From a Surgeon to a Full Stack Engineer..Why?

At one point in my life, I can distinctly remember making a promise to myself to become something great. I was going to be the first of my family to go to college and so to say I was pushed academically growing up is safe to say. Grades mattered, scholarships mattered, and I wanted to say that whatever I would become would make a difference in the world. Over time, becoming a doctor was the natural choice. I loved problem solving ever since I was a little child and I can attribute that and my general curiosity to my grandfather. He always was one of the smartest people I knew and strove to make sure that I experienced the best in life.

Fast forward to now. I achieved what I sat out to do. I became a foot and ankle surgeon and I practiced for 3 years. Along the way I met an absolute plethora of great people and I wouldn’t change anything if I was asked to. And now, here I am , back at school in Denver. Don’t worry, I can hear you from here.. ‘Adam, what the hell are you doing??’. I am 32...I started school when I was 5… I finished medical school and residency at 28… And now, I am going BACK to school. Even now when I say it I get a bit stressed. But, since the day I have started it, I have loved every minute.

So, let us get to the meat of this and answer the question that I am sure my friends and family want to ask me.. why? I can safely say, for me, medicine just wasn’t what I hoped it would be. This is not me sitting here saying working in medicine is bad either because I loved it as well. WHAT? That doesn’t make any sense?.. Well, I loved walking into a room, meeting a patient, and making them feel better. To compare what I did to coding, isn’t a far fetched assumption. I would meet someone, be faced with a problem, try to deduce a fix for the problem based on some information given me, and then have to implement that fix to try to make that someone (hopefully :D) feel better. The patients, albeit testing at times, were the best part. Although, some part was always held back. I always tell people, do something that, when you wake up, you can give 100% to.. and medicine was just not that for me. For the moments I loved, there was equally moments where I had to push myself to even just wake up and go into work. So, luckily i got COVID. Ha. Honestly, I owe my career change to it. My (now) wife knew that I loved problems and knew I had always talked about learning coding. Once I had COVID I had to take some time off work and it was a perfect time to start dabbling in it!. I started by doing an EdX class in python….then another..then I ended up getting furloughed (more time to learn!), and then another python class was finished. Before I knew it, she had asked me to write a small script to parse some data for her use in her old company. And I WAS ABLE TO WRITE IT!! It was that moment where serious discussion started about me going back to school. I did end up going back to work as a physician for a few months, but ended up being laid off after COVID hit the practice hard.

Now, 5 weeks into Flatiron School , I can safely say I am loving it. Every day I am waking up with a new passion that I haven’t felt in a long time. I have met some amazing people already and every day I am waking up looking forward to learning more and more. Recently, we have started to do full stack development, and I cannot wait to learn even more. Each day is filled with knowledge and I am seeing my progression forward every day as well. In the end, I do want to be able to use my medical knowledge and apply it to developing an app for the medical field. I think that tech in medicine will soon be come one of the next very hot topics and I also think it will make a HUGE impact on patients lives. I hope that I am there, helping make that impact :)