ABSTRACT
Identities have relatively distinct temporal careers and individuals must grapple with the future in scheduling the expression of certain identities over others. While students' private lives are inundated by training, the inundation is scheduled at times and thus predictable. Students are aware of which clerkships are noted for taking all their time and energy, and which are more reasonable. Students come to envision that the so-called payoff after graduation does not relieve the conditions that bring about the inundation of their private life or significantly change their relationships with others in private life. Given the prospect of continued inundation with medicine into the indefinite future, students and their families begin to foresee that, in many dimensions of private life, the problems and processes of family life in medical school are not affected by graduation. With few exceptions students' selection of their specializations is a compromise between their future professional and private lives.
