I received career guidance from an E! Network reality TV show about the lives of people in Beverly Hills?
About three weeks ago, I was browsing Netflix, looking for something mindless to watch for 30 minutes as a break from writing my thesis. I came across Dr. 90210, a show about plastic surgery in Beverly Hills, and thought “YES – something to counter the heaviness of Virginia Woolf”. Little did I know this show would spark an energy in me I hadn’t experienced before.
Yes, Dr. 90210 is superficial 90% of the time, but the 10% that is about reconstructive surgery and the miracles doctors can perform make it worthwhile to take a look. The show sometimes focuses on genital reconstruction to complete gender transformation, cleft palate repair, eye repair, and even the separation of webbed hands and feet. One episode I was particularly heartened by was when one of the doctors went to a facility in a rural part of Mexico to perform pro-bono work. There were 70 children waiting in need of surgery to perform the necessary surgeries they could not afford. In that week, the doctors were able to operate on 40 of the 70 patients, but with primitive, or sometimes non-existent equipment. Living in various affluent bubbles from Ann Arbor to Claremont to Copenhagen, I have never seen such primitive medical facilities. Of course you hear every day about the need of better healthcare in various countries, but I’d never visualized what it would actually be like to be a patient in this position before – scared, desperate, and putting your life in the hands of anyone who can help.
Needless to say, the issue of health care really struck a chord with me. I feel not only should people be able to receive the health care necessary for their survival, but also reconstructive surgery should not be overlooked as “superficial” or “unnecessary” to people’s well being. Watching this show got me rethinking what it is I want to do with my gap-year. I do not plan on going to medical school, but would like to do something for a cause I’m passionate about, in any capacity, while I have the opportunity. I still would very much like to go back to Denmark, only now I am looking into various human services agencies I can join while working and/or studying abroad. As for the future, more and more I’m leaning towards going into positive psychology (one of the many career paths I listed in my first blog post) so I can help to improve the well-being of people’s lives. In a roundabout way, my procrastination from thesis gave me renewed motivation to keep up the work, so someday I can make a difference.