Precocious identity formation

Childhood promise and trapped adults

I almost failed two classes in my life. Organic chemistry (because obviously).

And penmanship.

If you’re of a certain generation, you remember penmanship classes. They’re where you learned, under the severe eye of Sister Viola Pratka of the Incarnate Word and Blessed Sacrament, how to write the cursive capital Q that (for unclear reasons) looked like a 2, or the capital Z that looked like a 3.

Friends, I was not good at it.

I got a D+ in penmanship.

And that’s when my parents knew I’d become a doctor.

I didn’t want to. I never wanted to become a doctor.

I had bigger dreams—like all little boys, I wanted to become a linguist or a philosopher or maybe a rock star. But, I’m the first-born son of an immigrant family, with comically bad handwriting to boot.

My fate was sealed. I’m a doctor.

Maybe you’ve felt this too — the gravitational pull of a professional identity you chose (or had chosen for you) long before you understood what it meant, long before your pre-frontal cortex was even a glimmer in your midbrain’s eye.

My friend Margaret did. She always knew she was going to be a doctor. The daughter of two physicians, she deeply admired her mother. (She also quietly despised her father, but that’s a whole other blog post…)