One year of Med School - A reflective piece

 
Dear diary,

Yesterday was my 18^th birthday.

It kinda sucked. First off, I failed my driving test, then I found out it costs RM400 to resit, and mom made me pay from my salary, which also sucked. And then I had a mental breakdown last night, which sucked most of all.

I feel like I’ve done nothing with my life these past few months. I made a bucket list for 2023 on New Year's Day – I found it today and I can only check two things off. Two! I have no idea if any of the others can even come to pass. At this point, if UM rejects me I’ll join a convent and become a nun. Or go to business school. Practically the same thing.
This has kind of been the worst birthday ever. 

--Excerpt from my actual diary, September 5^th 2023

  
Look at this and tell me I was not the next Picasso of my generation. 

I very clearly remember the experience of my 18^th birthday.

 For one thing, it was a Monday, which is somehow the worst day of the week to have a birthday fall on (Friday is the best fight me on this). I was up by 5am, showering in cold water, packing my bag, staring at the rain pouring outside the window as my driving instructor drove me to my first driving test. I was cold, I was sneezing, my Malay comprehension was on the same level as a French tourist for some reason, and oh, I also failed said driving test. I came back home two hours late for lunch, the puddles still not fully dried up behind my house, locked myself in my room, and cried for thirty minutes straight.

My 19th birthday was the complete opposite.

Ok, let me start over. This is proving to be a difficult blog post to draft haha.

Ever since I was a kid, I had only one dream – to become a doctor.

I also wanted to be a part time ballerina, part time painter, part time writer, part time scuba instructor, part time scientist, part time paleontologist, and also still a doctor. Simultaneously.  I had an actual schedule planned out that somehow also involved me coming back to my grandma’s house every day to eat chicken curry for lunch.

Most of the other stuff has kind of faded away – painting is now just something I do in my free time to relieve stress. Writing is something I do part-time, whether it be writing these blog posts or getting my own story published (check my insta!). But being a doctor is the one thing that I was very sure stuck around.

 

Age 9 and age 13, and my anger issues clearly did not improve

When I started grade 7, because my class of three students was “so advanced” (read: the school didn’t have the budget for us to get our own science teacher, yes my first school was really weird and a traumatic experience I am more than willing to gripe about in-person) me and my friends were put in the same science class as our seniors in Grade 9. Or, I should say sciences classes, as grade nine is where they started splitting science into Biology, Chemistry and Physics. Physics sucked (and still sucks, sorry to all my engineering friends reading this), Chemistry was okay at high-school level and a nightmare during A-levels, but Biology was my best subject by a significant margin. And I think that was mainly because of our teacher, Mr. Chandra.

Mr. Chandra was one of those cool teachers, the ones that would let you ask questions in class without raising your hands, the one that would tell you what YouTube channels you should subscribe to if you wanted to learn stuff outside the curriculum, the one that would act all strict and tough but was a genuine, down-to-earth kind of guy that was disappointed with an education system that suppressed the natural curiosity of his students. Our first lecture with him was Biology, Chapter 11: Immunity. From the minute he started speaking, I was hooked. He described the course of an infection in the body like a great war, our white blood cells the valiant, self-sacrificing soldiers, the tanks and machine guns. We learnt how immunity is passed down from mother to child, we learnt how vaccines worked, we learnt about antibodies and antigens.; when I got back from that class, I knew that this was the kind of thing I wanted to learn about for the rest of my life. I was content with velocity in Physics, content to know the common elements on the periodic table for Chemistry, but my appetite for Biology was never satisfied.

My mom was on-board, until she discovered just how expensive medicine was. I believe there was a near-fainting spell on her half. She tried to reason with me, tried to make me explore other options (to be fair, if paleontologist was a viable career choice in this country, I would have taken it in a heartbeat), but I wasn’t backing down so easily. I had an assignment to interview someone in the career that I wanted to pursue, and I interviewed a family friend who was halfway through medical school, who even showed me her textbooks. I spoke to a doctor on the phone, a specialist who had PhD, and asked her about the challenges the faced. None of it phased me – I was really sure; once my mother realized that she was nothing but supportive.

Not joking about the wanting to work with dinosaurs thing. Genuinely, this entire entry is me describing the plot of Jurassic World.

In high school, my physics teacher was Dr Catherine, and she is still in contact with me today. She saw something in me, I’m still not sure what, but it made her encourage me to participate in all sorts of extra-curricular activities – essay competitions, inter-school competitions, science fair projects, emceeing for Awards Day – when I tell you the number of certificates I received for participation is enough to fill a folder, I’m not kidding. Dr Catherine was also a cool teacher, one who laughed at our typical gen-z jokes, would give you an extension on the homework deadline if you really needed it, and the first person you’d go to for advice if you were struggling with something. Even today, I find myself feeling like I’m 15 again as I message her so she can give me a recommendation letter or help me decide what software to use for a research paper. The most important lesson she taught me was to be unapologetic – I was struggling with my sense of self, and I was (and still sort of do) suffering from a bit of anxiety when it came to putting myself out there – but she always reminded me that I should be confident in my abilities. I should hold my head up high. There’s not a day that goes by where I don’t wish she was still teaching me.

High school also gave me my favourite English teacher, Ms. Shakti (read: previous English teacher was extremely problematic, again, ask me for the story in-person). She was energetic, vibrant, and extremely supportive – and I really mean extremely. You don’t forget the kind of woman who spends her entire Saturday at a low-key creepy university campus packed with parents and students alike, with limited seats and no air-conditioning, all so she can support just one student from her class. Ms. Shakti liked to always say that she “never had to do anything” and my achievements were my own – but I honestly don’t think I would have ever had the courage to even sign up for the National Storytelling Competition of 2019, let alone walk back home as the champion, were it not for her consistently being there for me, offering me advice, supporting me. Often I’d speak with my teachers like Dr. Catherine and Ms. Shakti as though they were my classmates, because they were appreciative of honesty and wanted to make us feel comfortable during the horrible time period that is puberty. Ms. Suzanne, Ms. Jessica, and even Mr. Foong – it’s thanks to them that I miss my time in high school terribly. I hope you all continue to inspire your students like you inspired me.

I cut my hair short this year and made it my entire personality

So, I studied hard, got good grades, graduated but didn’t manage to make valedictorian, and went on to do my A-levels, which in and of itself is a whole other blog post. I’ve lost a few friends along the way (good riddance to a few in particular) and gained friendships that I hope will last for a lifetime. I grew older, wiser, I got glasses and stopped using them then started using them again, I grew my hair out from the classic “Dora the Explorer” bob, and I did a bunch of side quests along the way that most of the people reading this blog post probably don’t even know about. When I finished my A-levels, I felt myself a bit of an adult already: I could ride the train by myself, I had just gotten my red belt in taekwondo, I finally could walk in heels without looking like a baby horse walking right after being birthed. At that point in time, it felt like everything was going right for me.

And then nothing went right for me.

My life sucked after graduating from college. I was jobless for weeks, then when I got a job, one which required talking to small children, I immediately got a sore throat infection (fun). Then, I got stalked from the bus station all the way to my house by a creepy guy who was always ten steps behind me, so I had to start spending money taking a grab to and from work. Then I got a second job, and this one also sucked because I had to speak to people all day and a lot of them were super rude. And on top of all this, I was trying to sit for my grade 6 piano exam, training for my red-black taekwondo belt, taking driving lessons, and applying for university after university, scholarship after scholarship. The cherry on top? Most, if not all of my A-level friends almost immediately left the country to peruse their studies overseas, so I was practically by myself.

2017, aka the year I got my ears pierced and also made that my entire personality

And so, my birthday. A month to when the university terms started, and I had no more offer letters to reply to. No scholarships promised. No friends to go out and eat lunch with. Just an empty email inbox and the crushing weight of defeat. I got into the habit of bringing my journal with me to work, something for me to write in during my lunch break – reading my entries from the time is really depressing. I had all these amazing people who had supported me with their whole hearts, who had inspired me and guided me, people who were awaiting my text message saying “I got into medical school!”. I was terrified that I was about to let everyone around me down.

It feels like I blinked, and suddenly it was September 4^th, 2024.

And… it was the complete opposite.

Driving license? Done and dusted.

Piano exam? Got my Grade 6 certificate.

Medical school? I just finished a year of it.

It feels surreal just typing that out. I’ve been dreaming of medicine for so long I don’t really believe that it’s real – that I’ve actually just completed a whole year.

This year, my birthday was the opposite of last year. Where it was raining, this year was sunny. Where I was alone doing my driver’s test, I was now with all my friends and classmates taking my final Biochemistry exam. Where I had failed my driving test, I was now confident that I had passed (excluding Anatomy that one was a real 50/50 shot) my first Professional Exams. And then it didn’t end there – where last year I had to go home and cry, this year my friends took me out to the mall and bought me lunch and a delicious cake. And I remember having this crazy feeling, the adrenaline pumping in my veins, the grin on my face so big my lips cracked, thinking… I did it. I made it. I’m still okay – in fact, I’m better than okay. I just survived my first year of medical school.

It wasn’t easy – I doubt you’ll meet any doctor in the world who will tell you medical school is easy. Living alone was enjoyable, but not necessarily fun when it’s 12am and you’ve spotted maggots crawling up your toilet and you’ve got to call the hostel pest control guys, only for them to tell you they’ll come over the next day (I legit asked him, where the heck am I gonna shower?). Or you come back from a weekend trip back home and your colour pencils have been overtaken by white mold/fungus (diagnosis still not confirmed). And the constant cycle of packing and unpacking and ironing clothes while sitting on the floor and the loud screaming for no apparent reason. I have beef with those particular dudes, especially because when we screamed back they’d shush us. Cowards.

In 2018 I got really into drawing stick figures. Genuinely my drawing skills peaked here.

Anatomy was by far the toughest subject; mostly because the content was much higher than both other subjects combined. It was also the most interesting, being able to see plasticized specimens in the dissection hall, identifying pink-stained cells based on what tissue they were from, enthusiastic lecturers who had far too much energy than was normal for an 8am class.

Physiology was all about understanding, about case studies and symptoms, and my new favourite stress-inducing phrase: physiological basis. I get war flashbacks just saying that out loud. But it was still fun because we got to learn why our body reacts the way it does, how delicate the balance between healthy and unhealthy really is, the mechanisms of the body being likened many a time to that of a well-oiled machine.

Biochemistry was full of cycles and processes, drug and enzyme names you had to be able to recall and spell accurately in your sleep – and I’m not joking about that last part. Multiple lecturers have threatened to break into our hostels and wake us up in the middle of the night to make sure we had the information they gave us memorized by heart.

Speaking of lecturers, I am going to miss a lot of them in my second year. Though they all were quite strict with us, many of them were very encouraging and especially willing to answer our questions. My friends and I have spent sometimes hours at a time going to them and asking question after question for topics we didn’t understand fully. A lot of them are very straightforward about the reality of our situation – which I appreciate, because I’d rather people be honest then try to sugar-coat things. They all did kind of seem very scary to approach at first, but eventually we warmed up to them, and now when they see us there’s always a friendly hello and sometimes a joke or two thrown around. The best of them never fail to let us know that they believe in us – that they can see our hard work, our dedication, and they know that if we continue to put effort into our studies we will be rewarded during our clinical years.

 

In 2019 I went back to drawing anime eyes

I’ve made a lot of good friends at med school. And I really mean a lot – this is probably the biggest friend group I’ve ever been in. We’ve spent hours together, pouring over past year questions in the library, doing our tutorials together and scheming to help each other should the lecturer call our name, planning birthday surprise after birthday surprise and even having impromptu sleepovers well into the hours of the night, talking about life and family and our dreams. They all are inspiring people, and therefore I aspire to be like them – confident, outspoken, dedicated and disciplined, courageous and kindhearted. We laughed together, we cried together, we’ve talked wedding plans and what our dream cars will be. I feel so blessed to have met all of these amazing, talented individuals; I say this about all the friends I’ve made, whether they are on my outer circle or inner circle.

And to my inner circle of friends, the ones in the group chat named after a random dessert from Domino’s Pizza: Thank you all so much, for the amazing birthday surprises, for answering my texts about histology at 3am in the morning, for following me to the clinic when I got sick, for sharing your notes, for laughing with me, for keeping me from going delulu, and for being there for me when times got tough. I love you guys <3.

I can’t mention my friends without talking about my time at Christian Fellowship. My faith is something very important to me, so it’s no surprise I enjoyed many of the sessions we had together, talking about Christian ethics, salvation, mental health and a whole bunch of other topics. It was a family away from home, and their support and prayers really touched my heart. Which is why I’m so excited to be the president for the upcoming academic term! Excited and nervous. It’s a lot of responsibility, but I’m hoping it’ll be a lot of fun, too; especially with Christmas just around the corner. Anyone else can hear Mariah Carey already defrosting?

The one thing I didn’t expect was to miss my family so much. I missed home cooked food especially – campus cafeterias suck. So I’d be travelling home pretty often so I could give my mom a hug and bother my younger brother; it helped keep me from going insane. I called my mom every single day, and sometimes we’d talk for almost an hour. She’s still the first person I go to for when I need advice, and she’s always praying for me and looking out for me. My younger brother and I text more often as that’s more our style, and he’s always ready to complain about whatever obstacles he was facing as he took on A-levels after me. And, to not my surprise, he’s doing a lot better than I did.

Whenever I come back home for the long holidays, or whenever my birthday comes around, I like to take a look at my old diary entries. I’ve been keeping a diary every year since 2013, with the exception of 2020 because for some reason, the most influential year of modern history was the year that I decided to not keep a diary for. Amazing. So, to end this off, here’s a letter I wrote to myself when I was eleven years old, as a reminder to my now 19-year-old self, that with faith, trust, and a little bit of pixie dust, dreams do come true.

 

I was nine and already drawing myself with a stethoscope :) 

I did it, guys. I’m in medical school.

Talk to you later, world.

Yours,

Joy :)