Getting Unstuck from Dentistry Pt.1
(…a continuation from Pediatric Dentist to Product Manager)
I. Creature Comforts
For as long as I can remember, I’ve always made decisions out of convenience and comfort. My older sister went to the northeast for college, so when it was my turn, I also went north…and east. Once I started school, I took all the science 101 classes because that’s all I knew. Soon after, I went down the pre-med/pre-dental path because… well that’s what everyone in Bio 101 was doing. 10 years later, I became a pediatric dentist.
Dentistry is a great career. Even if the cost of dental school has gotten out of hand, dentistry is well compensated, the work-life balance can be great, and you get to help people. Despite all these check marks, 8 months ago (November 2021), I came to a difficult realization that dentistry, or at least the clinical side of it, didn’t inspire me. But what else could I possibly do if not dentistry? I had just spent the last 10 years pursuing this one thing. I was stuck.
II. Sanity Check
Before I started taking drastic measures, I wanted to do a sanity check. I wanted to make sure this wasn’t just a phase, burnout, or me FOMO-ing on the Great Resignation. The first thing I did was write down a pros and cons list regarding my current situation:
The second to last bullet point made me the most uncomfortable. I always saw myself headed down the ownership route and even came very close to signing a lease for an office space during the peak of the pandemic. Writing it down, meant admitting that this wasn’t my path, and that was extremely unnerving. This was, however, in retrospect, the most important step. Unbeknownst to me at the time, I had just taken my first baby step toward getting unstuck.
Continued in Pt 2.
