"Volunteering" - the most misleading term ever

This is just me letting off some steam. Volunteering is to willingly work at an organization without being paid. And I thought, growing up, that volunteering is "voluntary", because that's the root of the word. So I never bothered to volunteer in highschool, and in university. I thought that the experience I get from working would be similar to experiences gotten from volunteering. And in a way... it's true. You improve your interpersonal skills no matter if you're working or if you're volunteering. But I have found out too late that if you want to get into health care related fields, you'd have to volunteer. It's mandatory. Volunteering is involuntary and compulsory, which goes entirely against the spirit of volunteering. Like, volunteering should be done with the intent of helping people without any personal gain. But if entering the health care field is set up in such a way that it makes volunteering a requirement to get into public health care programs, then people would volunteer with the intent of making it into the programs they want to join, and not necessarily with the intent to help people.

Don't get me wrong, there are nice people out there who volunteer for the right reasons, and they get into med school or whatnot for the right reasons. But there are also those who volunteer for the sake of getting into programs, and not to help people. I must say, now that I look back on it, I'd probably be a wrong person to enter the public health field... I think. I'm not sure. I'm certainly a kind person... but I don't know if you can call me selfless in that I'll be willing to help anyone. I'm selfless for my family, and maybe my close friends, but I certainly won't give much thought about the troubles of strangers, which is basically the spirit of public health, right? Public health requires you to be concerned for the well being of strangers. And I guess since I haven't volunteered, I don't know the degree of my concern for the  misfortunes of people I don't know.

But whatever the case is, no one told me volunteering was a must to get into the public health field, so now I'm like a fish out of water if I want to pursue that field. I've still got the pharmaceutical business/sales, and I still got bioinformatics. I'm not exactly dead yet, and I'll keep fighting for myself and for the person I'll eventually marry.