M, is for motivation. It's also for Medicine!!!

I have a sister who firmly believes that when you're at a station in life where God doesn't want you, he'll make things VERY uncomfortable for you while you're there. Well if that is true and I tend to believe it is, then right now, I'm the equivalent to having ants in my pants, big red, BITING, ants, LOL!!!!!!

I'm a person who's all about maximizing opportunities because that's just how I roll. So when I learned a few weeks ago and recently had reiterated to me that my desire to pursue a PhD in my current gig isn't received well at all by a certain higher up (who also ironically questions my qualifications because I don't have a PhD), my thoughts about why I am, where I am at this point in my life came up yet again. Except now, I'm starting to loose sleep over what's going on on my 9-5, and I HATE loosing sleep over ANYTHING.

Now I have a tough decision to make. Do I apply to the PhD program anyway knowing only my supervisor definitively supports me, or do I take a chance on not having a fall back plan should my job not become permanent?? I think we know what the answer to THAT question is. Path201X is gonna stay focused on her future and for common sense's sake, I'll have to include a job search as well.

Couple things I expect to experience in an academic environment. I expected to experience more camaraderie about research projects, but camaraderie is hard when people are "possesive" with their research agendas. I expected and was originally told that I had FULL SUPPORT for my pursuit of a PhD part-time because I would do so on MY time AFTER work and because I work at an institution that grants PhD's.

My thoughts about my situation right now are this. I REALLY wish I had at the very least reconsidered those other 5 year post bacc/MD programs I looked into last year this time but never followed up on (with the exception of the 1 I applied to and was subsequently rejected from). People close to me are telling me to get busy with the securing my employment future and to put the MCAT studying into FULL gear. No problem, already done. But that other little nagging thing that keeps coming up over and over and over again in my head, is my true desire to ultimately pursue the MD/PhD which I concede is crazy given my age. But I think there's a reason I keep coming back to it over and over and over again and that's because it's truly what I want to do. I WANT the clinical knowledge and I WANT the PhD training because I'm convinced it will significantly contribute to making me a superb Physician. Say what you will, folks with medical training MD or DO combined with a PhD, simply approach patient care issues with that extra eye for problem solving which in my observation, is greatly enhanced by having that strong research background.

Someone close to me says that I need to use all this newly created "job baggage" as motivation for securing my future. And that's exactly what I've done.

Did someone say, Physics??????????