My Grandfather always wanted me to be a doctor… He was a doctor himself and wanted someone to take on his mettle after him. When I was young, even I dreamt of being a doctor... for that matter a Neuro-Surgeon one day. I remember telling my relatives, as a child, proudly “I want to become a doctor” whenever they asked me.
All of my childhood, I kinda cherished this dream. Sometimes I used to read my Grandpa’s books that he had in his collection – about human anatomy, various diseases and all. He used to tell many things about his profession. I could see that he loved talking about his experiences as a doctor. I used to envisage myself doing the same some time down the lane. But as I grew up, things changed. It became clearer to me that as fancy as the profession looks, it is dead difficult to be into it. The cut-throat competitive entrance exams, the long grueling hours to continuous studies and the eternally long time the degree takes to be completed… it was all just too scary for me. Plus after you have earned your degree, the investment that goes into setting up your own clinic is altogether a different story…
Initially I tried to prepare myself mentally for all this, thinking that this hard work would definitely reap me some wonderful benefits. But, somewhere inside my heart, I knew that I was falling weak…. This dream became far from achievable for me… I hate myself for accepting this but the fact is that I backed out even before trying.
I chose an easy way out. I went for engineering… It’s not that no efforts go into engineering studies. But we should accept that they are far less than a medical degree. Those four years of engineering were a cake-walk for me. I also landed into my dream job after completing my degree and managed to earn a fat salary. Life has been really very smooth after that. I do love my present career as a Software Professional and dream of earning an MBA somewhere down the lane, just to enhance it further more….
But the one thing that I can not forget is that this career was a second choice… and that I played second fiddle in one of the most important decisions of my life… That’s the regret that’ll remain with me all through…
Trying Heads or Tails for the first time… The prompt for this week is “Doctor”
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