I Want the White Coat

The point:  You have to embrace it all.

A member of my family had a brain aneurysm the other day.  As we trek daily to the ICU waiting room we see a lot of docs, superior in their physician armor, crisp in their white coats.  While I wait to see whether the ICU nurse will buzz me in, their card-swipe causes doors to swing wide for them.

While The Client Chair has held MDs who assure me their careers are different from this medical film clip, at this moment as a peasant visitor, I want the white coat.  In my career movie, I want to stride into the room, be seen as vital, in charge; to be made way for, deferred to.  In the next moment, I acknowledge that I don’t want blood on me EVER, to take organic chemistry, to have someone second-guess my diagnosis because they got their medical degree at Google University; or to be yelled at because a loved one died, to be on my feet for 14 hours in surgery, to deny care because the hospital that owns me dictates it.  In short, I want the glamor of the job, not the drudge of its reality.

When you’re thinking of your next career, what you most often see is the white coat, not that reality.  Examples:  College forensics classes are bulging because TV CSI stars work amid multi-hued bottles in muted-toned labs, and investigators work trash dump crime scenes in spike heels.  In real police life their status and environment are quite different.  Similarly, with TV news anchors.  You don’t see the 2:00 AM reporting for work, the no social life, the emotional toll of reporting ongoing horrific stories like 9/11 or community flooding or child murders.  You have no idea of the discipline and fortitude this takes, or how dreadful this industry can be.

If you can picture people you know who are successful and happy in any of these professions, it’s because they bought the whole package.  They looked at all of it, good and bad, and said, “This is what I want.”  If they’re unhappy in those jobs, it’s possible they saw only the white coat and thought, “Cool.”  That crisp white coat might have become a straitjacket, and they may now be sitting in The Client Chair saying to me, “Now what?”

If you want to change careers, especially if you’re not sure of your direction, make it a point to have serious conversations with people already in the job.  Ask them to tell you what’s great about it, what’s not, the challenges and sacrifices.  The road of change is generally not easy.  You have to know you want all of this NEXT.