Why I'm Studying Medicine in My 30s

what's up youtube my name is doug and if you're new to the channel i'm a former english teacher and first year medical student in poland in this video i'm going to talk about why i'm switching careers and going to medical school at the age of 34. this is a topic i was asked about repeatedly throughout the admissions process to medical school in my essays and in my interview and it's a question that i'm still asked today by some of my classmates here in postnaught if you are a non-traditional student like me you will of course be asked the same question why medicine and why now so i hope you find this video insightful and i hope it helps you to better articulate your own reasons for wanting to study medicine to start off i'll give you a brief synopsis of my first career after earning an m.a in english i taught college writing in hawaii cambodia and china for a total of five years i also tutored kids online and taught business english situational english and conversational english in a variety of language centers outside of teaching i had a handful of publications in literary journals a pushcart nomination i presented my curriculum ideas at conferences and in my final year i was employed as a full-time curriculum designer in china doing english for chemistry majors so that was my first career in a nutshell a total time investment of seven years back to today's question why the change the short answer is that i've been thinking about medicine for a very long time i had reached a point in my first career where i was getting really good at my job my students liked me for the most part i was designing really sweet lesson plans and moving up to better positions but i was deeply unfulfilled i wanted to do more something more necessary to human life and something that allows me to have a more tangible impact on the world my vision is to be the 80 year old doctor who's seen just about everything he's a pillar or she is a pillar of the community and has no plans of retiring that's the short answer the long answer is as an undergrad i was very undecided between studying language and medicine i'd had five knee surgeries between the ages of 14 and 23 for my osteochondritis dissicans but that's for another video this is where my interest in medicine originally came from but as an english major i fell in love with my writing and literature courses and wound up pursuing a master's degree in english and became a writing teacher that decision haunted me on and off for the next seven years my entire first career i had this recurring existential crisis where i questioned the decisions that i'd made and felt it was a mistake not to become a doctor now i'll try to describe these existential crises a little more and maybe something will resonate with you if you're also thinking of changing directions in your own life the first existential crisis occurred while i was still in grad school working on my masters i was surfing off diamond head and i'm by no means a good surfer but i was out in a surf advisory when i saw this man go over the lip of a large wave and concuss himself on his longboard i assisted a group of people and pulling the guy out of the water and onto the shore and i remember the ambulance and the paramedics coming down taking the guy off carrying him up up the cliff and into the ambulance off to the hospital and i'm standing there on the beach and i'm thinking i'm in the wrong place i want to go with the guy in the ambulance i want to be there with the nurses and the doctors when they're running tests and running labs and figuring out what happened to his brain and his spinal cord and they're nursing him back to life the idea of returning to class the next day i think i had a seminar on young adult fiction it felt very hollow by comparison but i pushed through and i finished my m.a the second existential crisis happened after my very first year of teaching i was at a japanese college in hawaii and i began to feel again like i was out of place i love being in the classroom and in the mentoring role i still do but i had this conviction of wanting to do more something with higher stakes and something more necessary to human life on top of this i was an adjunct at the time and it was sometimes tough to string together enough classes just to pay rent you get the feeling pretty quickly as an adjunct writing teacher that you are disposable and this feeling did not help so i enrolled in chemistry and bio while teaching part time at the japanese college i paid out of pocket for these courses because i already had 25 000 in debt from my prior education so i studied when i wasn't teaching grading papers or lesson planning i made flash cards and i took these with me to school and between teaching between teaching i'd have 15 minute breaks and i'd be running through my flashcards i'd run to the bathroom take my flashcards with me finally i reached a breaking point and i looked to my students they were doing quite well in their toefl exam that was the standard for this particular university and my students were successfully transferring into american colleges which is what their goal was at that time and my students liked me that was enough validation for me at that time i discontinued the prereqs and continued teaching so i keep my head down and a couple years later i'm teaching in china i'm a full-time writing instructor not just an adjunct anymore i'm researching literacy narratives i'm presenting at conferences and in my final year i finally become a lecturer not just an instructor or adjunct or teacher anymore finally a lecturer and i'm getting paid to design curriculum full time i just teach 10 hours face-to-face class time each week plus i've got massive vacation time i'm dead lifting 300 pounds i visited spain twice in a year and who goes to spain twice a year anyway despite all the travel i'm actually saving money i had finally arrived in life and i was supposed to be happy but instead i had another existential crisis at this college where i was doing english for chemistry majors i was working alongside scientists and grad students doing innovative work in nanoparticles nanochemistry different types of nanoscience and they were generally glowing with the excitement of their work and i knew that if i were to continue teaching that i would never feel that same excitement myself i was drinking a terrific amount of beer and in my darker moments i felt that i had wasted seven years of my life finally i did take a step back and i realized that i had chosen to become a teacher and if i didn't want to continue down that path then it was completely in my power to change it so at the age of 33 i went back to college for my post-bac and became a pre-med student for the third time in my life finally finished up organic chemistry and physics sat the mcat worked as an er scribe in houston i applied to medical school in poland got accepted and here i am so that's the story of why i'm pursuing medicine as a second career in my 30s in retrospect a first career was not a waste of time it was a necessary part of my development as a human being for my personal growth i needed to pursue literature and writing and teaching the skills that i practiced in my first career communication sacrifice creative problem solving and teamwork will be deeply useful to me in my future work as a physician if you are a career changer like me then know that you have probably also developed some skills that will carry over into your work as a physician i'll leave you with one final message going to medical school at any age is a huge decision of course and it's all the scarier when you've invested in a first career but if your heart is truly in medicine and i know intimately how cliche that sounds i was a writing teacher but if you cannot imagine yourself doing anything else happily then i do believe that going to medical school is a decision you will not regret i personally feel relief and satisfaction knowing that my life's work will be in a field where i can make a difference every day and always be needed thank you for watching if you like the video be sure to subscribe and stay tuned for more on my journey through medical school in poland

Channel: MA to MD

Views: 43,348

Keywords: Medical school in your 30s, nontraditional premed, nontraditional medical student, career change, switch careers, poznan, poznan university, premed postbacc, europe medical school, poland medical school, polish medical school, caribbean medical school, Poland

Id: p2gJlqqDn1Y

Length: 9min 9sec (549 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 26 2019