So I got my results today and I don’t know how to tell my Asian parents I failed all of them. The eldest child. top scorer in high school. Med life fucked me up. With any luck my plane back to crash.
I want to say something deep that’ll lift your spirits up but I’m coming up blank. I’m in medical school. I’ve been in medical school since 2014. Mine is a 6 year program and I’m still in my 4th year. I’ve failed twice since I started. It’s been an exhausting and emotionally draining experience for me. The first time I failed hit me like a brick. I might not have been on top of my class in high school but I was an honors student. If there’s anything my teenaged self had confidence in, it was my brain. And I failed miserably in my first year. I didn’t know how to deal with it. I just bottled it in, shrunk into a shell, ate my way through depression and isolated myself. I’m African and we Africans share the same thoughts as do Asians – Medicine, Law, Engineering or failure. While my Parents never really hounded me about my grades, I still didn’t know how to go back home and give them bad news. So, I avoided their calls even though I was continents away from home.
Two years later, after a very rough exam two months, I failed the 2nd time. It hurt more this time around. The depression I’d try to keep at bay had crawled out and ate my self esteem and confidence away. So, no matter how hard I studied (which was hard cause even getting to study was fucking difficult), when I got to the exam, I blanked. I’d barely passed (like pity passed cause my exams are oral and I had given up) some of my courses and had my final one when I failed it.
I can write thousands of words on how med school has fucked me up and I wouldn’t be able to write everything down.
For someone who had never failed, failing twice hurt more than I thought it could. I’m still recovering. I haven’t gotten over it yet. I’ve finally gotten off my ass and I’m crawling. I know, logically, I have nothing to be ashamed of but I still cower when I see my initial classmates in their final year. But I’m making small progress and that’s all that matters. I’ve learnt to go at my own pace and try not to focus on others. It’s tough but I’m trying. I’m in a much better place now.
I hope you can take time to think through if the med life is for you. Not because of smarts or anything (because even the high-fliers suffer burn-outs and depression) but if it’s worth it. I’ve lost classmates to suicide since I’ve been here. Your mental health is not worth it!! Unless it’s something you want to do, it’s not worth it. I feel like I’ve poured too much of my energy, tears and blood into med school that I won’t quit. Luckily, the higher I get, the more I feel like I’ll be okay but I know people in their final and penultimate years who are depressed and want nothing to do medicine once they graduate. I repeat, the medical life ISN’T WORTH YOUR MENTAL HEALTH SUFFERING!!
I hope you find a way to tell your parents. It might not seem like it but it’ll pass. Trust me! I had to eventually face my parents.
I don’t mean to depress you even more but I feel like by honestly telling you my experience, you could be comforted by the fact that you’re not alone.
If you ever want to rant about the medical life, feel free to do it on my wall. Sending hugs 🤗
You can always do something else. It’s daunting, but you can always start over. Medical school has a knack of making you feel like an idiot, but you are not! You’re still intelligent, and you can do anything you want! One of my friends in HS was on track to be a doctor and hit a wall—he just didn’t want to do it anymore. You know what he did? He dropped out of medical school and became a professional life coach. He is hired by companies and individuals trying to reinvent themselves and helps them find other fields to work in which use their specific talents and abilities and academic achievements. He’s done TED talks and is based out of Europe now. Super amazing guy, but doing something far from what his first career choice was.
I’m happy things worked out for your friend. I’ve always had the optimum respect for people who have had the courage to quit the medical life especially when they’ve invested time, money and energy already.
I know a lot of people I started school with that quit to pursue something else and they’re incredibly happy now. I also know people who recently graduated but have no plan to continue down the medical path. An acquaintance of mine is currently pursuing photography after graduating. He’d found photography after he started medical school and had made a career out of it while in med school enough for him to work outside Hungary (Germany…) as a photographer. I love hearing news like that. I know someone who went on to pursue culinary school or open her bakery.
For me, it’s a different case. I don’t know what I’d do outside medicine. In the semester preceding the 2nd time I failed, I’d had a breakdown. I hadn’t gone to see a therapist or gotten help for my depression. Even though I’d started to feel better but because I hadn’t gotten the help I needed, I found myself crawling back into the hole that was depression. I remember finding it hard to do anything, crying myself to sleep and declaring to my friends that I was tired. I broke down in their apartment that I was going to quit. I’d had enough but I was going to finish the semester and regardless, if I passed or not, I was going to quit.
The exam period came and it was hell for me. I was going to quit anyway but I was going to quit with a bang! So I studied my ass off. I really tried but I kept failing because I didn’t have the confidence to give answers I knew as my exams are oral. So, that summer, my father had an intervention after I’d called him crying that I’d failed again. He told me I had to come back home. That nothing was worth me feeling this way. That it wasn’t the end of the world. I knew that it wasn’t the end of the world but it didn’t stop me from feeling so useless.
I fought with my dad that summer. He wanted me to quit and I was adamant I was going to continue. It was a big fight. He even threatened to stop funding my education. I had to get third parties involved to beg my father on my behalf. It was later I found out through my mum that while I cried, they spent sleepless nights crying too. They’d sent their kid alone to an unknown country at the age of sixteen. I wasn’t the only one suffering.
If you ask me why I didn’t quit, I can’t tell you. I’d been screaming all year that I was done and when it came down to it, I wasn’t willing to let go. I can’t deny that the feeling of having nothing else to do with my life and the fear of returning back home to questions like ‘why are you back?’ didn’t influence my stubbornness.
I don’t regret not quitting because things did get better. I can’t explain how or when the shift came but things got way better. I’m more confident in myself now. I haven’t failed an exam in 2 years.
….And I think the change happened when we switched to the clinical years. The more time I spent in the hospital, the more I felt I’d made a choice I won’t regret. I don’t know what kind of doctor I want to be. I just know I want to be a doctor and that I’d enjoy it. I can’t say that my stubbornness didn’t play a role in me insisting on this medical path.
I also can’t say that had I quit, I wouldn’t have found something else to do – something that’ll make me infinitely happier than I’d be in the medical world. I also can’t say that after I’ve become a doctor, I won’t find something else to do. I really don’t know anything – not even what specialty I want to go into! But I know that I enjoy being in the hospital. In that sense, I feel lucky that my stubbornness and unwillingness to let go isn’t naught! Hopefully, even after becoming a doctor, I continue to feel this way.
I know way too many people who don’t already feel this way and that’s why I tell anybody who asks me for advice. ‘This isn’t all there is to life. It takes courage to quit and you quitting doesn’t make you a failure. You’ll find something to do! And the years you spent in medical school in the meantime isn’t useless either. It gave you perspective and experience. It’s better to quit now than to keep tilling soil that’ll give you nothing but barrenness, sorrow, and a lack of fulfillment all at the expense of your mental health, physical health and relationships. If medicine isn’t something you want, it’s not worth it!’
Didn’t expect it to be this long and I applaud you if you even read it through.
I’m proud of you! Fighting! I know you will find your niche in medicine-we all do eventually. There are so many options, so so many types of temperaments and people in this field. It sounds like your experience has made you stronger. I teach medical students now and my road to my specialty is not typical either. I would have never thought I’d be back teaching students either, but here I am.
One of the hardest things for someone is failing, especially when you’ve never failed before, especially when you’re basically an adult before you have the experience of failing. It seems like the whole world is crashing down. I’ve known MD and Ph.D students who have never failed until they get to post grad years and it’s stunning, people are suicidal, early 20’s and thinking their lives are over. IT IS JUST THE BEGINNING. What did you do when you fell as a toddler? You got back up. Did you parents disown you for falling down? Were they disappointed you fell? They were probably more scared that you were hurt. Medical school is crazy hard. After my gross anatomy final my first year, I was 110% confident I failed miserably and my first stop, even before doing to see my parents, was my old university professor’s house—both his sons were friends of mine and one was ahead of me in medical school. I cried it out in front of him and his wife and asked them how I would tell my parents. His advice: You can retake tests, retake your year, until you pass. Unless you give up, no one even has to know you failed. You haven’t failed until you give up. Chin up, be proud you’ve made it this far, get back up, walk again.
Wang in the north
December 5, 2019 at 9:38 AM
So I got my results today and I don’t know how to tell my Asian parents I failed all of them. The eldest child. top scorer in high school. Med life fucked me up. With any luck my plane back to crash.
blnmom
December 5, 2019 at 11:41 AM
I went through sort of a similar situation. Try not to stress too much about it, it’ll suck for a while, but then it’ll pass.
IamPilgrim
December 5, 2019 at 1:04 PM
I want to say something deep that’ll lift your spirits up but I’m coming up blank. I’m in medical school. I’ve been in medical school since 2014. Mine is a 6 year program and I’m still in my 4th year. I’ve failed twice since I started. It’s been an exhausting and emotionally draining experience for me. The first time I failed hit me like a brick. I might not have been on top of my class in high school but I was an honors student. If there’s anything my teenaged self had confidence in, it was my brain. And I failed miserably in my first year. I didn’t know how to deal with it. I just bottled it in, shrunk into a shell, ate my way through depression and isolated myself. I’m African and we Africans share the same thoughts as do Asians – Medicine, Law, Engineering or failure. While my Parents never really hounded me about my grades, I still didn’t know how to go back home and give them bad news. So, I avoided their calls even though I was continents away from home.
Two years later, after a very rough exam two months, I failed the 2nd time. It hurt more this time around. The depression I’d try to keep at bay had crawled out and ate my self esteem and confidence away. So, no matter how hard I studied (which was hard cause even getting to study was fucking difficult), when I got to the exam, I blanked. I’d barely passed (like pity passed cause my exams are oral and I had given up) some of my courses and had my final one when I failed it.
I can write thousands of words on how med school has fucked me up and I wouldn’t be able to write everything down.
For someone who had never failed, failing twice hurt more than I thought it could. I’m still recovering. I haven’t gotten over it yet. I’ve finally gotten off my ass and I’m crawling. I know, logically, I have nothing to be ashamed of but I still cower when I see my initial classmates in their final year. But I’m making small progress and that’s all that matters. I’ve learnt to go at my own pace and try not to focus on others. It’s tough but I’m trying. I’m in a much better place now.
I hope you can take time to think through if the med life is for you. Not because of smarts or anything (because even the high-fliers suffer burn-outs and depression) but if it’s worth it. I’ve lost classmates to suicide since I’ve been here. Your mental health is not worth it!! Unless it’s something you want to do, it’s not worth it. I feel like I’ve poured too much of my energy, tears and blood into med school that I won’t quit. Luckily, the higher I get, the more I feel like I’ll be okay but I know people in their final and penultimate years who are depressed and want nothing to do medicine once they graduate. I repeat, the medical life ISN’T WORTH YOUR MENTAL HEALTH SUFFERING!!
I hope you find a way to tell your parents. It might not seem like it but it’ll pass. Trust me! I had to eventually face my parents.
IamPilgrim
December 5, 2019 at 1:06 PM
I don’t mean to depress you even more but I feel like by honestly telling you my experience, you could be comforted by the fact that you’re not alone.
If you ever want to rant about the medical life, feel free to do it on my wall. Sending hugs 🤗
Ally
December 5, 2019 at 2:50 PM
You can always do something else. It’s daunting, but you can always start over. Medical school has a knack of making you feel like an idiot, but you are not! You’re still intelligent, and you can do anything you want! One of my friends in HS was on track to be a doctor and hit a wall—he just didn’t want to do it anymore. You know what he did? He dropped out of medical school and became a professional life coach. He is hired by companies and individuals trying to reinvent themselves and helps them find other fields to work in which use their specific talents and abilities and academic achievements. He’s done TED talks and is based out of Europe now. Super amazing guy, but doing something far from what his first career choice was.
IamPilgrim
December 6, 2019 at 3:29 AM
I’m happy things worked out for your friend. I’ve always had the optimum respect for people who have had the courage to quit the medical life especially when they’ve invested time, money and energy already.
I know a lot of people I started school with that quit to pursue something else and they’re incredibly happy now. I also know people who recently graduated but have no plan to continue down the medical path. An acquaintance of mine is currently pursuing photography after graduating. He’d found photography after he started medical school and had made a career out of it while in med school enough for him to work outside Hungary (Germany…) as a photographer. I love hearing news like that. I know someone who went on to pursue culinary school or open her bakery.
For me, it’s a different case. I don’t know what I’d do outside medicine. In the semester preceding the 2nd time I failed, I’d had a breakdown. I hadn’t gone to see a therapist or gotten help for my depression. Even though I’d started to feel better but because I hadn’t gotten the help I needed, I found myself crawling back into the hole that was depression. I remember finding it hard to do anything, crying myself to sleep and declaring to my friends that I was tired. I broke down in their apartment that I was going to quit. I’d had enough but I was going to finish the semester and regardless, if I passed or not, I was going to quit.
The exam period came and it was hell for me. I was going to quit anyway but I was going to quit with a bang! So I studied my ass off. I really tried but I kept failing because I didn’t have the confidence to give answers I knew as my exams are oral. So, that summer, my father had an intervention after I’d called him crying that I’d failed again. He told me I had to come back home. That nothing was worth me feeling this way. That it wasn’t the end of the world. I knew that it wasn’t the end of the world but it didn’t stop me from feeling so useless.
I fought with my dad that summer. He wanted me to quit and I was adamant I was going to continue. It was a big fight. He even threatened to stop funding my education. I had to get third parties involved to beg my father on my behalf. It was later I found out through my mum that while I cried, they spent sleepless nights crying too. They’d sent their kid alone to an unknown country at the age of sixteen. I wasn’t the only one suffering.
If you ask me why I didn’t quit, I can’t tell you. I’d been screaming all year that I was done and when it came down to it, I wasn’t willing to let go. I can’t deny that the feeling of having nothing else to do with my life and the fear of returning back home to questions like ‘why are you back?’ didn’t influence my stubbornness.
I don’t regret not quitting because things did get better. I can’t explain how or when the shift came but things got way better. I’m more confident in myself now. I haven’t failed an exam in 2 years.
IamPilgrim
December 6, 2019 at 3:29 AM
….And I think the change happened when we switched to the clinical years. The more time I spent in the hospital, the more I felt I’d made a choice I won’t regret. I don’t know what kind of doctor I want to be. I just know I want to be a doctor and that I’d enjoy it. I can’t say that my stubbornness didn’t play a role in me insisting on this medical path.
I also can’t say that had I quit, I wouldn’t have found something else to do – something that’ll make me infinitely happier than I’d be in the medical world. I also can’t say that after I’ve become a doctor, I won’t find something else to do. I really don’t know anything – not even what specialty I want to go into! But I know that I enjoy being in the hospital. In that sense, I feel lucky that my stubbornness and unwillingness to let go isn’t naught! Hopefully, even after becoming a doctor, I continue to feel this way.
I know way too many people who don’t already feel this way and that’s why I tell anybody who asks me for advice. ‘This isn’t all there is to life. It takes courage to quit and you quitting doesn’t make you a failure. You’ll find something to do! And the years you spent in medical school in the meantime isn’t useless either. It gave you perspective and experience. It’s better to quit now than to keep tilling soil that’ll give you nothing but barrenness, sorrow, and a lack of fulfillment all at the expense of your mental health, physical health and relationships. If medicine isn’t something you want, it’s not worth it!’
Didn’t expect it to be this long and I applaud you if you even read it through.
Ally
December 6, 2019 at 4:54 AM
I’m proud of you! Fighting! I know you will find your niche in medicine-we all do eventually. There are so many options, so so many types of temperaments and people in this field. It sounds like your experience has made you stronger. I teach medical students now and my road to my specialty is not typical either. I would have never thought I’d be back teaching students either, but here I am.
Ally
December 5, 2019 at 2:34 PM
One of the hardest things for someone is failing, especially when you’ve never failed before, especially when you’re basically an adult before you have the experience of failing. It seems like the whole world is crashing down. I’ve known MD and Ph.D students who have never failed until they get to post grad years and it’s stunning, people are suicidal, early 20’s and thinking their lives are over. IT IS JUST THE BEGINNING. What did you do when you fell as a toddler? You got back up. Did you parents disown you for falling down? Were they disappointed you fell? They were probably more scared that you were hurt. Medical school is crazy hard. After my gross anatomy final my first year, I was 110% confident I failed miserably and my first stop, even before doing to see my parents, was my old university professor’s house—both his sons were friends of mine and one was ahead of me in medical school. I cried it out in front of him and his wife and asked them how I would tell my parents. His advice: You can retake tests, retake your year, until you pass. Unless you give up, no one even has to know you failed. You haven’t failed until you give up. Chin up, be proud you’ve made it this far, get back up, walk again.
Ally
December 5, 2019 at 2:51 PM
And ditto if you want to rant, just tag me! @ally-le