Having a job, doing the work

The most important question that I was asked while interviewing for medical school was ironically the most simple: Why do you want to be a doctor?

If you’ve applied to medical school, you know it’s an infamous question with multitudes of responses and no particularly correct one. Online websites and admissions counselors on YouTube will sometimes underscore the underlying qualities that make this question so important. 

The reality is, the medical school interviewers are always asking you the same question that everything else in life is asking you: Why do you want to be here in this space, becoming this type of person?

Life is a series of questions and answers — often between people and the worlds they build around themselves. This is what I’d like to believe is the human spirit, hardwired in our minds from the first moment we look around us. We ask questions, and then we set out to find answers.

When I studied anthropology at UC Berkeley, I was required to take many classes that required readings on social theorists. The usual culprits — The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, Fetishism of Commodities and The Order of Things — popped up more times that I can count.

I even considered buying permanent copies for my home library, but truly, who reads “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism” on a casual Saturday afternoon? Nevertheless, reading for my anthropology classes taught me how to question. 

In particular, these readings taught me how to ask questions and never take my world for granted. Every single aspect of life is worth questioning, including things that we feel are guaranteed — yes, even chasing the 51B bus down College Avenue or learning to dodge consulting clubs on Sproul. 

Learning this made me question everything about the way our world is structured and the true meaning of work in our society.

It’s often not fruitful to hyperfixate on this type of thing; it can quickly lead to disillusionment. We’re raised pretty much from preschool to think about our potential contributions to society — “What do you want to be when you grow up, Aarthi?” Even after graduating and getting into medical school, I don’t think I have an answer to this question — because I fundamentally think that job and work are not synonymous. 

What is work? What is a job? What is considered which and why do we do it? 

These are truly volatile questions to ask myself four weeks before I start my first year of medical school. Perhaps I should have thought of them sooner, but wouldn’t you agree it’s better to confront them late rather than never?

These questions came to the forefront of my mind last week while speaking to my grandmother. In a passing comment, she mentioned how she had always wanted to be a botanist. She had never gotten the opportunity to go to school and had raised three children in an India that had just celebrated its thirtieth birthday. She was made from resilient stock, where work meant raising a family, not a path to a formal education. 

A job, I’ve found, is a position that pays money. Work is the mental or physical effort done to achieve a certain purpose. My grandmother, like many women in post-colonial India, was not a stranger to hard work, though she was a stranger to a job. 

She has never had her own money or had her own bank account. In the eyes of society, she is considered unemployed and a dependent. But this fails to take into account that my grandmother is a phenomenally talented cook, voracious reader of fiction and motivational speaker par excellence. 

For fifty years, she has worked — first as a wife, then as a mother and now as a grandmother. Some side hustles include being a maker of Indian spice mixes and the most delicious pickled mango on Earth. 

In the ‘80s, my grandfather unexpectedly packed up their family to move from the tropical, unbearably warm South India all the way to the frigid, snow-capped North India. My grandmother simply bought a shawl and a book titled “Learn Hindi in 30 Days.” She never asked “Why?” Life didn’t have time. Life stopped for no one, especially not for a woman with questions and dreams. 

Women didn’t have dreams. They had responsibilities. They had work to do.

Becoming a doctor has meant everything to me, but it has meant even more for my grandmother and every woman in my family. I am free and not at the mercy of the people around me. I can ask questions and know that I will get answers. I think about my freedom a lot, especially as I organize my bank account and grad school loans and as I sign the lease on my new apartment two states away. 

As I think about the answer to that all-pervasive question — “Why do I want to be a doctor?” — I think about how it’s not just about me. I chose this particular path because it represents my love of medicine, my love of science and my caring for people who need it the most. It’s my dream job, but it’s not just my dream; it’s a dream that is compounded due to generations of women that wanted more. 

As I pursue this career, I pursue a job. I am seen by society as an actively contributing member to it. But I can never forget those unsung heroes that contributed to it. Because it is their hard work that has allowed me to pursue a job.