Last Friday was my first day to set foot on the Texas Tech campus as a student in over seven years. A lot of thought, discussion, and prayer has gone into this decision, but, as with any 31-year-old husband and father, there are so many variables in this equation that it’s impossible to think of them all. So, we’re forced to tackle some of them one-by-one as they show their ugly faces.

And several of them made themselves known over the last few days.

We haven’t given up hope yet, but my decision to go back to school has just become significantly more complex. Our ability to pay our current obligations (car payments, credit card bills, health insurance, etc.) has been impacted more than I had anticipated. Through a series of horrible financial decisions, we’ve dug ourselves a ditch that is becoming increasingly inescapable.

For now, I’m going to stay in class while we try to figure this out. But if we cannot figure it out soon, this journey may be terminated in its infancy.

The problem is that I have all three of my classes–Biology, Chemistry, and Physics–scheduled on the same day. And the problem is compounded by the fact that my wife and I are now down to one vehicle, so my wife will be dropping me off at school every day, and I won’t be able to leave any of my luggage in the car to swap out between classes.

So, as soon as I finish this post, I plan on logging onto the university website to see if I can’t get at least one of these classes shifted to Tuesday/Thursday. Maybe that will lighten my load enough so that I’ll only have to take one bag with me.

Either way, I cannot put into words how excited I am to finally be on the first leg of this journey. I’ve been wanting to take this step for over five years now, and thanks to the tremendous support of an amazing wife, I’m finally doing it!

If I have the wherewithal tomorrow, I’ll let everybody know how my first day went.

Today’s lunch break marks a significant point in my journey to become a physician. This morning, I received an email that my financial aid refund was in my account. So this afternoon, after lunch, I bought my first textbooks as a biology major. And now I’m $640 closer to being a doctor.

When I first started this blog, I was not honestly expecting to make it even this far. If you go back to my first post, you’ll see that all I had to hold onto was a faint hope that someday everything would just fall into place. As it turns out, it wasn’t hope that I needed. It was determination. And that determination didn’t really take hold until the day when my dear wife said, “Let’s do this!”

And now I’m on my way!

In which I discuss my recent decision to abandon my career and go to medical school.

Until now, my answers have been vague and noncommittal, but I think I’m beginning to uncover my path. I realize that I will probably know nothing for sure until my third year of medical school, but right now I’m leaning heavily towards Oncology. Oncology has  been one of the front-runners ever since I started considering medical school years ago, but it hasn’t been until the last couple of days that I’ve started leaning heavily in that direction. In the last several years, I’ve seen some of the most precious people I know affected by Cancer, and I can’t imagine a career that would be more rewarding than joining the fight against this horrible disease and striving to improve the lives of those who are afflicted by it.

A dear friend of mine who recently went through a monumental struggle with Cancer had this to say:

Think about working with Cancer patients. I have been stunned by the compassion and determination of these professionals. They bring smiles, laughter, and most of all Hope to those who find themselves in “the Valley of the Shadow of Death”. They are bright lights in a world of darkness, angels who are able to both rescue those who are helpless and to guide with decency and grace those who will never come out of that valley.

These words really struck a chord with me. Thanks to the hard work of my friend’s doctors, his Cancer has been completely removed. If I’m able to do that for a single person, then I will be able to say that my work on this earth meant something.

Several weeks ago, I sat down with my wife, and we discussed medical school in a little more detail. The next day, after returning home from the grocery store, she told me I should do it! And even more than that, she said I should make it happen as quickly as possible. So in the last several weeks, we’ve put our house up for lease, found a renter, moved to Lubbock, and applied for classes for this fall! Everything has happened so quickly, and everything seems to be falling into place.

I still have two years of undergraduate sciences to catch up on before I can actually apply for medical school, but at the ripe old age of 31, I’m finally getting started!

More to come soon!

In business school, we were taught about feasibility studies. We were taught to do a thorough analysis of a project to determine whether it was (a) physically possible and (b) fiscally feasible. Today I’m starting my own feasibility study for medical school.

Step 1: Interviews

My first step is to get in touch with as many people as possible who have experience in the medical and/or education fields and pick their brains to make sure I’m thinking through all the necessary considerations. Among my list of people to contact are: my cousin, who is currently in med school at Texas Tech, a dentist friend, another cousin who works as an RN, a pre-med advisor at a university, and as many medical and med school forums as I can find.

My 2 main goals with this step are to:

1. Determine the feasibility of going back to school given my current situation.
2. Think through any considerations that I might not have thought of on my own.

So that’s where I am right now. Any and all suggestions/advice are more than welcome!

Well, with everything that’s going on, I need an outlet of some sort, a place to talk about my goals openly, a place to start a conversation with others who are going through (or have gone through) the same thing. As the Proverb says, “Two are better than one,” and “a cord of three strands is not easily broken.”

The Dream

When you’re 18 years old and you announce to your family that you want to go to medical school, you quickly become a source of pride to the whole family. But when you’re 31 and you make the same declaration, people look at you like you’re crazy. Once you reach a certain age, you’re no longer encouraged to follow your dreams, to live life to the fullest. Rather, you’re mildly scolded and reminded of your responsibilities.

My question is this. Why can’t we be responsible and still shoot for our dreams at the same time? As a 31-year-old man with a wife and a 9-month-old daughter, I’m inescapably aware of my responsibilities, and I’m also aware that because of our current financial situation, medical school may never happen for me. But that doesn’t mean a man can’t dream, does it? As long as my responsibilities are being met, and as long as I’m keeping my family top priority in the planning process, why is it so crazy that I want to find a way to make this work?

The Reality

Having said all of this, I should mention that I fully understand and appreciate the reasons behind the reactions. When you hear that a 31-year-old family man with debt problems wants to give up his full-time time job to go to medical school, it’s natural to be concerned. A barrage of questions immediately comes to mind. How are you going to pay for it? How are you going to pay your CURRENT bills while you’re in school? What is your family going to do if you can’t pay your mortgage and/or car payments? And the truth is that I currently don’t know how to answer any of these questions. So I have to gently remind people that I’m not just going to jump in and do this recklessly. In fact, until I can answer all of the above questions, I believe that I have no business actively pursuing this dream.

The Present

So, here I sit at the same desk, working the same jobs, doing everything I can to pay the bills and provide for my family. Will my dream of someday practicing medicine ever come to fruition? I can honestly say that I have no idea. But until I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that it’s too late for me, I’m not giving up hope.