Ahhhhh... back to quarter life crisis mode?!

4 days ago, while attending a talk by Admiral Roughead (Commander of the Pacific Fleet) a gentleman stood up and introduced himself as the only MD among the crowd of international policy expert PhDs. Finding an MD in this kind of environment really intrigued me, so I approached him after at shared my bio background from the Berkeley days.

Today, Dr. Robert Morrow dropped by my office and we talked for over an hour and medicine, public health, policy, government. Him and I are so similar on the inside. We both have the compassion that drives us to help people one on one as a physician, but also the desire to want to do more to impact the world.

He was a living example that you can be an MD and still work on IR issues. My biggest reason for not going to Med school was so I wouldn't get stuck in a hospital and die from repetitive boredom. He was the first living example of the type of MD / diplomat that I want to be, aside from Dr. Sun Yat-sen, MD... but I said "living" example.

So... crap!! Again, back to the classic question: Medicine or political science? I feel like I'm 22 again, only with a Masters under my belt. I like both, and I'm good at both. Shoot! Now it's between getting an MD or PhD. I know I'm going to get one, just not sure which one. Both might be too nuts, especially spread across different disciplines.

In terms of the MD consideration, I guess I'm in the same bind as our friend Jennifer Hwang at Microsoft. ;) Maybe we'll end up going to school together as the motley pair - an EECS with MD and a politics with MD.