choices

Excerpt from a conversation with a childhood friend in which what I have joked about for years has come to pass - my friends really are doctors.  Note: Dialogue may or may not accurately reflect the conversation that took place.

Me: Congratulations on your wedding!  I guess I'm the last one standing.  Since I'm coming... hey, you have any friends my age you want to introduce me to?

Friend: <laughs> I'll work on that for you.

Me: Hey, so where are you in your training?  <joking> Are you an attending* yet?

Friend: Yes, I'll be an attending.  My fiance got a job back in our hometown, so I'm going to apply there.

Me: You're kidding, right?

Friend: No.

Me: <pause> You're really finishing residency?

Friend: It's only three years.

Me: <speechless>

Me: But I just finished my first year of graduate school!

Friend: Don't rush into it.  You've done a lot in the past few years.

Repeat conversation with several other friends, substituting "you mean you just bought a house?", "you mean you just had a baby?", "you mean you're celebrating your seventh anniversary?", and "how can your son possibly be eight?" in appropriate places, with appropriate amount of incredulity.

Speak with engineering friend who states that he needs to "reduce my spending by [x] dollars a month to help with family medical expenses, to which said MD/PhD student, after appropriate expressions of sympathy for the health of relevant family members, suddenly realizes, "But that's the same amount as my whole stipend!"

 ... and then, a bit to one's own surprise, realize that one is quite content after all - not in a hurry to acquire responsibilities, still hungering for more education - and so quietly, without envy, return back to the pleasures of a carefree life: running, research, mathematics, and the occasional evening clinic, not necessarily in that order.

The rest will come at the right time, the right place, and in the right way. 



*For the non-medically initiated, an "attending" refers to an attending physician - the highest form of life in the hierarchy of training, in which medical students rank lowest, right down there with bacteria inhabiting the crevices of the floor.  After graduating, you get the letters M.D. after your name - but no respect, sleep, or sunlight for the next few years.   After emerging from residency with some knowledge about patient care, budding doctors get hired on as attending physicians and suddenly receive responsibility, the privileges of rank (which include kow-towing by aforementioned medical students and residents), and a paycheck that covers more than student loans and the instant noodles they don't have time to eat because they're so busy saving the world every day.