Dr. Joe Saldivar found out the hard way that being a real medical doctor was not at all like what he saw on “St. Elsewhere.”
But the short stint in a hospital led to a teaching career that he has never regretted.
Saldivar, Bakersfield College’s Professor of the Year recipient, remembers his days as a pre-med student at Fresno State University. He spent two weeks “job-shadowing,” which was following a doctor around in a hospital. To his dismay, Saldivar faced people who were gravely ill, grieving families worried about their loved ones’ conditions and how to pay medical bills. Saldivar realized that he did not have the right personality to be a practicing medical doctor.
“It would tear my heart apart if I had to tell a patient’s family a loved one is dying,” Saldivar said.
According to Saldivar, a doctor must be caring but also distance himself or herself emotionally from a patient. Doctors must also, according to Saldivar, steel themselves from the possible disappointments of performing surgery.
“You (a doctor) can experience the highs of doing your best (during a surgical procedure), and that might not be good enough,” Saldivar said.
The next stop on Saldivar’s college odyssey toward finding his true calling was at UC Irvine as a graduate student studying nerve regeneration with an eye toward a career in medical research. However, as a grad student also doing assistant teaching, Saldivar found teaching much more engaging than medical research.
“I would perform an experiment in a lab, and then I’d tell a class what I found, and I’d say, ‘You’ll be reading about this in a textbook in a few years,’ ” Saldivar said. The rapport he experienced with students was encouraging, and his joy in the experience greatly surpassed his doctoring and researching experiences, he said.
Saldivar, a Porterville native, liked teaching so much, that it led to him reneging on a promise to his wife – an Orange County native he met while a grad student at Irvine – that they would not settle in Bakersfield.
Eight years ago, Saldivar was interviewed for a teaching position at BC. His intention was to just get interviewing experience, but then he was offered the job at BC.
Despite their lack of enthusiasm for settling in Bakersfield, Saldivar’s wife urged him to take the job since teaching jobs are so difficult to acquire. However, according to Saldivar, his wife “cried during the first four months” of their new residence, which started in August, because of the brutal Bakersfield heat.
But, according to Saldivar, Bakersfield “grew” on them, and they appreciated the affordable housing. Saldivar also found working at BC congenial to his tastes.
At BC, Saldivar works with “great colleagues.” And although he savors the autonomy in his work, at the same time, he enjoys the “support of faculty and staff.”
In the morning, Saldivar says he thinks, “I get to go to work, it’s not ‘I have to go to work.'”
Saldivar, who teaches Biology 11 and Biology 3B, says his ultimate goal as an instructor is to get his students to think critically, so that when they enter the working world, they can make wise decisions in any given profession.