My Not-So-Straightforward Path to Psychiatry

Nevertheless, after my service commitment was complete, I enrolled in college and began asking those questions and making friends with those who had good goals and study habits. One thing I learned was that medical schools may look more favorably on applicants with research experience, so I searched out internship opportunities and soon found myself committed to several areas of research from asthma and immunology to neurology and even virology. For one project I would be out catching mosquitoes in between classes; it was interesting, as were all my projects, but they were not the cancer research that continued to elude me during my undergraduate years.  

As a graduate student, I was finally able to land a spot in a lab that was studying proteins implicated in osteosarcomas. It was very exciting to finally be working on a cancer-related project, and though the lab’s focus was protein structure as it relates to function, I was able to conduct transcriptional repression assays, which fascinated me the most. However, after days on end and countless hours in the lab without meaningful human contact, I felt that something was missing and longed to connect with people. And although modern medical therapies depend on innumerable hours of benchtop research and the accumulation of thousands of seemingly small individual contributions, I realized it might be years before anything I was working on might find its way into cancer treatments. I maintained my goal to one day contribute more directly to patient care.  

As I was contemplating whether to stay in research or pursue other interests, fate stepped in and helped make up my mind. As much as minorities such as myself were encouraged to seek research careers, there was not much mentioned on what happens if your primary investigator (PI) does not get their grant renewed. I will always appreciate my PI for taking on as unpolished a research assistant as I was, but despite being the nicest guy you will ever meet, he was “encouraged” to resign by the university when his grant was not renewed. Seeing how harshly he was treated made me realize that I should seek other opportunities that would allow me to continue to learn new things while also making a living to support my growing family.

Before leaving my graduate program, I started looking into other professional schools that seemed interesting and would help me find gainful employment. The one that seemed the most practical was a local Master of Business Administration (MBA) program. Once I applied and was accepted into the program, I was like a fish out of water, surrounded by people who were already in the business field and some even leaders in their companies. To ease my transition, I utilized my  undergrad strategy to seek out those with good goals and study habits and to frequently ask questions, following the old adage,  “the only dumb question is the one you don’t ask.” 

When it came to coursework, I had gained so much discipline studying for all my science courses in undergrad that although not easy in any sense of the word, I was able to complete most of my business and statistics courses with A’s, except for those darn accounting courses where all I could muster were solid B’s. Funny thing was that before I became interested in medicine, I thought being an accountant would be the coolest job. I had learned to network early on, and word in the halls was that companies offer paid internships to business students and the secret was to apply early. I heeded that advice and, after only about 70 job applications, I landed a full-time internship at the headquarters of North America’s largest oil refining company.

It was interesting work, and it definitely felt good to earn a paycheck after so many years as a graduate student. I was placed on the trading floor, and it was about as high stakes as you could get inside the company’s hierarchy. I had to learn everything from scratch, but I had learned hard work from my parents and the army, so I made it a point to keep an open mind, learn as much as possible, and use that work ethic to my advantage. I was working full time and taking classes full time at night, squeezing in studying during lunch breaks and late into the evening after my classes let out at 10:15 PM, only to wake up at 5:30 AM to do it all over again. After three solid years, I was able to graduate with my MBA in Finance and was now a full-fledged employee. Pay and benefits were great, and my family was happy, but I couldn't help continuing to wonder what it would have been like to have a career in medicine. I stayed on a few more years before being able to take the leap to reapply to medical school.

I had applied before, but a lot had changed since my last application, especially my MCAT scores. Apparently, that was exactly what I needed, as they had increased enough to give me at least a puncher’s chance to have my applications considered (and not laughed at). I applied to over 65 schools and received two interview requests: one allopathic and one osteopathic program in my home state. My allopathic interview was scheduled first, and I could not have been more nervous. My blue-collar background had always made it difficult to feel like I belonged in the white-collar setting. Added to that stress, my best friend from the refining company, who had retired about a year prior to my medical school applications, took his life the week before my interview. It was shocking news, and I felt very bad about missing the funeral, which was scheduled on the same day as my interview.

I drove six hours to the interview and felt I completely bombed it. When they asked me about “game theory” and “what I had been up to with my life?” my mind went completely blank. One interviewer would ask a few questions, then leave the room for a “page” and then return for a few minutes only to do it again. I left the day flabbergasted, and to this day it remains my second worst interview of all time. My osteopathic interview was exactly one week later, and although it was more dynamic with over eight different interview sessions, everything that I could not answer the week before came naturally. As destiny would have it, I was accepted into the osteopathic program in the same city where I was living.

Matriculating into medical school was truly a surreal experience, going from a decade-long dream of working in the field of medicine to being smack dab in the middle of it. Before clinical rotations began, I told myself to give each rotation a fair shot and to not make up my mind too early, which was ironic because I had spent so much time dreaming about becoming an oncologist. I went in every day with an open mind to learn as much as I could. I found that I really enjoyed meeting new people and hearing their stories.

As I began completing more rotations, I found that no matter the specialty and the primary complaints and diagnoses, depression and anxiety were almost always part of the story, and that in a lot of cases it significantly affected the patients’ quality of life. It also became apparent that just being able to talk about their problems and to have someone really hear them out was therapeutic. This fascinated me and made me think how cool it would be to practice in a specialty where patients could benefit from two completely different treatment modalities. As I completed my rotations, it also made me think about loved ones who suffered from mental illness and about my friend who was lost to suicide. By the time I completed my rotations, it became clear that psychiatry was a field that I could impact positively, especially if I could leverage my many past work and life experiences to help me better connect with patients.

Now that I am on the verge of entering the final year of my psychiatry residency, I can say that this is the best and most fulfilling “job” I have ever had, and each day I get the feeling that I am exactly where I am supposed to be.