MY FUTURE | miwcapstone

The Gap Year Dilemma

I will be applying to medical school in the months following my graduation from college for entry in the following year. This leaves me with, at minimum, 365 days of open space and time to explore my passions outside of school. The next step? Wrestle with the contradictions that this coming year has presented.

Building and Breaking:

The biggest balance I will need to find is between building my resume and doing things I want to do that are simply to allow for a brain break. Of course, to continue with my education in medical school, I cannot take this gap year and ignore all things service. And I don't want to. I sincerely do enjoy volunteering in medical settings. However, I don't want to do activities as resume boosters. In my opinion, that would be a waste of time. I want to be able to combine service, job shadowing, and mental breaks.

So part of me, this professional part, wants to get dressed up, do a 9-5, and accomplish responsibility through meaningful experiences in medicine. Yet, another part of me wants to throw caution to the wind, pack a bag, and take my camera to go hiking in the mountains or camping in the Redwood Forest. The biggest challenge with this dilemma is that my soul lies at the heart of this contradiction. I have a true passion for medicine and healing, but I also have an aching feeling of wanderlust and an adventure-seeking being stuck behind my dress clothes.

I feel that this will be the easiest compromise to find. I currently volunteer for Hope Medical Clinic in Ypsilanti, MI and I genuinely look forward to being there each week. It provides me with the patient interaction I want as well as a solace away from the stress of school work. While I'll be leaving Hope after graduation, I know that there is another place for me to find my niche in that satisfies my hunger for supporting others, my faith, and my mental health through the break from academia. I sincerely believe I will find this other place and I will have time for both a deeper exploration into patient-care as well as a few trips across the nation and/or globe.

Freedom and Familiarity:

My mother had one stipulation for my gap year... move home. She has been my number one supporter throughout my education and this includes financial support for all things college: rent, utilities, books, tuition, groceries, the whole nine yards. I am happy to move back in with her to cut costs while I take this time off of school. Besides, the familiarity of home will be comforting after four years away.

However, there is a part of my brain that sees this gap year as my opportunity for freedom. Do I really want comfort or do I want to challenge myself with unfamiliar situations and experiences? Gap year, as an advisor once told me, is the last time I'll be free to choose what fills my days because as soon as you take the first step into medical school, you begin a life-long journey of learning. Medicine is constantly changing so physicians are required to attend conferences to learn the latest breakthroughs. So, I want to run. My brain is telling me to get in my car and drive across the country.

I'm a rash person, though. I often get excited about something and let my mind take over and exaggerate the reality of a situation. Once, after a TED talk, I decided I was going to start my own company about something... but I can't remember what it was about because I obsessed about it for a few weeks and then dropped it when I realized that wasn't where my true passions lie. Now, I feel myself getting carried away with the illusion of what I imagine my gap year will be instead of finding tangible ways to make it worthwhile.

So why can't I can move home and I can visit new places? Why can't I honor my mother's wishes as well as my own? They seem mutually-exclusive when my imagination runs away with dreams of touring Europe and Asia while forgetting about my responsibilities here. But they are not. I can be more than one side or the other. I can do both.

Saving and Spending:

A lot of the anxieties of my life have stemmed from financial situations. As a single mother, my mom gave up a lot to put me through school. She worked long hours and made sacrifices to ensure I was able to have the best education possible. It has been a true blessing to have such a selfless woman supporting me and now it is my turn to save her a little money instead of spending it all. There is no one I respect more and it is the absolute least I can do to give her a little break in expenses on my end.

On the flip-side, she raised me to follow my passions and to never let anyone tell me that I couldn't do something. And I always imagine this gap year to be a time when I would take photographs, see exotic lands, and meet interesting people from around the nation and the globe. The only problem is that dream takes spending money, not saving. Plane tickets, lodging rates, and activities abroad will cost me the money I was attempting to save to lessen the blow she will take when my medical school bill comes in at $200,000.

Is there a compromise here? Probably. But, it's one that will likely feel like less than best. Not getting to do all of the traveling I want to do and not getting to save up as much for medical school as I hoped will both be equally dissappointing. I anticipate that finding that medium will be something that happens in the moment. I won't know it at the time, but at the end of the gap year, I hope to look back on it and have no regrets about the amount I traveled or saved.

I believe that whatever ends up happening, wherever I end up landing, and whoever I end up meeting along the way will be a part of a larger plan for me. I find comfort in the fact that my future is uncertain to me as of late. There's a whole year waiting for me and I won't grow if I have a rigid plan for the wheres and the whats of it all.

So here's to the next 365+ days ahead.

Cheers,

Sarah Clayton