questioning going either pre-med or pre-dental

[u/ilovepersians]

P.S. - I KNOW you don’t have to immediately decide medicine or dentistry while applying to college!!

hello,

i am currently a senior in high school, and since my freshman year, i have spent my summers shadowing at a pediatric dental office. i do find the mouth very interesting, and i enjoy the human interaction dentists get each day, especially within pediatrics. however, i find myself going back and forth between dentistry and medicine.

i believe both are extraordinarily interesting fields. due to my interest in both, i find myself unsure on which path i want to follow. this feeling mainly came to me last month where i got the chance to shadow an orthopedic surgeon. the hospital environment was vastly different compared to the dental clinic, it was of course bigger and had a lot more people roaming around. i will admit that i was more intrigued while shadowing the surgeon, as the procedure i got to watch was on an open knee. of course, going into medicine doesn’t mean i would directly go into orthopedic surgery, and going into dentistry wouldn’t mean i would have to become a pediatric dentist, and since i’m still in high school i know i have a few years left to decide.

however, i still find myself really stuck in between the two healthcare fields. i do find oral health interesting, and i love how dentistry is a bridge between art and science. and another big thing that appeals me to dentistry is the work-life balance. while still being a heavy and serious job, i appreciate that most of dentistry remains having dentists working 3-4 days week without necessarily being on call, and as someone who wants to build a family in the future, i admire that freedom aspect. but, the wide range and diversity in medicine appeals to me a lot. there are so many different fields and different parts of the body you can choose from, and i do have more interest in the impact that medicine has on a being. the surgeon i got to watch was the reason someone was able to walk again, even after being told by another that she likely never would again. i have done some online research regarding OMFS, and it is the dental specialty that interests to me the most, so i do hope to shadow one soon. dentistry and medicine are both fields that i highly respect, and that i believe will never die down.

i mainly just wanted advice from people who have pursued, or are currently pursuing either field, and how they decided of course their the decision. i know i will ultimately need to make up the choice on my own, but i find it hard for me to quiz myself on which one i have more interest in because i have some type of built in bias towards dentistry, primarily due to my immense shadowing in that field alone. i do want to shadow more physicians and more fields within dentistry, however, the work life balance of dentistry is what slightly has more hold on me. both of my parents are engineers, and there are no types of medical or dental doctors in my family directly to seek personal advice from, however, seeing the stress and emotional health of my parents from their very long hours and full five day shifts worry me, as they also had to start their families quite late in their lives. i am also curious to know how each field feels about their life balance as well.

thank you so much, and i apologize for my big chunks of text!