Growing up, I thought I was pretty bright – but who doesn’t think they’re pretty bright in America. It is sort of a trademark of our culture, isn’t it? Everyone thinks they’re special, everyone thinks they’ve certain skills that other people do not have. But like many of the especially bright people who surrounded me, I did not do very well in school. I just didn’t have the attention span for it, and my grades reflected that fact. I had always wanted to have a career in medicine, but I didn’t see how this was possible. There was just no way that I could make it through medical school.
It didn’t even occur to me that there were medical job opportunities other than being a doctor. When we tried to start a band in high school, everyone wanted to be the singer and lead guitarist. And of course, after high school, each wants to be the physician. No one even thinks about being a nurse anymore. Nonetheless, some of the best medical job opportunities don’t require the kind of intense medical training that I feared such as medical transcription, devide sales or being an orderly.
The first medical opportunity that I took was a job opening up as an orderly in the local hospital. It was difficult work, and not glamorous, but it paid pretty well and I could get into it straight from school. I figured that it would be a good entryway into a medical career. After that, I could see if I wanted to pursue more ambitious medical job opportunities. Well, it turns out that I did. I found it rewarding. Working in a psychiatric hospital like I was, you get to really see people struggling with real-world problems. Even though some of them failed to get better, when they did it was quite an experience to be part of the healing process. I think this is what draws people to medical job opportunities in the first place.
Now, I work as a nurse. This does require a good bit of schooling, and it turns out that I was superior at school than I thought. It grants me to interact directly with patients, and it pays much better than most medical job opportunities. Honestly, even though medical job opportunities are pretty lucrative, I would advise against going into them immediately. Before you go in for four or five years of school, you should take an entry-level position in a hospital and see if it is for you.
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