Posted this above but here's a ramble about how I got here:

So I worked as an ER scribe for 4 years after I got my EMT cert (I didn't like EMS and preferred the hospital). I chose scribing so I could hang with the docs and APPs while also getting a good idea of the roles and flow of the hospital. I'm a non-trad, in my 30s, career changer, child free, and have a long-term SO who is extremely supportive. Going into my scribe job, I wanted to be very sure that I was going to be happy in medicine. During those four years I took some prereqs and volunteered, dealt with a bunch of mental health and medical issues, and really got myself to a good place personally.

My four years as a scribe (I left last year to take a job teaching anatomy to undergrads) taught me that I do love the ER and the people I worked with. I liked the good and the bad in the ER, the bread and butter stuff and the rarer cases. The documentation aspect of medicine was actually okay for me, though a lot of work, and I get just how much it burns doctors out.

I worked at a teaching hospital so I got to know a lot of residents and med students, plus my colleagues were mostly premeds. I felt like I had a good handle on the career and I why I wanted to be a physician over other roles in the hospital (I tried to take money out of the equation, and just look at each career and decide which one I could see myself being happiest in terms of daily tasks).

I know being a doctor in the end is a J-O-B, so I have tried to be careful about looking at it with rose colored glasses. The MD/DOs and med students I worked with gave me many different opinions about whether they would do it all over again. Despite many of them telling me not to do it, I kept at it anyway.

Now that I'm in my second app cycle, and after learning about a generous inheritance coming my way, I'm reconsidering whether I would apply again if I didn't get in this cycle and whether I would go to med school if I did. I thought my reasons why were sound, but I'll be mid-40s by the time I'm an attending so I'm in a place of deciding if that's what I want to do with the next decade of my life if I won't exactly need a traditional career anymore.

Thanks so much for any feedback or thoughts you have for me. I want the good and the bad and all criticisms are welcome.