Bobby and I broke up on prom night.
It was sad, but not unexpected. Bobby had been accepted to USC and would be starting there in the fall. His cousins from out west had invited him to stay with them for the summer, until his dorm room was available, and Bobby left the day after prom. He’d joked that he needed the extra time to find a proper Kung Fu studio to train in. We’d known about his leaving for months and avoided the topic, choosing instead to enjoy the time we had left with each other. It was ironic though that now that our schedules were almost completely clear we were saying goodbye.
Mom and Eva fussed around me on the day that he left and I had to reassure them repeatedly that I was fine. Eventually, dad asked me if I would please have a small breakdown so that mom and Eva would have their closure moment and move on. The two of them looked scandalized at his comment, but I immediately broke down into faux-tears and started wailing in my best impression of a soap opera actress and beating my chest in sorrow. “Bobby!! Bobby! How could you leave me?? You said that you’d love me forever and always be with me. Oh, woe is me!” Mom and Eva were not amused, and they finally left me alone. Literally. They went shopping together. Without me. When had my mom and my best friend started going out shopping together?
Unlike previous summers, I had no jobs and no trips planned. I’d even put my scanning at Sister Clara’s clinic on the backburner. I was coming to grips with the idea that I was finished with school. This summer wasn’t simply a three month break before going back to school. This summer was the start of my career. The only problem being that I didn’t know which career to choose. I’d been thinking intently about this since Christmas break.
Officially, I was the head of the Hannah Foundation, but in truth, Shauna, Diane and mom were doing most of the work and I only needed be there for a few mornings a week to approve expenditures and to give some direction. I still believed strongly in the work that the foundation was doing and I had plans to expand it further, but I’d decided that even then the foundation would be a side interest and not my main career.
The same idea applied to Kung Fu, blacksmithing and investing. They were fine hobbies, but not careers for me. Where did that leave me? What did I really want to do? I thought about the past few years and tried to focus on what gave me the strongest sense of fulfillment. After a while, I found three area of interest: scanning for mines, rescuing people as Roger, and medicine.
Becoming a mining consultant and helping McKenzie Resources and other companies in finding and exploiting mine sites all over the world sounded wonderful. I could travel the world and make a very good living while doing something productive and worthwhile. Yet I could see myself growing bored of it after a few years. There really wasn’t much of a challenge to it. I already knew everything that I needed to know to get the job done and I could do it faster that anyone else. Maybe I’d refine my technique or increase my range over time. From that perspective, being a mining consultant seemed like a something that would be interesting to do a few times a year.
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Using my abilities to rescue people sounded great and the only downsides to it were that I could never tell people what I did for a living and that the work was inconsistent. Although, if I offered Roger’s services to the CIA or FBI, or even to the State Department, I’d probably have more work than I could handle. Did I want to go to work for the government? Would being able to pull their agents out of anywhere simply embolden their planners and put their agents in greater risk? What if I disagreed with what their objectives were or if they wanted me to save a murderer because he had vital information for their other plans? The only way I could see it working was if I got to decide which rescue attempts I would participate in. Even then, could I trust that I wasn’t being lied to? Again, this was something that seemed more part time than full time.
Compared to the other two options, medicine seemed like a huge challenge. Not only was there so much to learn, but there was also so much that still wasn’t even known. Developments in medicine were ongoing and I’d never be bored. Learning new ways to use my abilities to heal people felt like it was something that would keep me on my toes. Although, this route presented it’s own challenges. Becoming a doctor would take a decade or longer, depending on my chosen specialty, and it would mean going back to school, sitting in classrooms and writing essays and tests. I was so over that. Maybe if there was a way to go directly to the residency part, where you could actually treat people, then I’d be willing to give it a go for a few years, but as it was, I couldn’t do it.
Where did that leave me? With an entire summer to experiment in. I didn’t have to make my decision right away. I could try out all of my options and see where they led me. With that in mind, I set about finding out how I could become a doctor without going to medical school. The short answer is that you can’t. If the goal is to become a licensed doctor, capable of legally performing medical procedures, you absolutely need to go to through medical school. There’s no home school alternative and as far as my searches found out, there are almost no shortcuts. It seemed that going to a Caribbean medical school could shave a few years off of the process. However, not being willing to move to the Caribbean, I crossed that option out. Although, it did seem like a nice place to vacation.
Nurse practitioners can treat patients on their own, with some exceptions, and it was a good alternative to becoming a doctor. However, becoming a nurse practitioner required between six and eight years of study. Paramedic training, on the other hand, seemed much more reasonable at six months to two years, but wouldn’t give me the type of license that would be useful to my plans.
I spent hours researching ways that I could get around the requirements with nothing to show for it except for my mounting frustration. I recalled Mark’s problem-solving advice and decided to check my assumptions. Did I need to become a doctor? Yes…and no. I had a special set of abilities that I believed would allow me to do things that no doctor could do. If I was going to use those abilities, I needed to first develop the skills of a doctor. Those skills were only taught in medical schools and their associated teaching hospitals. So yes, I needed to learn to be doctor, but no, I didn’t need to actually be certified as one.
With that revelation, my plans fell into place. I would go to medical school, only I wouldn’t bother registering. I could learn just as well in R1 as I could in reality. Right away, that decision saved me from having to spend four years earning an undergraduate degree. Now I only had to find a way to bypass the four years of medical school classes and I could start on my personal residency program.