Why I am not a Scientist, Psychiatrist or Doctor

Sorry about the hiatus, I had a vacation and then some job related things to take care of. Real life intrudes sometimes...

So, without further adieu, here is why I am not a scientist....

When I was graduating from high school, I got it into my head that I should be an MD/PHD psychiatrist. This came from a variety of misconceptions that I had at the time, primarily that learning psychology would give me some sort of insight into the human mind and how people think about things. I also thought it would be a good way to spend my life talking to people and helping them work through the emotional traumas and troubles of their lives. My vision of psychiatry was of a Freudian doctor sitting in a big comfy leather chair in a wood paneled office talking to someone who was lying on a couch discussing their inner turmoils. Unfortunately, modern psychiatry has little to do with traditional therapy techniques. Instead it mostly involves popping people full of pills until they either stop complaining or actually believe you have cured their mental problems.

Now, you can probably tell from the end of the above paragraph that I do not hold modern psychiatry in much esteem. While this is true, I do wish to point out that there are quite a few people whose psychological conditions really are due to neurotransmitter imbalances that can be successfully treated with psychotropic drugs. Unfortunately, these people make up an incredibly small proportion of those seeking help from psychiatrists. Most people are simply depressed due to the modern world and their lives not living up to their ambitions, hopes and dreams and their inability to accept the life they have. Most of these people would likely be better served by not experimenting with drugs but instead working through their problems and analyzing the root causes of their psychological trauma. Unfortunately, years of therapy with a doctor is not cost efficient from an insurance perspective, so instead the grand tradition of psychiatry has been reduced to a happy pill dispensary. A way point between a troubled mind and the pharmacist.

But I digress, I entered college honestly thinking that I would go pre-med and major in psych. In my first year I took intro to psych, chemistry and a class called brain and behavior. Much to my horror, I found the focus of both psych courses to be neurology. Instead of learning about brain development, I was memorizing the taxonomy of a neuron and learning who was the first person to shove electric probes in a mouse's head and have it actually do something other than killing the mouse. It was an incredible let down to say the least. Moreover, in chemistry I found myself confused in lectures and bored in labs. The end result was that I was either obsessively reviewing notes and reading assignments, or sitting in a lab waiting for a solution to properly mix. In labs I would bide my time squirting liquids onto the hot plate to see them sizzle and pop. This included flammable liquids, mostly because they had the most satisfying reactions. The end result of all of this was that my grades were suffering and I had completely burnt out on my chosen collegiate course of study by the middle of the second semester of my first year.

After some personal issues, and some other unrelated problems, I ended up switching majors into a completely unrelated area of academia. Fortunately, I was much more engaged there and my grades improved markedly. In hind sight, my blunder from the very get go was a profound lack of knowledge about myself. I do not have the attention span to watch a chemical reaction slowly occur over a three hour lab. I do not have the patience to sit down and properly balance a chemical equation or memorize all the parts of the body and their Latin names. My mind requires more active thought and discussion. The discussion, and the desire to help people was what made me want to be a psychiatrist. It was the science required to get there that convinced me this was a bad idea. This is why I am not a scientist, psychiatrist or doctor. But it is why I respect the people with the mental discipline and fortitude to put up with all the years of tedium required to follow one of these three professions.