Cancel My Career Plans and Declare Me Undecided: Hospitals Are 'Too Sad' It's amazing how fast conditions can change. Yesterday, it seems, we were diving into swimming pools and burning up in the sun. Today, we find ourselves covered in sweaters, protecting ourselves from the chilly autumn air that flows outside. Kansas weather is famous for its rapid change. I've learned that my plans for the future can change rapidly, too. For four years, I thought I knew my future plans. But all it took was one experience for me to realize that I was wrong. When I was in the eighth grade - the same year that I started the A.V.I.D. program for first-generation college-bound students - I decided I would become an anesthesiologist. It seemed like a foregone conclusion, really. Every Halloween my mother decided my costume would be what it had been the previous year - a doctor. I have picture after picture from year after year of dressing up with my cold stethoscope, green scrubs, and a little white box that served as a first-aid kit. My mother has told me a few times that she wanted me to become a doctor, and since moms know what's best, I thought I would listen to her advice. Within the first few months of A.V.I.D., we were taking quizzes and doing research about career choices that would fit our personalities. I was a manipulative child when it came to answering the tests. I answered them a certain way to get the results that I wanted. And I knew what I wanted: to become what my mother told me I should be, a doctor. Every time we took a quiz, I answered questions in a way that would garner the result I wanted. I wanted the quiz to tell me what my mother had told me. I felt I needed the reassurance of the test to confirm my future. I grew happy every time "medicine" or "health care" showed up as part of the career field that matched my personality. Of course this wasn't my personality, but I didn't realize this until later. While I grew more assured that I would become a doctor, I began to do some research and decided that I would become an anesthesiologist. Initially I told myself it was to help people by numbing their pain, but honestly it was for the money. The only downside to becoming an anesthesiologist, I thought, was the extra 10+ years of schooling that it would take, but the gains seemed tremendous. In September of my junior year, the idea of becoming a doctor still fixed in my mind, I set out to volunteer at my local hospital. I wanted to see what real doctors did, though I didn't know what to expect. Initially, I thought I would be an assistant who helps the doctor during surgery, handing them the tools that they needed. I ended up being placed in the laboratory. My biggest job is picking up urine and feces samples to deliver to the lab so that they can be tested. Other duties include scanning papers and restocking supplies. It didn't take more than the first two sessions for me to realize that the hospital just isn't for me. Neither the hospital, nor the medical field, offer careers that are compatible with my personality. I volunteer there once a week on Tuesday nights for four hours, and when I think of the atmosphere of a hospital, I think of the sadness and the sickness that is everywhere as people are fighting for their lives. I will no longer be pursuing a career in anesthesiology. The hospital is just too sad for me. In no way am I trying to say that if you're thinking about pursuing a career in medicine that you should simply let the idea go. It's just that, in my case at least, I can't see a career in the hospital. The setting seems to put down my liveliness, forcing me to put it away for another time. I can't see myself living like that for the rest of my life. I just can't. Now that I no longer want to pursue a career in medicine, I'm leaning toward a career in law, but who knows? Just like the winds blow hot and cold in Kansas, the winds of my decisions continue to point me in different directions. Perhaps a career in politics would be just the ticket. Mr. Espinoza, a student at Topeka High School in Kansas, is one of eight high school seniors around the world blogging about their college searches for The Choice.