Ethan Peters is an Honors College Fellow double majoring in Biochemistry and Spanish with minors in music and medical humanities. He is a premedical student with plans to attend medical school in Fall of 2025. He has served in several campus organizations, including as a music section leader in the Razorback Marching Band

The smell of clinical sterility permeates the room as people clothed in blue bustle about, each performing their task with the confident precision that only comes from hard won experience. I press myself into the wall in an attempt to stay out of the way, my unfamiliarity with this strange landscape obvious. The patient lays face down on the operating table, already under anesthesia. The OR is nearly prepped for an intrathecal drug pump installation, a procedure that routinely grants life changing levels of relief to patients with chronic pain. The door flies open, and the surgeon strides into the room. He takes his station over the patient, instrument in hand. There is a moment of stillness. The physician glances at me and beckons me over. I, a knot of nervous excitement, cautiously tip-toe my way over to watch his deft movements and absorb as much of his explanation as I can. After the procedure ends, I follow the surgeon to the next patient as I reflect on the wayward path that brought me here.

Months ago, I was a sophomore premed student. I had wanted to be a physician ever since I was little. The glamor and weight of the job were alluring to me. I had just begun my shadowing and encountered unexpected sandbars, lurking just beneath the surface. The first two physicians that I shadowed told me with as much force as was polite to abandon medicine and take a different career path. The toll it placed on them and their families was too much, and they wanted to save me from the same sad fate. I was disturbed. This did not match up at all with the glamourous picture of my life as a doctor that I had envisioned. I began to research problems in the medical field and became increasingly concerned as I went. After a decade of intense training, the life that awaits physicians features strained relationships with hospital administration, burnout, and precious little time with loved ones. I regretfully abandoned medicine, as so many physicians had advised.

In the middle of my crisis, a friend suggested that I consider dentistry. Dentists often own their own practice, which gives them the flexibility to decide their hours and take Fridays off. Private practice is on the decline in the US in medicine. This made dentistry seem more conducive to my goals of having a family. I switched to predental, started volunteering in a dental clinic, and shadowing dentists. After six months of this, once the thrill and newness wore off, I started to see some concerning aspects of the field. All of the private practice dentists that I had shadowed were great businesspeople. Much of their time was spent on payroll and buying equipment. I personally would rather not worry about administrative tasks and instead focus on my patients. Perhaps most importantly, the work of a dentist did not excite me. So, I returned to that uncomfortable land in the middle, feeling directionless and confused. I had already changed trajectories once, and the idea of doing it again was embarrassing. I did not want to admit that I had misstepped. Eventually I realized that this was exactly the time to admit that, own it, and do something about it.

I returned again to those original concerns with medicine. After spending a lot of time thinking about them and talking them through with friends and other physicians, I answered them one by one. My relationship with administration is not doomed to failure. It depends more on how I conduct myself as an individual than anything else. Burnout is a real threat, but I know how to lean into the things that give me life, like my spirituality and hobbies. I have to trust them to sustain me. Time with family is a priority to me, and I will protect it. I can draw whatever boundaries in my life that are necessary to that end. I don’t have to agree to any terms that are unacceptable. After thinking through these concerns, I cautiously returned to medicine.

My experience with dentistry is not a mistake. If I didn’t have it, I would have always wondered what could have been. I am certain of my place in medicine in a way that I couldn’t have been before. Now, walking in the shadow of a physician here in the clinic, I am convinced that I am on the right path.