Everything I regret about my gap year

will it make you not want to go back to medicine and i will say hell yes it did for me i would just say it's a bit of a regret i lost on that said what the hell am i supposed to do which was the case for me just as hard to convince yourself to go back than it is to convince yourself to take the gap year which is saying something hi if you're new to this channel my name is elizabeth and i am usually a medical student in london last year i interrupted my studies and took a gap year i have applied for an interruption from studies from university which means that i will not be going back to university this august and ever since i get so many questions asked on how the experience has been whether i regret it and all the pros and cons and how to manage things in this time so i thought i would compile all your questions together and create a video now all the questions that were asked to me were around regrets so i've divided this video into two parts the first will be the regrets or potential regrets and how i address these um in terms of my personal gap year and the second part will be the huge benefits or the things that i think are um that i don't regret doing this gap year for one major thing i want to say before i start this video is that everything that i benefit from or suffer from during my gap year is a hundred percent due to the very specific conditions of my life that i am in and honestly just due to my luck so i just want to say everything that i am explaining or describing please take with a pinch of salt and they're definitely not recommendations just a very very raw and perhaps too transparent exploration into how this journey has been for me so just for a bit of context before i get started i have finished my three years of medical school i am currently taking an interruption gap year and that means that i will have two more years left when i return back to medical school next year hopefully let's see so yeah that is the stage of a medical training that i am at the moment and during this gap year i have been potentially working on quite a few things i'm a strategy consultant most of the time i also work on this youtube channel i have a few newsletters a podcast of my own and also i just launched a course of my own so there's quite a few things going on there in the background so it hasn't necessarily been a lot of time off but it's definitely been a break from my studies so let's jump in firstly the main theme that came out of why to regret a gap year and why potentially regret gap year was the idea of taking time out and a lot of panic of letting time rush past me and getting older and all of this stuff this was i think a huge issue for me to start with medical school so i am a older student i took three gap years before starting university anyway and these were not by choice i really really wanted to go to university immediately after my high school however due to very specific conditions at the time i had to keep deferring my place in university for three years so i was already very very proud of the idea of my life is running past me my peers are graduating my peers are getting married my peers are in work already and earning so much money and buying houses and i'm just sitting here waiting to start university i think that eventually this does tend to fade a bit when i was first considering my gap year this was one of the most acute things that was on my mind at the time so last summer when i was really considering my gap year i was just counting the numbers of how old i would be when i would graduate and then just thinking oh can i afford this like extra space in my life and just pause everything and everything's just going to take a year longer why would i do this let's just power through and there's this huge notion of powering through and getting it finished and my perspective has completely shift on that right now so so so much i think that that is absolute [ __ ] i think that there is genuinely no rush because where are you trying to get to i think very very often especially in medicine there's this view of because you have so many milestones that you need to hit like there's the next exam and then there's the next exam and your next portfolio and your training pathway and everything is divided into two years plus four years plus five years so it seems as though these things are just milestones that you need to reach and tick box exercises that you need to do these are very what i like to use this is book that i read on finite infinite games it's a very finite game it's you do something and you complete it while i think life is more of an infinite game if you just take a step back and what i did is i took a step back and i looked at the whole perspective and i was like where am i trying to go and there was nowhere specific i was trying to go i'm not trying to reach a certain thing to me there's no inherent pleasure in kind of graduating and becoming a doctor and oh my god i did this and then oh my god i finished my junior doctor training and oh my god i'm a consultant now that necessarily doesn't give me too much pleasure it did at one point of my life that imagining that but now it's rather the point of my life is for me to be healthy and happy and at peace and whatever that looks like a year here two years there graduating at 35 maybe i do an extra year and then i take a gap year and i do an extra year it doesn't matter it really really doesn't matter to me i think that there is no rush and i need to let go of this grasping onto things not only in medicine but in so many different aspects of my life and letting go of this control has been a very good exercise for me to kind of be a bit more at peace with where i'm going so i think it was just the perspective shift of where am i trying to go and why does this number matter what if you were suddenly told that i i don't know um actually there was an issue with your birth certificate and you were born three years ago would you have a like phoebe and friends when she told that hey um the sister told her that she was a year older and she was like oh my god i'm already 30. that was such a difficult situation for her but imagine that was for you in the end of the day the numbers just don't matter there is no rush to get anywhere you could be a year older a year younger i think letting go of the number game is a very important exercise to do as soon as possible because at some point because of society we get uh we start seeing threes in front of things and fours in front of things and thinking that oh my god time has passed but that was a very wrong long long ramble already oh my god this is going to be a long video in the sense of yep these things just don't matter and the sooner i realize that the better for me and i've fully embraced it there's no rush it's not about the numbers this feels right right now or i need to do this right now there's no choice let's just do it and embrace it and move on the next question that came up a lot and was related to this was the panic of my friends graduating first or having no friends next year and i kind of cheated on this because after the third year in medical school the majority of people will intercalate which means that they will take a year out to do another degree and then they will return back to university so a lot of the people that i was in my year with have chosen this a lot haven't especially because a lot of my friends tend to be postgraduates so they already have a degree so they just chose to continue a lot of them will now be graduating a year earlier but a lot of them will be at the same stage with me having said that even if no one was there again it was so important for me to take this gap at this time and i really felt that it was the right thing so i don't think friendships are dependent on kind of the situation that you are in as much if there are true friendships if that makes sense and especially in medicine you don't get any choice you get placed in different hospitals across different sites and even when you're sitting in exams very often you don't see your friends so i don't think there would be a big difference i'm still in contact with my friends so i don't think it would be an issue in that sort of way yes sometimes i feel perhaps actually when i see my friends graduate next year i'll feel like oh that could have been me but um for now i just feel that that's not a main issue and yeah i don't worry about that as much the next question i got asked a lot was on not having a purpose and purpose in general i think this is only an issue if the majority of your purpose or your purpose comes from medicine and suddenly that's not there and you think what the hell am i supposed to do which was the case for me because so much of my life was built around medicine and when i thought that i wasn't doing this anymore for a moment i did have the sense of oh my god what now where does this go and what if i don't return what will happen um i think it's a dangerous place to be but it's a very healthy exercise to do in the long term and this is potentially something that i would recommend lightly to people who are in medicine to kind of i think just even realize for a second how much of your identity and self-worth is tied around this thing that you're doing because you never want that to be just one thing i think um i got told this by a doctor once and it made me cry um it was a one-to-one that i had with a doctor and she she just sat me down she said elizabeth you are so much more than your accomplishments i don't know why it was the first time at the age of 24 that someone had told this to me but it really hit me so hard and i just spent so much time thinking about this because i realized there was almost nothing there apart from my accomplishments that determined my self-worth almost i think leaving medicine this was very very healthy because it made me realize that no actually you have value as a person in your own right and these are just things that you do and you might do them very well and they may help other people that's fine but that doesn't add or take away from who you are as a person because you are valuable in your own right so i think it's a very healthy exercise that i've done in trying to find self-worth and value and purpose outside of medicine which i've definitely found now and it's much more healthier than to make an informed decision of kind of setting boundaries again it's not it's not displacing worth it's not that now my worth is kind of oh am i a good strategy am i good at my day job it's not that it's elizabeth is she good is she okay is she happy and these are just things that i do and i think i only managed to fully do this after leaving medicine so i think this was a huge benefit and not a regret definitely that i had in terms of taking a gap year the next question is justifying it to others this is so difficult i actually have not shared the reasons that i took a gap year online yet and i think at some point i might i'm just not ready to talk about it still now it's deeply personal um and i don't know what the format would look like necessarily or how to explain these things or how much emotion can you show online um so i'm not too sure about that and when it comes to people asking it depends on how well i know the people so the closest people in my life and the people at my job kind of know the reasons specifically that i took a gap year um because it is important information to them and i feel comfortable sharing it if i'm close to someone um i think in in my day-to-day life i'm really really open so if i feel comfortable in a situation i'll very easily say what were the reasons that i took a gap year um however it's not something that i've shared online and in terms of justifying it to people i don't if someone asked me why did you take a gap year because i wanted to um and no one can say much to that and this kind of ties onto the next one which is regrets that terms of parents reaction um my gap year was very very spontaneous so i thought about it seriously one morning by lunch i had decided that i was going to do it and then i sent an email to my university and then i called my mom and dad and then the next day the university confirmed it so the turnaround was literally 24 hours for this whole thing from my parents having no clue that i was even considering this to me going hey um i'm not going back to uni in august so that was very scary i think my mum understood it more i think my dad was very scared because i think my dad was concerned that i wouldn't go back which is something i'm going to address a bit later um but i think my dad was a bit concerned about that especially throughout my gap you're always asking me are you going to go back and um i think when it comes to parents when you are a certain age and if you have a sort of a good relationship with your parents it's easy enough to say i realize your concern and recognize where their concern or anxiety is coming around because if they're having a highly emotional reaction um it's likely because they are assuming that you are not considering things that you actually have considered so i think telling that to them and saying hey um you know tell me what's concerning you right now are you worried because i am not listening to you or you think that i'm not listening to you are you worried because i'm doing this to spot you or go against what you wanted are you worried because i think i haven't considered the risks and kind of exploring them with your parents and saying actually i have considered this and i have considered this and that and that but in the end of the day if you say but i need this and this is which is what i said is that i i need this and this will make me happier and healthier and i really really need to do this right now um there's very little that a parent can say i think sometimes to you saying that no but i need this and this is what what i need and i've decided it and i think that was a situation that i wasn't with my parents again things are very different because i live away from my parents and i am kind of financially independent so a lot of these things don't muddy up the situation but i think it was difficult to break it to my parents i don't think it's something that they expected and um but at the moment i think they are just happy either way i think my mom doesn't want me to go back to medical school but my dad does so yeah there's that with parents the next question is such a legitimate one and that's the panic of for getting things in medicine this i would say a hundred percent is true i do have a bit of panic around this because i do realize i have forgotten so so much i think that i don't have a specific plan for this in place just because the next few months of my life are going to be extremely intense but maybe in two months i will start revising again and that's something i might do online maybe do some live streams of questions or just do some live stream study with me that would be something quite cool i think but i do need to i think revise quite a bit more and do more work when i start again in terms of catching up having said that because i took three gap years between my high school and university i didn't actually find that even in three years i had lost a lot of information compared to my peers um i was actually reading a lot of medical stuff in the meantime though so maybe there was a bit of that but um i think that we overestimate how much we forget and that if the foundations are solid then very very easily you can catch up with these things again and then it depends on where your kind of pride lies i guess i think for me in medicine this shifted very fast in the beginning i was very much oh i want to know all the details i want to be that girl who just knows you know that pathway it knows that the name of that enzyme and that's completely changed now where i'm like oh i don't actually care about that stuff i am much more interested in the important uh the things that i consider to be essential in medicine which is how you deal with patients and your patient care and your communication and understanding the basic things that are applicable in hospital in real life and the very important things because i've realized that even though i spent so much energy learning these small facts they always fade so fast in a few months definitely in a few years they'll all be forgotten while the rest are the things that remain there and i think would make me likely a better clinician so i think in that sense yes i'm sad that i'm probably not going to be the brightest person in any room in medicine when i go back but um at the same time i would just say it's a bit of a regret and a loss in that sense but not enough for me to regret my whole gap year the next one was setting goals during your gap year this is interesting the spontaneity with which i took mine meant that there was not a lot of time for goal-setting and also i'm not a goal-setting person i just don't like goals in general and therefore i had none but this was not out of character for me so if you're the sort of person who likes goal setting i guess you can set something for your gap year that would be great i'm the sort of person who hates specific goals so i don't set them in general so yeah i didn't set any and i'm very happy with that situation oh this is a very good one did you make a pros and cons list i did but it was impossible and the reason for that is there's just so much unknowns if you if you do a pros and cons list for leaving medicine and staying in medicine it's so hard because you don't know where things will go you don't know how you will feel in the future i don't know what i'm making decisions for a person that i don't know i don't know if i'm going to be in five years just like i made a decision for myself now when i first got into medical school i would be making a decision for elizabeth in five years if i left medical school i took a gap year i just don't know who the hell that girl is and what she wants and who she is and i just i've realized that there's just no point there especially with the unknown unknowns and with even known unknown so i'm like i don't know how i'm going to feel and i don't know actually what my experience of medical school would be and how much free time i will have and if i can balance these things i just had no answers for these so in the end of the day i scrapped the pros and cons last and i just went with my gut and i think that's the best thing to do in this case at least for me it was an emotional decision it was not a um it was not a pros and cons list because well actually if it was a president condolence i think i would have to leave anyway but there's a part of me that felt oh you can get over these things while in medical school you don't need to leave medicine so i don't think i was being rational with my pros and cons anyway so for me it was an emotional decision i thought yep actually i'm going to stop this now so that's how i did made the decision the last one on regrets of a gap year is the one very very legitimate one is will it make you not want to go back to medicine and i will say hell yes it did for me and this was the most scary thing i think and this is one reason why i would potentially warn against a gap year but then again if you take a gap year and you realize you don't want to do something then maybe it's not the right thing for you but anyway in the beginning i missed hospital and i missed medicine but that only lasted for a few months and then after that i thought oh there's so much going on in my life and there's so many other things happening and very funnily um a hundred percent of people in the medical field especially trained doctors and the more senior they are the more they would tell me don't go back just don't make the mistake of going back just stay away um it's like it's so good that you have other things that you can do and you enjoy don't go back and then it was either the people who are very junior in medicine so early medical students or it was people who were not in medicine who were saying oh you have to go back it's so good for you like my parents for example so that was a very interesting observation i had and equally i felt that oh there's so many things i'm doing now that i enjoy is it worth completing medical school do i still want to be a doctor at some point um i think a gap year will definitely do that to you especially if you enjoy your gap year if you find something that it feels like it's your calling or if you find something that you deeply enjoy outside of medicine it becomes so difficult to convince yourself to go back especially in my case where if i would leave i would still have a diploma in medical sciences because i've completed the three-year degree so i don't know i think this one is very very risky in my case i think i've decided that i am going to go back but i would just say it's just as hard to convince yourself to go back than it is to convince yourself to take the gap year which is saying something because convincing myself to take that gap year was definitely one of the hardest things i've ever done um and yeah so it's very very difficult both ways i think one of my friends mark his friend said this to me where he said don't take a gap here just just leave because if you take a gap year you're never going to go back and i think it is so hard to do that um that's a slight warning that i do give if you take a gap year during university now the last part of this video is going to be the pros and the things that i absolutely don't regret doing in my gap year that i think are incredible and the first one was that it gave me so much time to sort out my mental health um i've been in a lot of therapy in my gap year and i've been dealing with a lot of issues that i have racked up my whole life especially during lockdown um and i think my gap year gave me the space to do this without so many deadlines i did have deadlines because i still had a job the whole time but not the medical deadlines and the medical guilt um that i would have it was very difficult to do these things while being in medical school while being outside of medical school i think it's grown me so much in terms of my mental health and my my peace and my kind of self-exploration and understanding so i think that this has been such a good space to do this absolutely would recommend for that reason the second reason i really delved in already was finding yourself outside of medicine i think doing these other things have uncovered so much of me as a person that i don't think i would have ever found if i stayed in medicine only and also it's opened up my eyes to specific aspects of medicine that i can find elsewhere in the end of the day my favorite part of medicine is sitting down in front of a patient that is why i'm doing the job um it's not for the admin i don't think it is for anyone it's not about running around in hospital um it's not it's just for also for the banter between doctors and kind of the connections that you get in working in a team so teamwork and also being in front of a patient and getting to help someone and these are the two things that i love the most about medicine but the latter i kind of find in consulting and in helping people and in coaching and having calls with people and helping them grow in other aspects of their life i have found doing that to an extent never never comparable to medicine because health i think is on a different level but that sort of pleasure is the same that i find in that sort of job while otherwise working in a team are things that you can get quite easily in many many different jobs so i found that i can in a way engineer a sort of career that is a hundred percent just my favorite parts of medicine but lacks the reward which is the frustrating part so but anyway i think finding and testing out different waters i've grown so much in my knowledge because before my knowledge was 100 just medicine based and customer service based and now i know so much about branding and marketing and business and finance and customer profiling and um online courses especially which is a super nice thing to know about and knowledge management and the internet and social media so there's so much that i've learned outside of medicine with a lot of the skills that medical training has taught me that has been extremely extremely valuable so that's something that i really really like and i think even though i've really expanded the range of things i can potentially do in my future and the range of expertise that i have at the same time i think by diluting my self-worth from just medicine it's just gone to nothing and it's just gone to me being and i think oh i have all these options now which give me a lot more calmness because i think at least for me i always thought that it was either medicine or nothing and i would never be good at anything else and i think finding and seeing that i can potentially enjoy and be just as good as if not better at other things then that makes me very i think happy and it's a very liberating way to live my life from now on the third reason and of course this is personal is um growing my youtube channel and my pod starting my podcast um i would not have started my podcast i think if i was back in medical school although my channel might have grown more because medical content does tend to do well so i don't know about that one but i think these two have been very very fun um creating kind of being a creator again as an adult was something that i thought i wouldn't be able to do after i kind of grew up and didn't have the extra time in medicine so this has been really really fun for me and lastly it kind of gave me a little reset button um to take some separation between everything that i was doing and approach it with a different eye and also gaining these other skills put me in a position of empowerment where it was no longer the need of oh i have these loans i need to continue this i've committed to this but rather going okay what are the reasons you want to do this do you actually want to do this do you want to try it out um and everything becomes more of a let's try this out and see how it goes and life is long there is no rush and there is no final destination to get to but rather you just enjoy things for what they are in the moment and you take value from what they are in the moment i think the biggest chef for me has been thinking that i always thought that i would be proud of myself when i graduated medical school and there was nothing to be proud of especially if i left that would just be embarrassing like the whole thing that i did in medicine would be a failure and an embarrassment and that is not the case at all it's not a failure it's not an embarrassment i'm so proud and happy now when i look back at the things that i did that even if i never go back or i never continue my studies that's something amazing that i did in medicine and i'm really really happy about it and i don't need to wait to finish things to enjoy them and the same way when i go back hopefully it will be fun by value and virtue of being there it will be fun because i know i chose to be there and i have these other options it will be fun because i know i can shape my life in a very empowered way and in a way that i enjoy and i'll be fun because hopefully i'll be much healthier when i go back to medicine so yeah that was my view on the gap year yes i don't regret it in the slightest i think it is one of the best decisions i have made in my life and i would 100 um oh no wait i can't say that and i would potentially recommend it to many many many people having said this i asked two three four four of my friends who have taken gap years and all of them said it was the best decision they've ever made so i'm i know that's not a huge sample size but i get to meet someone who regrets their gap year everyone that i've met just raves about it so much so i think do your research ask the people around you do some rational thinking into why you're doing it how you can fill in this time and how you will feel yourself and what support system you have in place and do you have people around you who support your decision and will support you if you go back or don't go back and do remember that you're really risking finishing your career because it's very very difficult at least in my experience to want to return after doing this but yeah this was the video i i did not realize i did not think it would be so long i thought it would just be a short little no i don't regret it it was great this is the reason and it turned into a huge rant so thank you for bearing with me honestly if you made it so far and thank you for sending in all your questions i hope you have a wonderful rest of your day be kind to yourself and others and don't believe everything you think thanks bye

Channel: Elizabeth Filips

Views: 116,477

Keywords: medicine, medical school, gap year, medical school uk, uk gap year, gap year from medicine, gap year medicine, study, student uk, quitting medicine, quitting medical school, leaving medicine

Id: AISv6yx0CXk

Length: 24min 45sec (1485 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 02 2022