Single guy with cold feet seeks advice

Hi. I've been mulling over this issue pretty much in a vacuum for months now and I need to talk to the people who are there, living in the world I'm entering.
As a 32 year-old single man with a spot in next year's class, I'm approaching my first year of med school with major cold feet. The hard work doesn't scare me at all - I'll work hard no matter where I go. The money factor is intimidating, but certainly not a deal-breaker. And the last obvious hurdle, the uncertainty of managed care and a litigious public, is a large obstacle, but one that I'll approach with the rest of medical community.
My worry is social. I don't want to be having my first child at 43 and I'm afraid that if I go to school that it will sabotage my chances for having a satisfying personal life. I want to hear about your successes and failures with relationships and starting a family as an older student in medical school. Is it worth waiting a year to invest in a relationship before med school? Is med school too much for most relationships? What has your experience been?

Quote (CosciHasher @ April 02 2002,23:16)
Hi. I've been mulling over this issue pretty much in a vacuum for months now and I need to talk to the people who are there, living in the world I'm entering.
As a 32 year-old single man with a spot in next year's class, I'm approaching my first year of med school with major cold feet. The hard work doesn't scare me at all - I'll work hard no matter where I go. The money factor is intimidating, but certainly not a deal-breaker. And the last obvious hurdle, the uncertainty of managed care and a litigious public, is a large obstacle, but one that I'll approach with the rest of medical community.
My worry is social. I don't want to be having my first child at 43 and I'm afraid that if I go to school that it will sabotage my chances for having a satisfying personal life. I want to hear about your successes and failures with relationships and starting a family as an older student in medical school. Is it worth waiting a year to invest in a relationship before med school? Is med school too much for most relationships? What has your experience been?

Hi there,
Look at it this way, you are going to be 43 years old one day no matter what. Do you want to be a 43-year-old physician or do you want to be a 43-year-old something else. Even if you opt for the "something else", you still may end up having your first child at age 43, 44, or later.
I am going to be a 50-year-old newly minted MD by the time I start my residency in General Surgery in July. I have the same fiance that I started medical school with four years ago. While he complains that he doesn't see enough of me at times, he loves me and supports my career choices. His career is very flexible and he has been more than willing to follow me through this medical school process. He said that he would love me whether I remained a college professor or whether I became a physician. He is relishing the day when I become the principal "bread winner" and he can go back to school to get his Ph.D in history or political science so he can write books. He loves the flexibility that medicine provides for both of us not to mention that I love what I am doing and I am doing what I love. That makes both of us very happy.
Plenty of my classmates married and had childen while in medical school. I even had one classmate that brought her 5-day-old daughter to Match Day ceremonies. She was married during the summer between our first and second years.
If your relationship is shaky to start with, its going to suffer with any stress. Any stress in a relationship, be it school related, health related or money related can end a relationship that isn't well grounded. Since most relationships involve two people being supportive of each other, I can't see where medical school excludes being supportive in a relationship.
Even if you take a year off to "invest" in a relationship, what are you going to do at the end of that year. Are you going to say, "Well, you have had your year, now I am going off to medical school"? I think your beloved is going to have a problem with that approach.
Quote (CosciHasher @ April 02 2002,23:16)
My worry is social. I don't want to be having my first child at 43 and I'm afraid that if I go to school that it will sabotage my chances for having a satisfying personal life. I want to hear about your successes and failures with relationships and starting a family as an older student in medical school. Is it worth waiting a year to invest in a relationship before med school? Is med school too much for most relationships? What has your experience been?

Hi CosciHasher,
First of all, congratulations on getting into med school. I cannot speak from experience of med school but I have done various jobs in the past that have been tough on relationships (spending 3 months at a time out of the country doesn't go down well, let me tell you...) so I will try and speak from that angle.
First of all, you describe yourself as a 'single guy' and so I am not sure whether you mean dating but unmarried or completely unattached. These are very different circumstances. If you are in a serious committed relationship then sit down with your other half and discuss how they feel about the future, medical school, babies (maybe they don't even want any....?). If you don't have a significant other then I doubt taking a year off or not going to medical school can give a guarantee one way or the other on the idea of finding one.
Various questions arise. Why are you set against having kids at 43? I know you will be older, it will be tougher...but the same can be said for medical school! Unfortunately (fortunately?) we don't all have the same life path and we have to adjust. Sometimes this is actually good. Maybe at 43 you will make a better parent?
You say that you will work hard no matter what you do. If this is the case why do you think medicine will necessarily be more difficult than anything else to arrange family time? There are family friendly as well as family 'unfriendly' specialties. The over-riding factor however is how you yourself handle things. My other half wants to go out tonight. I could be pretty justified in saying I don't have time right now. I have 2 pre-req exams this week, work all day, and take classes 6-11pm monday through thursday. Instead of saying no however (which I do sometimes do) I got up early today. I put food in the 'slow cooker' so we can eat when I finally get home tonight, filed my taxes, dropped my car off at the garage, I have already been in and out of two business meetings, I have to give a lecture in half an hour, I am on here doing my daily scan/quick reply, I will use my lunch hour to visit the gym, my afternoon will be spent training a new lab technician, I will then pick up my car and drive across town and take one of my exams, leave there, drive to the other side of town to drop off some lab samples that need delivering and then head out with my better half (hopefully by 9:30pm as the exam actually lets us get out of class before 11pm for once). The fact is I have made a choice as to what are my priorities and how organised I am prepared to be in order to have 'a life'. You can influence to a large extent how your life is just by making such choices yourself...
Good luck with your decision on what to do, but don't forget there are no guarantees either way, and how things turn out is in large part down to you...there are all types of doctors with all types of lives.
Best wishes
:)
Alex

Hi there!
As a single person myself, I can relate to your feelings. But I personally feel that school is actually an easier place socially, because, although you have little time, you are surrounded by people who have roughly similar interests and educational backgrounds. Having been out of school for several years, I actually find it much harder to meet people who I would have a lot in common. I'm hoping that in med school, it will be easier.
This reply assumes that you are not already in a relationship. Good luck and reply if you have more thoughts on this!
Nancy
TUCOM Class of 2006

Thanks to all for your thoughts.
Cold feet are a strange thing. I believe they come from a place where you feel there is no way out - that you are (in effect) trapped into participating in something that you're not quite sure you want to experience. A wedding, med school - same thing.
So, this week I decided not to go to med school. I figured that then I'd be able to keep earning a decent living (I'm in the computer field) and have time to dedicate to any future parter who might come into my life (I'm single). Then the strangest thing happened. Within a day of deciding not to go to med school, I really wanted to go to med school. Turns out that when the decision was mine to make again and not just something I felt pressured to do because I (and to be frank, my mother) had told everyone about it, it was much easier to decide. The choice was again mine to make.
The benefit of our (we oldpremeds) age is mostly in the perspective that it affords us. It's the perspective that alerts us that AOA is not the only thing in the world, that getting high honors on a test doesn't make you smarter, and that sometimes being well rested and well balanced count as much (if not more perhaps) as a high grade.
I approach medicine again with this philosophy in mind: study hard, be an excellent provider, and when the opportunity comes to either invest further in your career or in yourself, try very hard to choose yourself a good deal of the time.
You're all correct - there's no guarantee that if I DON'T go to med school the perfect partner will avail herself and if I DO go to med school then she'll stay away. In the end, your success depends not on where you are but how you act while you're there.