Career Choices

“Morning John.”

“Hey Sarah,” John replied. He had been working at this restaurant too long. It was supposed to be a break, but it had become a inescapable and monotonous pattern months ago.

“Who is my first table?” he asked.

“I set you at 23,” she answered.

“How are they?” he hoped the group was small, he needed time to think.

“I don’t know…” she said timidly, “They don’t speak English.”

“For my first table? What did I do to you?” he snapped back. He was already dreading having to try and communicate food and drink orders using the menu and gestures.

“I’m sorry, it’s just the way the rotation turned out,” replied Sarah, trying to justify her assignment.

This never should have happened, thought John, I had a future before this place.

He woke up to his phone vibrating. John had studied through most of the night. He glanced at his phone. It was his friend Stephen – dude where are you, the lecture starts at 8:00. John glanced at the clock – 8:23.

“Shit.”

He got to the lecture two minutes after it had started.

“Man, it’s every other day with you, what’s the deal?” Stephen asked.

John replied defensively, “I can’t find a way to remember all this useless stuff. I don’t know if medical school was the right choice. Who cares how antibodies bond to virus capsids to disable them or how viruses mutate to accommodate varying hosts? I read all the material multiple times and my mind comes up blank afterwards.”

“Maybe you should drop a class,” Stephen suggested.

“If I drop some classes I could pick up a job too and start paying off all my debt from this mistake of a career,” John replied.

A few weeks later John had been hired for his job as a waiter and was only enrolled in two classes at his university.

I might just drop all of my classes and take a year or two off from school to make some money and get a break from the stress. He was thinking.

The final step came when he was walking to his car from school to go to his job. Having just finished the winter semester he was trying to decide what he would do in the following semester. A couple walked by who were touring the school.

“Are you a student here?” they asked.

His response was what finally put him over the edge, “Yeah, I’m studying to be a doct… actually no, no I’m not.”

Back in the present John was still thinking about his decision.

My life now is monotonous but at least I escaped all of the stress and pressure. I could just never relate to the classes. I don’t know what I’m interested in, and what my career should have been, but it’s too late now.

The biggest problem in John’s life was the debt which he had accumulated from the college and medical school which he dropped out of. His salary as a waiter barely paid minimum payments on his debts and he had no hope of getting a higher paying job without more education. That was when John heard someone shout from the back of the restaurant.

“Oh my God!”

“What?” he said running to the person who had shouted.

“She just collapsed,” The woman replied.

“Call an ambulance,” said John.

John’s medical training kicked in and hey immediately knew what to do, “Her pupils are dilated. It’s cardiac arrest; starting C.P.R.­”

John kept the woman alive until the ambulance arrived. This experience was exactly what John needed to give relevance to his

The people around him asked how he knew what to do when he was just a waiter.  He answered, “I’m studying to be a doctor.”

Months later John was back in school. He had found a way to apply relevance to his studies in medicine.

“So your back for good?” asked Stephen.

“Yeah, I enrolled in my classes again and I’m having a much easier time with remembering all of the material that we have to.”