Did you always know you wanted to be a doctor?
"Like Mother, Like Doctor" is a new blog on TalkingScience, written by mother-daughter team Linda and Dana. They will be blogging about the academic world of science - each will be writing posts about their lives and the science surrounding it.
To begin our blog, “Like Mother, Like Doctor”, we, Linda and Dana, decided to interview each other about our experiences with becoming and being a woman in medicine. After all, between the two of us there’s a lot of firsthand experiences of what it means to be a woman in medicine—as seasoned practitioner, newly minted medical student, and for both, as patients.
So here we go! To begin, we offer a series of discussions, in which both of us weigh in with our perspectives and insights at times generated by your questions and comments. Others post will feature “A Day In the Life”, “Ask the Doctor”, and random, interesting observations and stories that will make you think, laugh, and maybe even cry.
DG: Hmmm. Where to start? Well, for this first blog, how about at the beginning? The question I want to ask, is “Did you always know you wanted to be a doctor?”
LB: No, I don’t think so. When I grew up in the 1950s and 1960s, your Grandma Zelda wished for me the college education she never had. “Be a teacher,” she told me again and again. “Teaching is a good profession for a woman.” For a long time I thought teaching would be my path, but when I reached high school I realized it was her dream, not mine.
And so my “non-specific” dreams loomed large over my early life. I was always very driven to achieve. Whether it was a pick-up kick ball game on Jackson Place where I grew up in Bellmore, NY, or the fifth grade spelling bee, or being editor of the Buccaneer, my high school newspaper, I always gave it all that I had. I totally immersed myself to be the best I could be. I liked a challenge.
I finished my first year of college still without a clear direction, and still without a plan. Admiration for my Aunt Roberta, a clinical nurse specialist and author, led me to discuss my plans with her as I thought I could become a nurse just like her. Her response startled me into a new mindset. “Why don’t you become a doctor like your Uncle Murray (her husband and my mother’s brother)?” I hadn’t thought about that possibility. My Uncle Murray was a family icon—first and only in his family to go to college. Medical school was beyond the family’s imagination. If my aunt and uncle believed that I could become a doctor, well then, maybe I could. And so I decided I would try to become a doctor.
I returned as a sophomore to Bryn Mawr College. Pre-med courses intermingled with my History of Religion major and Chemistry minor, kept me really busy and really challenged. Not the typical science pathway for anyone who wanted to become a doctor in the 1970s, especially a woman. But as I have learned through these many decades, there doesn’t have to be a typical pathway.
What I also learned was that having someone believe in me really helped me to believe in myself. And as I am writing this blog, I just now realized my aunt and uncle were my first mentors, but thankfully not my last. I knew I could make this difficult journey. And now, 35 years later, my mentors, my drive, the intellectual stimulation and the deeply felt need to make a difference in the lives of others has pushed me on this long and winding road.
And you? Did you always know you wanted to be a doctor?Di
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