Welcome!

[Written on August 10th, 2020]

Hi,

I am pleased to share with you that today is my first day as a medical student in Arizona, USA. Yes, this is quite the pivot.

On Friday, I made the move from Toronto to Phoenix with two checked bags, a carry-on, and a backpack. So far, the transition has been manageable. I’ve been buying furniture, cooking, and talking to my friends and family who are integral members of my support system.

Since I received my acceptance to Midwestern University, the move has been looming over my head every day for months. But today, there is no more anticipation, and it feels good to leave that constant psychological burden behind – it was exhausting.

On the topic of leaving things behind, I am equally happy to have survived the crucible which is the medical school application process. On the flight to Phoenix, I was reminiscing about a time in early 2019. It was the back-end of winter with sunsets in the late afternoon. Around this time I had decided to apply to medical school a second time, and it would be the last time I could use my MCAT score before it expired. After work, I went to the nearest Starbucks to chip away at the application process. At this stage, I was making a list in Excel of every medical school in North America that I could apply to. I wanted to shoot my shot everywhere. I was going onto every school’s website and taking note of their GPA/MCAT requirements, prerequisite courses, whether they accept international students (in the case of schools in the US), and their contact information.

It was only an hour or two after work and already pitch-black outside, I had the usual ninety-minute commute back home ahead of me, and I remember leaning back against my seat and wondering how the hell I was going to find the time and energy to get through this. In my first application attempt, I was fresh out of university with very few, if any, demands on my time. This time around, I was working a full-time job, commuting 2.5H per day, was in the middle of a gym-everyday-for-a-year challenge, and still maintaining the Chemistryfamous store.

So I started making moves. I quite literally moved to Toronto from the suburbs. My commute remained just as long, but instead of driving, I was able to travel using the subway. I then switched phone carriers from Rogers to Freedom because Freedom offers cellular service in the subway. True freedom. Now I was able to tether my phone to my MacBook. I bought earplugs to drown out the sound of the subway and other passengers to focus on my writing. I skipped morning coffees so that I could have both hands available for typing. I stomached the motion sickness I felt from focusing on a laptop screen in a moving subway on the way to work and then back. This allowed me to turn my commute hours into productive hours.

After dinner, I worked on applications some more before hitting the gym and going to sleep. And, my condominium building had a small gym, so now I had no commute for my daily workouts either; I would just head downstairs at the end of my day to get it in.

I used my lunch breaks at my 9-to-5 to call universities and clarify their prerequisites, citizenship requirements, coordinate reference letters. On weekends, I would continue chipping away at the applications. Yes, I may have spent an excessive amount of time wordsmithing, but I wanted it to be perfect. This was my last (realistic) chance.

Even after submitting the applications, I spent an unreasonably excessive amount of time preparing for my interviews. You’d think the suffering ends when you’ve submitted the last application, but no, a new kind of hustle begins. When I received my interview invitations, I became a legitimate background-check-professional when learning about these universities. I collected as much information as I could possibly get my hands on. I read their websites, forums, spoke to alumni, the whole nine.

Once I completed my primary research, I drilled mock interviews where I’d get suited up and video tape myself answering interview questions (I used Anki to present questions in a random order from a bank of roughly one hundred questions so that I wouldn’t end up memorizing answers to a small handful of specific prompts). I used the video tape to judge myself from the perspective of the admissions committee. It is awkward but very eye-opening. I practiced my interviewing skills in the mornings before work, after work, during lunch, while on walks, in the bathroom – pretty much anytime I had a few minutes where I could talk to myself out loud. 

The applications were also extremely expensive. The cost of the applications themselves, the secondary applications to select schools, the flights/hotels/cars for interviews, and the other little administrative costs all together summed to several thousand dollars. By the time I had spent my last dollar on the application process, I had no savings and my credit card was maxed out by the time I had paid for the last application. 

On top of these monetary costs, there is also opportunity cost. It was 9 months from first starting on my applications to getting accepted to Midwestern University. It is a bit annoying to think about what else I could have been doing as a bachelor in my early 20’s living in downtown Toronto.

A part of this process also involved resigning from Astellas. I had a good thing going for me there: decent pay, extremely flexible hours, manageable work, lovely colleagues, and a trajectory towards a successful and comfortable career. I would be lying if I said I didn’t have doubts about leaving the pharmaceutical industry for medicine.

As I write this, I am taken aback by the sheer magnitude of the sacrifices I have made just to get to this point. Sometimes I wonder: And for what?

I would say that a factor in my decision to pursue medicine is that I think there’s value in accomplishing difficult things. For me, the experience of writing this post is proof-of-concept – Although the content here is regarding the hardships and challenges I encountered over the last eighteen months, when I reminisce on these experiences I feel pride and happiness. I think that being able to look back at what you’ve endured and overcome gives you a kind of genuine confidence. I anticipate that I’ll feel the same way at the end of this, and that’s really what I’m looking forward to.