Welcome to my blog! I’m glad to have you here. I didn’t know what to write about for the very first post. It feels like that first page of your journal that you need to leave blank. But it would be rather boring for you if I just gave you a blank screen to stare at, so I’ll fill it up with a little bit about me. Who I am, what I believe, and where I’m going.
I want to be a doctor, and I’m particularly interested in surgery. Why? Well, while studying engineering and psychology at Northwestern University, I worked on a number of design projects to design, build, and plan the sustainability for medical devices. Our teams had the privilege of working directly with patients (users), and also prototyping our designs. One of our designs, which assisted stroke survivors in donning their shoes one-handed, won an award for best design. My design experience developed my appreciation for the mechanics of the human body. I also thoroughly enjoyed working with my hands to create something. In exploring the various medical professions, I realized my experiences in engineering and talent with craftsmanship are a perfect match for surgery.
So that’s the reason I’m interested in surgery, but the reason I want to be a doctor is a little more complicated than that. I knew pretty early on in my engineering career that I would not be an engineer for the rest of my life. So I started thinking about alternatives–I thought about a career in finance, mostly because I didn’t know anything about it and wanted a challenge; I thought about medicine kind of vaguely; and I also thought about writing (I had, at that point, written an unpublished series of 7 books), but that market seemed to be impossible to break into.
My life was filled with reasons why I can’t, instead of reasons why I can, and should. It was the wrong kind of caution to have. Then a few things changed all of that. First, I was on the Glenn Beck Show, and I asked a question. My question was related to the scenario of a societal collapse–what would a person like me do, if we have no savings and we can’t buy gold or land? How would someone just starting out in that scenario survive such a thing? The answer was to invest in myself and make sure that my talents and skills would be needed by society. So I decided to become a volunteer EMT–that is a skill that can certainly be used by society. I fell in love with medicine. I loved the ability to directly influence a person’s health, and felt my patients’ gratitude for my service.
The Glenn Beck Show also inspired me to publish my 7 books. Instead of going through the cumbersome and time-consuming traditional publishing industry, I self-published. Glenn Beck frequently cites examples of people who put themselves out there and succeed, because of the age we live in. Your competition, if you are a cable company, he says, is not the next biggest cable company but an 18-year-old kid who has 30 million followers on Twitter because he says interesting things while sitting in his bedroom in his pajamas. If you’re talented, and it’s Heavenly Father’s will, you will succeed. Maybe the new Q from Skyfall is right–one can do more sitting in his pajamas than ever before.
Yeah, I like James Bond.
The second thing that happened was that I joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. That’s right–I’m a Mormon! Is it any surprise that I have a blog? I obtained something called a Patriarchal Blessing, which is when a Patriarch, or an older gentleman set apart for that specific calling in our Church, lays his hands on one’s head and provides a blessing. The blessing tells a person things they might or might not know about themselves, where they’ve been, and where they’re going. This blessing cemented in my mind that I really should transition my career to medicine. Combined with my positive EMT experience, I knew that this was the right call.
I was promised in my blessing that as I did the Lord’s work, my mind would be made clear and I would be able to concentrate and succeed. This happened for me–as I took the many prerequisite classes that I needed to apply to medical school, I earned A’s and B’s in everything. I was able to easily learn the material and, as promised, learn spiritual things behind the secular concepts. The next great challenge was the MCAT, but I was on a new “can-do” streak. I put my all into studying for this thing, and prayed like crazy. I took the MCAT more than once, but I achieved a good score in the end. Then I applied to medical schools.
I was accepted into Rosalind Franklin University, Chicago Medical School!
So the point of this post, I guess, is that it took a few things for me to succeed: the inspiring notion that anyone can succeed who is talented and puts himself out there, the re-alignment of my priorities to do something that was inherently beneficial to others, and the promise from Heavenly Father that as I turn unto Him, He would bless me with the ability to do His work. These things can probably be summed up as the Power of Can-Do. Now I want to inspire others with this notion. Don’t list reasons why you can’t. List reasons why you can! Post your inspiring can-do story in the comments below. Thanks for reading!
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