Why I Decided To Step Away From Medicine

On September '21, I decided to step away from medicine. Like many pre-med students, I had doubts about the field, and for so long I decided to just repress them. Those doubts, it turns out, were my mind showing me the red flags and eventually my body started shutting down. I couldn’t sleep, I wasn’t eating well, I was anxious constantly, and it all crescendoed in September of 2021 and I was completely burnt out.

This entire experience left me asking why and how I got into this situation, I wondered why I stayed in the sh*t show for so long. It took me many months but I have finally figured it out and have come to realize that stepping away from medicine was indeed the best decision I could have made.

The Build-Up

Growing up, my first love was the TV (the second was Emma Watson if you were wondering). It’s what got me better at speaking English, it was the first place where I could fully immerse myself in something and learn while also having a good as* time. My interests were always consumed in the TV format. When I was younger, I was interested in goofy content, so I would watch "The Master of Disguise" and Minecraft videos on loop. When I was in middle school and high school, I was making more friends and was interested in socializing, I watched shows like Friends, and How I met your mother. Near the end of high school, I fell in love with anatomy.

My high school teacher single-handedly introduced me to the coolest subject on the planet and inspired me to want to pursue medicine. Therefore, I watched tv-shows like House MD, Scrubs, and movies like "Patch Adams" which resonated with me. I began to really connect and see myself in the characters on the screen. I would catch myself daydreaming like JD, or trying to solve medical puzzles like House. Upon graduating from high school, I was convinced that Medicine was for me. I had some volunteer experience under my belt and I was ready to learn.

The Turning Points

There are many pros and cons when it comes to being pre-med, with the cons being fairly obvious. There are a lot of hours dedicated to getting the best possible grades. Often times friends took the back burner in order to get extra hours of studying in. There were many lonely days and tiresome all-nighters, but at the time it all seemed worth it for the pros. Becoming a doctor meant you would have a good income, you would be able to provide for your family, you would make meaningful impacts on people's lives, and the biggest pro for me, at that point in my life, was that there was a plan laid out for me. There was no real agonizing work required from me to figure out what the next steps should be, I just had to choose the classes and do the work. Hundreds of thousands of students have gone through the same path, and countless books have been written on how to be the ideal medical school candidate. No need to explore, I know everything that I had to do. From the outside, this seemed sweet, but in reality, all it did was stop me from developing any personality outside of being a good pre-med student.

Dedicating hours to studying had already led me to have very few friends, not exploring my interests (outside of subjects related to medicine) just ended up adding to the misery of my premed existence. I remember my senior year leading up to the MCAT, I was looking into questions that I would get asked during medical school interviews and one, in particular, stumped me; the easiest one. “Who are you, and why do you want to be a doctor?” Sh*t I had no idea who I was, I don't know, I am Karan.

I wanted to be a doctor because I thought the human body was cool and I wanted to help people. To all the med students reading this, you know how bad of an answer that is.

I still stayed with it cause I had convinced myself that this is what I had to do. I mean Dr.House! I could be like Turk or JD or Dr.Cox and live out the lives that I loved watching on television. Furthermore, if I do this I can finally make my parents proud of me. It all made sense, I just had to push through the pain. I hope you are seeing how incredibly wrong this mindset was. This stubbornness would eventually cause me to burn out.

Truth is, House MD and Scrubs, and any other medical tv show (looking at you grey's anatomy), do not reflect the realities of a hospital. It was a lot more paperwork than I had thought. The field is ruled by insurance companies, and while you do get to make a positive impact on someone, the work-life balance is so bad that the people that really need you around, your family, are the ones whose lives are negatively impacted by your absence. There was no way in h*ll that the need to please my parents and my yearning to become Dr.House would keep me going through the painstaking years of medical school. My "Why" just wasn't strong enough. 6 weeks into studying for my MCAT, I mentally broke down. I had no passion for the field, and no willingness to want to learn more about subjects that used to spark a burning fire in me. I had even stopped going to the doctors for regular checkups because every visit served as a reminder of what the future would be, and I did not like what I saw.

With the help of close friends and the best career counselor in the world, I finally made a healthy decision for my future and decided to stop pursuing medicine. It was hard, incredibly f*cking hard. Telling my family, and my friends, I felt like a total fraud. I felt like I had led people on, gotten them invested, and then let everyone down. I was nothing more than this big dull disappointment in people's lives. Not true though, I am the bomb.com

Eventually, that pain subsided and it was replaced by the feeling of being completely free. A weight was quite literally lifted off of my shoulders. Since this decision, I have been to the hospital a few times, and the anxiety that used to cripple me was replaced by tremendous relief. I had dodged a bullet, honestly many bullets, #matrix style.

Looking Forward

For a while, after this decision, I did feel very lost. In a matter of a few weeks, I  had lost a huge part of my identity. I was aimless, directionless, all the less’s. There was a period of depression where I was telling myself that I had no purpose. However, life is like a roller coaster, you have to go down before you can shoot back up.

I began developing my interests and forming new hobbies again. I picked up my ukulele, good for me but bad for my roommates. I picked up my camera and began talking to strangers, took a job at a rock climbing gym, started working out again, ran my first 10k, and began working on this blog. I started on the journey of self-development and learning how to become more confident and not people please all the time. Looking back at pictures of me during my premed years, or less than a year ago, I can see just how far I had let myself go. I am so glad that I burned out and took that wake-up call for what it was; an escape. As an overthinker there are many decisions I rethink and regret, but not this one.

The Take-Away

If you made it this far, and take something away from this story let it be this. Listen to your gut, if something feels wrong it probably is wrong. Take time to learn about yourself and what you like and want to do before you jump into a career. Yes, life is a race, but if you remember your Aesop fables, the turtle beats the hare. Take your time homie, read more books, try new things, explore new places, and meet new people, that will make you happier than rushing to get a career and your life set asap ever will. I am so grateful for all the people in my life that helped me realize that when I was at my lowest.

At the end of the day, I am just a 22-year-old dude still learning about life. You don’t have to listen to me, but if anything here resonated with you please subscribe and stay in touch for more 🙂

Much love buddy and see you in the next post <3