Can A Type B Personality Get Into Medical School?

I've spent a lot of time thinking about medicine during the past two semesters. Discovering the field of psychiatry forced me to re-evaluate my future and to rethink what direction I wanted to go in with my life. Since I started my transition out of the business school and into the sciences, I can’t even begin to recount the number of comments I’ve heard about “how the nature of medicine is changing” and “becoming a doctor is a million dollar mistake.”

It doesn’t make me feel any better that my own DOCTORS have tried talking me out of it. Jeez.

The stuff I’ve heard really makes me question my own judgement. If doctors are as hyper-competitive and money-hungry as they’re made out to be, will I be able to be happy as a psychiatrist? And before psychiatry is even made an option to me, I have to endure the rest of my undergraduate pre-medical education and then survive medical school with a ton of people who will most likely fit that stereotypical doctor-personality.

My two questions are: is that what I want? And can I make it?

My ambitious-side says yes. It is and I will.
However, my reflective-side still ponders.

I was surprised to discover through a personality test that I am supposedly a “Type B” personality. This came as quite a surprise to me as I had always thought of myself as a “Type A.” My initial reaction was that the personality test had to be wrong and that it must have misjudged my true colors.

However, I chose to keep an open mind and to further explore the meaning behind “type A” and “type B” personalities. After all, I learned not to dismiss personality tests after I took the MBTI freshman year and discovered the 16 different personality types. That one test alone completely revolutionized the way I look at the world.

From what I could gather online and in my old Management Skills textbook, this is a simplified breakdown of Type A vs Type B personalities.

Type A

-Enjoy achievement of goals, especially difficult ones.
-Constantly working hard to achieve goals.
-Feel the pressure of time, constantly working.
-Highly competitive and create competition.
-Hate failure and work hard to avoid it.
-Oftentimes fit and well-educated.

Type B

Generally more laid-back.
Work steadily, enjoying achievement along the way.
Do not become stressed when goals are not achieved.
Creative and explore ideas and concepts.
Reflective, thinking about their inner and outer worlds.

After going through both types, I think I lie somewhere in the middle. I think I actually relate to everything under Type A except for “highly competitive and create competition” and everything under type B aside from “do not become stressed when goals are not achieved” which is funny since both are significant defining characteristics for both types.

This theory forces participants into an A/B dichotomy and it seems I lean more towards B than A. Which I guess is a good thing since it means I statistically have fewer heart-related health risks to worry about… but on the other end, it also means being a little different from most of my peers. (Though I think most INFJs are already used to that.)

It’s unfortunate that various professions tend to attract such a uniform group of workers. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a work-place with more diversity? I feel like the system is set up so that only certain personality types can even make it through.

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doctors want to talk you out of medicine to find out if they can talk you out of it... you will handle patients, different kinds, and in retrospect, sick people are hard to handle sometimes, they complain a lot, about the treatment, about its effect, so if you want to give up give up in med-school not after that

on the second part, i think its bad to force yourself into boxes like type A and type B its ok to use these kind of groups where it matters, like blood types... personality is way more complicated and i think a gynecologist has a very different personality then a surgeon or a pediatrician

and my bonus opinion i think the system works when "the system is set up so that only certain personality types can even make it through" whene that "type" is there for help others overcome obstacles and illness and to help those in need - we dont really need doctors who are in the business for the title and the money they can be lawyers...