Arrested Development

Most doctors and doctors-in-training will agree -- committing to a career in medicine is akin to jumping voluntarily into a time warp. While our friends and contemporaries take more advanced steps into the world of responsible adulthood -- becoming financially independent, starting their own families -- those of us who chose to pursue further training in medicine are inexorably stuck in this very small but dramatic world called our training hospital. This is especially true of those among us who have chosen to take our residency training here in the Philippines.

Don't be fooled -- we may deal with life and death at work and are still able to think on our feet even after a 36 hour shift, but, for the most part, our personal lives show the emotional maturity level that is closer to adolescent than adult.

It's hard to make plans to invest in a new condo or to plan on getting married and starting a family when you barely make enough in a month to get from day to day. To be brutally honest, a good number of us are still firmly covered by our parents' financial security blanket even as we're pushing 30. It can get pretty frustrating, especially during those days when everything seems to be going wrong, you've done 48 hours straight and are still on the clock, and you can't figure out what insane impulse made you decide to make this your life. When you're pushing 30 and feel that you have nothing concrete to show for it, it seems so much easier to just give it up and be normal.