My son the doctor?

I know Friday was their first day off school but with my MIL in town and Richard's birthday it all kinda blended into a long weekend. Today seemed more like their first official day off and we did a lot of NOTHING.
Well, not nothing. Nate and I had an appointment to meet with the counselor at the middle school he will be attending in the fall.
There were all kinds of forms to fill out and one of them asked about what career path he has chosen (in 6th grade, really? ~ I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up!). He told the counselor he'd like to be a surgeon. You could have knocked me over with a feather. In the waiting room, he was looking at law enforcement. I didn't make a comment. She spoke mostly with him and they mapped out a schedule for middle school (which includes taking some high school courses) and even high school with the possibility of getting his 2yr jr college degree at the same time as his high school degree.
Don't get me wrong, I think it is wonderful ~ but seriously ~ this is the child who will do the bare minimum on a project at most. He tries to blow off his school work on a regular basis. Richard and I joke that we have had to drag him through school.
I know he can do it, if he decides to. He is absolutely smart enough. It's his drive I worry about. On the way home we talked about it and I told him that I thought that it was a wonderful goal and that I would help him in any way possible but also it meant really getting his act together, being organized and getting lots more A's than we've been seeing in the past.
Could this be the start of the new and improved Nate? We can always hope ~ not that the old one was bad.. actually he's an amazing young man and I really am so proud of him. But in some ways he's a very typical preteen boy and that's okay too. I'll tell you one thing, he'll make a really cute doctor!