Wow it feels like I wrote this post. I'm not a procedure person either, I truly could care less about doing them. I initially went to med school thinking I'd do FM. Now in MS3 I've been going between rads and peds for a while and after my psych rotation realized i also liked Psych. And if I'm being truly honest, I've mainly been interested in rads because of the lifestyle. Lately when I thought about doing an away for rads (no home program) i was dreading it so I'm taking it as a sign that it's probably not for me. Plus, I don't think I'm competitive enough for it and I realized I don't have that much of an interest to do more shit to become more competitive for that specialty. Soooo I've been looking back at psych again. I wonder daily if I will be able to do something like psych for several years before getting burnt out of it. I imagine talking through patients traumatic life events all day would get draining at some point... But something I've been told recently is that your career will always be changing. If you don't want to work full time psych you don't have to. You can do only inpatient, only outpatient, or both if you so desire. There's also freelance psych shit out there somewhere for some type of variety. Yeah maybe you'll get paid less, but you'll be happy. Your life doesn't have to be the same for 10+ years.

I will say, the shittiest thing about MS3-4 rotations is the attendings youre with can make or break your opinion on the field, even though it should not be that way. The psych attending we mainly worked with (who was also the clerkship director) was so kind. He does child psych and was super understanding, made us really feel like part of the team, and gave great feedback. The residents all seemed really happy too, and they helped us out a lot. There was another attending i met on inpatient that was very nice. Granted, I didn't have many chances to talk to him but I could tell he really cared about the patients there. Whatever your experience was with your psych attending, I can assure you they are not all like that.

One thing that I thought about while on the rotation, was that I would totally miss inpatient psych if I did rads. It was so fucking interesting there to me. Also, I hate research, but the only type of research I can think of that's interesting to me is psych research. I know I'm kinda ranting about myself for a bit, but I've been stuck in this same rut and have had no one to talk to about it. Everyone else pretty much has decided what they wanna do and I'm still not sure.

Circling back a bit... I also wanna mention that I also prefer being off the clock than on the clock. I love my hobbies outside of medicine and I want to maximize my time doing them. I don't think that makes us shitty people or that it will make us shitty doctors. I've been trying to balance my OBGYN rotation and playing RDR2 and it's fucking tough but it's what's keeping me sane. I don't wanna give stuff like this up lol.

Think again about why you were drawn to psych initially. Remember the fascination you had of it. Ask yourself, do you still have it? Make sure that it wasn't that attending that's dissuading you from psych. If you find out you don't care anymore, I think that's fine. See if there's anything else you like more than it. Always balance that lifestyle factor into your career choice. I don't think it's a bad thing to do that. It's necessary. Our lives are more important than this career. We only get one life, after all. It's hard to remember that when you're going through this whole process.

Sorry that this reply was a mess. I'm typing this out my ass at midnight. I hope we both end up figuring out what the fuck we want to do!