What was/is your childhood ambition?

I think this should probably be the most obvious answer I've ever given. I wasn't one of those kids whose dreams changed as he grew up. I never wanted to be a fireman or a fighter pilot; I always wanted to be a doctor. Why? Because I have never wanted to be anything else. Even though my father was hard on me when I was a kid, I still looked up to him more than anyone else and I thought that what he did was the best thing anyone could ever do. At the time I don't think I knew exactly what he did just that he saved people's lives.

I wanted to be a good man like my father and a good doctor like him. It didn't matter that he was hard on me or that sometimes as I was growing up I questioned my reasons. Once it stopped being about my father and started being about me I think I realized how much I actually wanted to be a doctor for my own reasons. Reasons that I can't even begin to explain in a way that will make any sense to anyone. I used to joke about it in med school, it's never easy being a doctor's kid at a school where the professors used to work with your parent, nor is it easy when your residency starts in the hospital where your father is chief. Everyone said it being a good surgeon must be in the gene's. I always hoped it wasn't.