Putting Things in Perspective

Zachary L. Bercu ’04 has a psychology thesis proposal due on Monday, two presentations to prepare for class and several unwritten papers looming. But at the top of his mind is tomorrow’s test.

“The pressure is on, we’re about to unleash the energy,” says Bercu. “This month is one of the toughest in my career at Harvard, trying to juggle all of these things at once, but that’s just the nature of the beast.”

This final qualification sums up Bercu’s attitude, as he puts a positive spin on the extreme stress that is part of the pre-med experience.

He is sure of himself, he says, because he has thought so deeply about the path he has chosen.

Although his father is a doctor, Bercu says he is not one of those students who always knew he wanted to go into medicine.

“My parents have never pressured me into any careers,” he says, although he came to Harvard thinking medicine was a possibility.

He says that as a first-year at Harvard, he was continually encouraged to consider and reconsider his decision to go pre-med. In the second half of his first year, Bercu declared psychology as his concentration, instead of a more typical pre-med major, like biology or biochemistry. His choice of concentration meant that he had to fulfill the pre-med science requirements with his electives.

By sophomore year, Bercu says he began to fear that medicine wouldn’t allow him to do everything he wanted to do. Medicine was a stable and secure career path for him, but he wanted to ensure that he did not become a doctor for these reasons alone.

“You realize there’s a whole world of opportunity out there, you want to feel like you’re unique, and there’s a real fear of becoming mundane later in life,” Bercu says.

Bercu says he toyed with the idea of going into many other fields, especially computing, which he enjoys as a hobby. He says he worried that going into medicine would preclude him from traveling extensively in the future, another favorite activity.

He says he hesitated to make a decision through sophomore year. This year, he says, it was time to end the procrastination.

“Junior year is like the night before the paper is due. I had to stop procrastinating, and I needed to figure out what it is I want to do,” Bercu says.

He says he realized that he had been unrealistic in his assessment of life after Harvard, and decided that perhaps being a doctor could allow him the creative freedom he craved.

“I had a lot of misconceptions about medicine,” he says. “It’s not as restrictive as I thought.”