non-profit?

this is quite perplexing. while attempting to create my profile, i scrolled down through the list of options and found...every occupation except my own, which i thought was rather commonplace. or, at the very least, worthy of a spot on the scroll-down list of occupations.

healthcare. i mean, how many hundreds of thousands of people are employed in the health professions, not to mention the allied health professions? well, stymied as i was, i finally chose "non-profit", as at this point in my career, that's actually true.

i once worked with a surgeon who claimed that, "there are three professions in this world...law, clergy and medicine." i was a fourth year med student at the time and would have been inspired by that sentiment had he not been using it as justification why we should NOT have rules about excessive work hours as residents. now, half-way through my intern year, i am the beneficiary (?) of those work hour rules, but find myself actually aspiring to become the sort of doctor he was talking about, the kind of doctor who is not ruled by shifts and billing and reimbursement, the kind of doctor who retains that bit of altruism that struggles up through the cynicism that pervades modern medicine.

but, truth be told, i wish i had a dime for every time some old-school attending started a sentence with the phrase, "well, when i was a resident..."