"Dream Deferred"

As I look at the amount of work I need to do before I can apply to medical school, I wonder if I will ever apply, get in and then find what I am seeking. I have been trying to analyze my motivations to go back to school. Frankly, I do not understand them.

When I was fresh out of high school, I seemed to be really focused. I knew where I was heading with certainty. Now, everything seems gray. When I feel this way, I like to read "Harlem" (sometimes called "Dream Deferred") from Langston Hughes' Montage of a Dream Deferred (1951), from which a line was taken for the title of the play A Raisin in the Sun.

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
and then run?

Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?