X Marks the Spot

A famous Christian scripture (Matthew 6:21) says, “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” In context, this means one should set aside worldly treasures for spiritual ones. But in a sort of reverse engineering, I have often thought that my treasure lay where my heart was. To find my treasure, I needed to know my heart.

When I made my decision to go to medical school, I did it by reading What Color is Your Parachute? —  a book for career changers and job seekers. I went to my local library in Somerville, NJ, sat at one of the big round blond-wood tables, and worked my way through the exercises in the book.

Treasure Map

Despite being an introvert, I learned that I enjoyed working with people. I enjoyed working on teams. And to my surprise, I didn’t want to be just a team member, I wanted to be a team leader.

After more research, I decided I wanted to be an osteopathic physician. Based on what I read, osteopaths had a more holistic approach to their patients, which appealed to my idealistic view of who I wanted to be. I didn’t know any physicians personally. No one in my family was a physician. I was what we would now call a “first gen.”

An Expedition

I devised a project plan. Study for the MCATs. Take the MCATs. Apply. I applied to only one school, the one which was located 20 minutes from where I was living. I wasn’t looking beyond the first two years of medical school. During my clinical years, I would have to move to southern New Jersey, almost two hours away.

And the path was hard, very hard. Yet I’ve never regretted the decision to become a healer, to seek a team, to become a leader of that team. I’ve retired from seeing patients, but I’m still on a similar path. Writing and facilitating writing groups heals me and those I work with. I still work on teams in my writing groups. But we rotate the leadership. I’ve learned where my treasure is. X marks the spot.