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I had no real issues growing up under the typical Asian upbringing. I was smart and never argued with my parents. I understood from an early age the rationale behind their expectations and demands. Yet I must also point out they were perhaps not as strict and rigorous as some other parents seem to be. Being the middle child in a household with three boys, I often found myself invisible between the three of us.
As I grew up and it became time to pursue a career choice, there was never really any doubt to the “optimal path” I should take. I had no real passion for any particular field of work. I pursued the default path to success, the common dream for many second generation Chinese children. My goal was to get into medical school. I thought that as long as I could stay on top of the competition, that was where I could, and would, end up.
This leaning was not forced upon me by my parents, although it was apparent from their attitudes it would certainly fulfill a personal dream of their own. I gave no consideration to my own personal philosophy against many aspects of medicine. I was not too excited about dealing with blood and gore, and actually protested the idea of preserving the weak (in certain cases), interfering with survival of the fittest. I recognized such indications that I would not make a very fitting doctor, but getting my hands dirty was the price to pay for the money and prestige that would come from the job. While there are of course many ways to make more money, medicine must be the most secure and reliable.
The first occurrence that steered me off the “optimal path” to making my parents proud was choice of university program. I avoid the use of the term mistake or obstacle because regret is useless, and the past cannot be changed. At the time, it was the best decision to make. My high school marks were good enough that I could get into any program I wanted. I settled on the accursed disaster of a program that combined biology and accounting. The idea was that should my entrance into med school be in jeopardy, I would at least have the backup of a CA designation (equivalent to a PA in the states).
Two main problems came from that choice. The first was that it was more difficult to maintain exceedingly high marks taking arts courses, because written exams are much more subjective and unpredictable. The quality of thought (or perhaps personally intuitive logic) it presented was so greatly inferior to the sciences. Secondly, I deeply despised accounting as a profession and its utter uselessness and mundanity. But I slugged through the banal mound of trash, convincing myself that I would escape this environment once I got into med school.
Last September was when I was supposed to apply to the medical schools in my province. I knew that the deadline was October 1. I delayed starting to work on it until September 15. That day I got home from school at 4:00pm and took a nap. I woke up at 5:30pm and decided that I would start the application process. I went online and found that they had closed registration for accounts at 4:30pm that very same day. I missed the deadline by one hour. That particular step only required me to create an account by entering an email and password, but from that point on, they locked all new account creations. I was completely devastated. Making such a huge, careless mistake was very uncharacteristic of me, who was normally impeccably organized. I had also spent significant effort in the summer preparing and writing the MCAT, all for nought.
One year was a long time to pay for that one hour mistake. I had already delayed my initial medical school application by one year due to co-op terms, so that I was applying in my fourth year instead of my third. One of my childhood best friends had already gotten in after third year. This was very rare and a remarkable feat, one which he well deserved, but meant that I was already a year behind and was playing catch up. It had been a dream of ours to attend med school together; when he first told me he had got in, I heard him choking up on the other end as I congratulated him over the phone. But with this setback, it seemed that the ever widening gap could no longer be breached.
I spent many long, hard weeks brooding over my mistake. This was compounded with several other low points in my life, most of which I suppose I have already mentioned in previous blogs. The only alternative for me, if I still wanted to pursue medical school, was wait another year. Realistically, however, this was not desirable. To be honest, I had just planned to take a wild shot to apply for med; although my marks were competitive, I lacked a strong medical experience background that I knew many candidates had (ex. hospital, lab work). My expected acceptance chance was perhaps 40%. My plan was to give it a shot and see how it went. If I got in, wonderful, the future ahead of me would be in medicine. If not, at least I could say I tried my best, I have no regrets. I would probably not be applying the following year, given all the work required in doing so.
Eventually I came to a conclusive consolation. I never wanted to be a doctor anyways. It was merely the default definition of success, the path I blindly followed for lack of better alternative. My parents would not be able to say, “My son is a doctor.” So what? I guess I lose the prestige. So where am I headed now? There is no way in hell I will enjoy staying in the public accounting field. Pretty much up to this point, my life was on autopilot, riding on the winds of my talent alone. I hate working. I hate medicine. I hate accounting. I am considering trying for law school. I am convinced I will very likely hate law as well. So now that I concede I have finally fallen off the “optimal path”, I guess I must navigate things for my own.
+ Show Spoiler +:End Note: I think my true orientation lies most closely in an engineering or computer science type field. But those are not the traditional professionals, and the concern was that they would be prone to obsolescence without constant re-education. It’s probably too late to go back anyhow.
 
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chinese and their prestige... sadly a lot of chinese parents do care about their child's career success because appearantly, its an indication of their own status. a lot of Chinese parents overvalue success over personal character and its why so many turnout to be mindless zombies that goes crazy once out of the hands of their parents (ie. college).
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Oh man... every part of this blog rings true with my life, except I guess I'm behind a year or two. It's just been a long ride on autopilot for me too.
I find a lot of scholarly pursuits (like anthro, psych, or philosophy) mildly interesting, but none have really grabbed my attention. I'm still on a one way flight to med school, except I'm just a freshman right now.
.... this just rings so true for me, I don't really know what to say.
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Isn't getting a PhD cooler than a MD?
I mean PhD holders are doctors!!
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On January 11 2010 12:57 FragKrag wrote:
Isn't getting a PhD cooler than a MD?
I'd agree, but some people might try to kill me if I said that publicly.
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I sort of had a similar situation, never really cared much, my dad went to... lets say the swedish equivalent of caltech, and I never really thought I wanted to go down this path, I wanted to be a lawyer, but when you get most of your praise from home for your achievements in math and science, I ended up in swedish caltech anyway.
Good thing my family motto is: "Dont get me mixed up in this". Oh, I mean our other motto: "Everything is always going to work out/be alright". I ended up not liking my Major (Automation) and switched to another one (Software Engineering) and I'm on top of the fucking world. I dont consider myself "lucky" (or rather I do, but not for the reason you'd think). I always believe that having a positive mentality like this is key to being happy and "successfull" (successfull in YOUR definition, not someone elses).
I'hve had alot of summer jobs, which has given me alot of perspective on working, and after being a super several summers, I realized that even though I want to have a good job with a good education and work in an office or whatever... being a super and fixing pipes, mowing lawns and calling electricians etc... IS AWWWRITE aswell!
So what this means is that if I grow bored of <insert education/work here> I always know that I can go back to do some sort of easy meanial job that pays sort of well. And if you get this mentality, you wont be stuck in a path that you find boring, instead you'll be able to take risks and go for what you feel is right, because you can always fall back on some shit job. Seriously, who the hell needs more than a computer, a connection, and maybe 2 RoK (An apartment with 2 rooms and a kitchen) the rest is just icing on the cake of life.
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So, go into Engineering so you parents can say "My son is an Engineer". It is a very prestigious profession as well.
EDIT - a few of the things you said show that you have a mindset for it - intuitive logic being far worse than science for example.
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On January 11 2010 13:14 lMPERVlOUS wrote:
So, go into Engineering so you parents can say "My son is an Engineer". It is a very prestigious profession as well.
EDIT - a few of the things you said show that you have a mindset for it - intuitive logic being far worse than science for example.
Engineer is obviously not prestigious enough.
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Damn I'm chinese but I'm like a decade behind you and rather opposite >.> I tend to argue with my parents >.<
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Well, my parents wanted a doctor or lawyer out of me (go figure, Korean parents) but I went into engineering. They're not openly unhappy about it, but I don't think they've given up on me yet (I mean, engineering undergrad doesn't stop me from applying to med schools or law schools). No way though, I'm doing what I want and that's it.
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Baa?21243 Posts
You'll figure something out, keep at it ;o
Considering the whole stereotype that Chiense parents are thrilled to have med school kids (a stereotype that is largely true), it is quite odd that my parents are complete opposed to me taking a pre-med path and applying to med school, which is what I personally want to do. Still haven't figured out if I'm gonna go through with it yet, meh.
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On January 11 2010 13:41 illu wrote:Show nested quote +On January 11 2010 13:14 lMPERVlOUS wrote:
So, go into Engineering so you parents can say "My son is an Engineer". It is a very prestigious profession as well.
EDIT - a few of the things you said show that you have a mindset for it - intuitive logic being far worse than science for example. Engineer is obviously not prestigious enough.
And I will never understand that..... I'm kinda jaded though, since that's what I'm studying.....
Whenever I look at a computer, I can see a lot of amazing mechanical and software engineering that went into it. And I don't know much of it..... Whenever I see a highrise building, I can see a lot of materials and design engineering work that went into it. and I don't know much of it. When I heard that my grandfather had a heart attack, and now has a pacemaker, I can see a lot of work that went into the design of it.
I could go on for hours.....
Engineering is such an important field in our world..... Prestige? Lots of it. Visible prestige? Not as much. Most people take it for granted.
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Here's my backstory: I'm chinese like you and my parents also wanted me to go to med school. I took biochemistry, didn't really like it by the end, but got good grades/MCAT to get into medicine.
At first, it was a lot of parental pressure to go into the field but after a while, I realized how awesome the field really is for anyone with an inclination to problem solving and/or critical thinking. There are tons of problems to be solved, it's a career with lifelong learning, and research is always an option. The financial stability and prestige is pretty nice too if that's what you want hehe. From reading your blog, I think you would enjoy learning medicine.
If your grades/MCAT are good enough then you're pretty golden. That's the most important part. All the lab work, hospital, whatever is secondary. Doing activities related to medicine merely requires time dedication on your part. I know people with philosophy majors and business/economics majors in my class.
If you think you're capable of being a good doctor and you've already spent so much time on grades/MCAT prep, I think you'd be doing yourself a disservice by not applying! Anyways, GL with your decisions - it's a tough one that determines a major part of the rest of your life 
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EPT
