meaningful comfort in the hard times of their lives, and not like some kind of fleeting infatuation which will leave them disillusioned at 30, or something like that.