Hello everyone! I have been visiting this site for about a year and reading posts trying to get a feel for how you guys feel about your chosen career path. my desire to become a doctor began in high school. my high school counselor and principals all encouraged me to go into medicine, but i would always find a reason not to want to pursue it such as i dont want to spend half of my life in school or I want to have kids before im thirty. i ended up pregnant during my senior year in high school and had my daughter at the end of my first semester in college. having her gave me another excuse not to purse medicine because i fear that i will never have anytime for her. Her father and i are still together( we have been together since i was 14). and want to have atleast one more child. i wonder how i will have the time to fit another child in?i will be graduating with an associates degree in nursing Dec.2010 and i try to tell myself that i should be happy because there are many people who wish they could be nurses and i should just continue on this career path and become a crna or np yet whenever i make up my mind that thats what im going to do i cannot help but feel that in the end i will regret it and wont be completely happy. i know that i have the abilities to become a doctor,I am a steady 4.0 student with an occasional 3.5 in classes such as english. (in my nursing program i have recieved all 4.0 and (2) 3.0). i know you guys could care less about my grades but i try to tell myself that maybe i am not smart enough to get throught med.school but deep down i know i am.i also tell myself that i would be miserable during residency because of the long work hours.once when i went to church my pastor told me out of the blue during his sermon that it is my calling to be doctor in front of the whole comgregation. there have also been times when i have met random people who encouraged me to enter medicine and really didnt know why they were doing so(it must have been god). i do believe that medicine is probably my calling but i am a little afraid of the long road to get there. i go throgh phases where i am 100% sure thats what i want to do and phases where i am unsure and confused. can you ladies give me any advice about what med school and residency is TRULY like and if you had the opportunity to do it again if you would
PS if you read all this THANK YOU and you all are truly an inspiration for me.

my advice is that you find something that you truly love to do, because if you don't love what you do, the time you spend away from your kids and at work will be utterly miserable.

only you can decide if you would be happy with nursing or becoming a physician. if you decide med school, as you can see, there are many, many moms who make it work each in their own way. if you have to work anyways (and don't have the option of SAHM or don't want to be SAHM), what would you rather be? the training may be long, but if your practicing medicine for a good 30 yrs, its really all relative.

if you chose med school, sounds like your kiddo would be close to school age by the time you started, making it much easier to be away all day....

one last note...you don't have to have it ALL figured out right now...i'm in my 3rd year of med school, just had a baby, and am still trying how to figure out how this is all going to work as stressful as it is, i don't think i would have it any other way.

aeryanna,

is becoming a doctor your choice? or is it the choice of others? Why do ramdom ppl tell you that? What do you do that even your pastor has said that?

The reason I ask you this is because nursing is a great field if you want to care for pts on a daily basis. I mean bed side care. It is a very stressful job if you do it in a hospital. But nurses DO NOT DIAGNOSE Medical problems. They don't have that training. You mentioned how you are graduating with a ADN well if you decide to do NP, you need a BSN and MSN. Well that in it alone can take you up to 4-5yrs fulltime. If you do it partime it can take up to 9yrs. That in it alone is just nursing. SO if you feel you will be going to school for a while you will no matter what.

As an RN who wished she went the docotor road I don't feel satisfied. I think is because nursing is a whole other world.