With the premise of FastGAMSAT – where how this non-descript dude came out of abso-fucking-lutely nowhere, passed the GAMSAT in one go with 2 month’s prep, then just strolled into med – it’s easy to fall into the deterministic narratives, about how I was always meant for medicine¹, and how after you get into med, it’s all just happily ever after, and your Life 2.0 is just all laid out for you.

Let me assure you that this is by no means the case, why not enough soul-searching beforehand is a recipe for disaster, and why my case is more relevant to you than you think.

The Fullest of Disclosures

So, there’s the rub:

I’m not pursuing medicine anymore.

In fact, I struggled all the way through medical school, and failed multiple clinical rotations.

I even failed rural medicine twice.

I got thrown out of medical school, then clawed my way back in (the reason is explained later).

I managed to graduate, but the foundation I built in medical school was so lacking, that I failed my first internship rotation.

The hospital I was based at was more than helpful, but in the end we reached a mutual decision that medicine was a poor fit for me, and I never finished internship². I have since left the medical profession, and not looked back.

What Happened? What Changed?

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when the wheels fell off the wagon, so I’ll try to recount how I felt at different points of my medical journey.

After starting med school, the passion that I felt during the GAMSAT wore off. I didn’t know why at the time, and didn’t have time to consider this curiosity, as I had my hands full with the medical curriculum. In retrospect, it could be a combination of the following.

Dealing With The Alien Landscape

I experienced a lot stress from the increased workload and unfamiliar knowledge, such as hard sciences and integrative reasoning³; as contrasted by psychology, which was dominated by humanities and reasoning about artificially isolated concepts⁴. 

Looking Through Rose-Coloured Glasses, In The Wrong Direction

The possibility that the passion I had during GAMSAT prep was for the romanticised idea of practising medicine, and after exposure to the “real” aspects of medicine, such as the different branches of skills and knowledge, and the true nature of hospital work, I found that the two diverged significantly. I also realised the core values that made me passionate about medicine were actually misattributed: This is explained in the section Entrepreneurial Thinking.

The Seeing-patients Bit

Talking to and examining patients and finding out what’s wrong with them is kind of the bread-and-butter of clinical medicine – and I hated seeing patients. This may be because of my introverted nature, a lack of congruence with my inner purpose with which to push through, and my core aversion towards carrying out systematised and repetitive processes (also explained in Entrepreneurial Thinking)

In second year med school, I came up with my first business idea. I come up with ideas all the time, so I didn’t pay it too much attention to start off with – but like any super-organism worth its salt, it refused to go quietly into the night, and grew and developed by itself, until I couldn’t ignore it any longer: I had caught the entrepreneurship bug.

Entrepreneurial Thinking

The distinct change in my identity from medicine to entrepreneurship, combined with my loss of passion for medicine, took me to a paradigm-shifting realisation: The values which lit my passion for medicine – (a) that I could choose my direction, (b) that I could help a lot of people, and (c) help them profoundly – still applied to me, but were simply misattributed to the medical profession: I had no interest in helping people in the predefined area of clinical medicine, and instead wanted to help better the world through my own businesses or inventions, as a direct result of my own free choice and creativity.

As someone with entrepreneurial qualities, I found that it made me particularly unsuited to medicine⁶: I mentioned earlier that I hated seeing patients, as I felt the process to be systematised and repetitive. I bear the same sentiment towards maths, hard sciences, and engineering: If a question has a clear answer, or a goal has standardised and reliable processes for reaching it, I would rather someone else do it, and for me to do something that only I could do, such as solving problems through my own creativity and background. Further, if I discovered a process which yielded effective outcomes, and/or significant value to others, I would want to systematise the process, so it could be carried out by other ppl, or machines: This way, the same hard work is only done by me once, rather than over and over when required.

It’s easy to judge such sentiment as wholly unrestrained snobbery and elitism, however I believe that this is simply the core belief that drives my actions and decisions. You can also think “if something is worth doing, it’s worth doing properly” or “I’m the only one that I can depend on to do anything right”, and be a hands-on and/or craftsman-type person. Or you might have been through tough times, and was helped along by the kindness of strangers, and this experience filled you with so much love and gratitude, that you’ve grown up nurturing and helping ppl on a one-on-one basis. Or you might have despised the help – that you feel you were forced to receive – as not being totally in control of your destiny, and strived towards self-development to the point of power-hunger. Or you could think differently still, and be confident, conservative, paranoid, risk-taking, logical, intuitive, contrarian, pro-social-justice, libertarian, go-hard-all-the-time, chill-as, and so on. I don’t think any core belief is better than another, and society needs all types of people, just like an ecosystem needs all sorts of organisms. After all, if everyone thought and acted like me, the world would never get any work done.

Why I Didn’t Just Drop Out

As my entrepreneurial ideals ate away at my already-suffering medical pathway, I found myself between the rock of being physically and socially⁷ locked in medicine, and the hard place of having had nothing but passion⁸ ensuring that I got any good at medicine (AND I even no longer had that passion).

I eventually felt like a zombie, in that the spirit has obviously left the body, but instead of disintegrating and becoming something new and more exciting⁹, the flesh is somehow held together in a crude and patronising shape, only vaguely reminiscent of its former glory, and given what could be mistaken as conscious movement, by an unnatural, unholy outside force. That’s literally what social/family pressure feels like when it comes to medicine – your career path and future no longer exists for you, but for the expectations of society, and the honour of your family.

When my attitude towards medicine got to this palliative level, I was no longer focused on excelling at med: All I was focused on was how to pass the next assessment, graduate, finish internship, and get to the point where I could leave medicine¹⁰.

Yes, I trudged through med school on the promise that medicine would end for me – sooner rather than later too.

As a result, I sucked at med-school-ing:

• I would not actively seek out patients to see, and when I had to, I did so grudgingly, and saw patients according to a basic script learnt in first year med, and rarely improved upon, meaning no matter how many patients I saw¹¹, I wouldn’t have learnt much more about asking relevant questions, being more time-efficient, formulating possible diagnoses and patient issues, or even becoming more confident¹².
• Not only do I not remember finishing any textbooks, I don’t remember even finishing any student notes.
• I didn’t learn any of the basics properly: Anatomy, physiology, histology, pharmacology, biochemistry, hell – even the basic sciences….¹³

But That Makes Zero Sense

In hindsight, there are major plot-holes in this predicament:

How did I expect to practice medicine (much less to complete internship, and have med as a backup job) with such a wonky-tonky shithouse foundation?

This is a massive one – not only did I waste time, effort, and medico-educational resources, sooner or later I could have caused harm (or worse) to patients¹⁴.

Even entertaining the idea that I could naturally progress through the medico-professional pathway, or even put it on the backburner – was naivety so extreme, that the correct response isn’t to laugh awkwardly, but to purse one’s lips and stare judgmentally.

The best reason/excuse that I could come up with, is diminished perspective on multiple fronts¹⁵:

1. Creeping Normality¹⁶:
   • The deterioration in my academic standards was gradual, and less noticeable. Eventually, I equated passing assessments with “good enough”.
2. Apathy:
   • Never underestimate The Power of Not Giving a Toss (Exhibit A) to generate mediocre results and bury decision-making accuracy.
3. Greener Pastures:
   • I didn’t just know entrepreneurship was my true calling, I felt it at my core. Now, whether this is true, or I’m just suffering from Greatly Greener Grass Syndrome¹⁷, only time will tell.
   • In any case, entrepreneurship became such an idealised alternative, that I viewed it as my saving grace in times of stress and struggle, and I told myself that medicine was simply something I had to tolerate until I could dive into entrepreneurship.
   • Now, your mileage may vary, but generally, when an activity becomes something that you tolerate, you tend not to care about the performance or outcome too much, and you withhold investing time and effort where possible – which is not quite the way to build the groundwork for a professional career.

And so I trudged along.

Why didn’t I just quit med?

As I struggled through med school, I was still living with my parents. It is exceedingly difficult to resist family expectations when you come home every day to them and their rhetoric.

To the western crowd, most of whom move out of home when they turn 18, it’s easy to ask why I didn’t just move out and quit med.

In hindsight, this would have been the correct¹⁸ and courageous¹⁹ thing to do; but at the time, the chronic stress of (a) medicine being hard, (b) medicine being harder due to sucking at it, (c) psychologically resisting medicine and doing it at the same time²⁰, hollowed out my resources. I was constantly on the verge of burnout as I struggled to put one foot in front of the other on the path of med. In this state, it was easier to rationalise²¹ that I had to continue, and maintain the status quo, than it was to take a risk and make a change (MJ – Man in the Mirror). It wasn’t pretty, but it was the truth.

How did I even graduate?

The thing with med school, is that it’s still based on standardised tests and criteria sheets, meaning that if you’re good at taking and passing assessments, you’ll likely eventually graduate.

And, even if you somehow fall through the cracks, fail your assessments/rotations, and get thrown out of med school, there are avenues of appeal, and a possibility that you can get back in – which is what I managed to do²².

Unfortunately, graduating from med school doesn’t mean shit if you didn’t learn things properly – which leads me to my DLC-expansion-pack bonus reason for why I accepted my shithouse foundations as sufficient for the med path ahead:

       4. Self-sabotage:

• Now this is a doozy – as it was super-insidious and super-effective:
  • Insidious:
    • On some level, I probably knew my academic bullshit wasn’t going to get me far at all as a doctor…
  • Effective:
    • …Except I didn’t care – at this point, medicine was the thing that kept me from entrepreneurship, and as long as I could do med, there’s no telling how long I would do med. So, I made sure I couldn’t do med. Sucking at med was my fail-safe against golden handcuffs²³.
  • Mind you, this is the most costly fail-safe option:
    • I would graduate from a degree that promises a job – and not be good enough to do that job, and
    • I would be known as a “failed doctor” as one of my identities – publicly and privately, and it just gets extra awkward every time the topic of medicine comes up, and someone present knows my med school history.

How Do You Feel About The Future?

I feel… optimistic. One thing about having an entrepreneurial predisposition, is that I don’t experience risk in the socially conventional way²⁴: After getting some distance from social influences (largely from family and family-friends), I’ve found that not being in med isn’t the end of the world, and neither is working “lowly” or dead-end jobs to pay the way for entrepreneurship.

A lot of my thoughts about the future has to do with entrepreneurship (after all, it’s what I chose over medicine) – I’ll talk about it more in later pages in the series.

Why Are You Telling Me This?

At this point, you’re probably thinking “Errr, that’s great?” or “That’s horrible!”, and “What in the living hell are you telling me this?”

I’m telling you this, because you can get into medicine.

At the end of the day, the GAMSAT is just a test – and tests are designed to be passable.

And with what FastGAMSAT and other resources teach, you can approach the GAMSAT and interviews with the correct practice and mindset, and get in sooner rather than later – sometimes a lot sooner than anyone expected.

But just like swallowing Mentos then sculling Coke²⁵: Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.

I’m not just here to flog²⁶ my study guide – I might do, if I’m happy with medicine, and think that everyone chooses medicine for the right reasons, and that everyone who gets into medicine enjoys it.

But that is not the case.

I wanted to get into medicine, and I was truly happy when I got in.

Then it all came crashing down, because I didn’t choose medicine knowing the bad and the ugly sides, and I didn’t realise there were paths that better suited my core motivators.

And the above two omissions that led to my downfall, will be the next two topics of discussion (coming soon):

If you’re thinking about doing medicine, or even feel that you’re clear about wanting to do medicine, I encourage you to read “Figuring Out My Suitability For Medicine”, and consider the aspects of medicine the PR department rather you didn’t know about.

If you’re weighing up medicine as a possible path, or are considering medicine because you don’t know what you want to do, read “What Should I Do, If It’s Not Medicine?”.

Final Word: I’m Biased THE OTHER WAY

One final word of warning: I am not like my “mentor” (the med grad who inspired me to do medicine) – I will not encourage you to do medicine by default. In fact, I take it upon myself to actively discourage everyone from doing medicine, except the few who are suited to it.

I hear your thinking “WTF, you’re running a site that sells GAMSAT resources – what’s wrong with you? Get it together man”.

Call it a personal conscience or something²⁷, but I think that if you weren’t built for medicine, I don’t want you to buy my ebook.

In fact, I don’t want you to do the GAMSAT – just get a partial refund and get on with your life. Don’t get cute and think “I’ll give it a shot (or two) to keep my options open”: If you fluke it and get into medicine, it’s like trying the door to the haunted house, stepping through, and having it shut and lock behind you – you thought it’d be cool to show off to ppl, you didn’t think it through when you did it, and now you’re gonna have to deal with the consequences.

Now, whether or not you feel sure about med, let’s see if you’re suitable – move onto the next page in this series!

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1. With hysteria like “He’s the Chosen One!”, “He’s a wizard, Harry!”, “He’s got the magic in him!” (Note: Unmarked spoiler clips for The Matrix and Pitch Perfect above.)

2. When ppl hear that I graduated from medicine, they assume I’m a doctor, whereas I’m technically just a medical graduate, since you only gain provisional “registration” (as a medical doctor, and can stick that coveted “Dr” title in front of your name) for internship.

“Provisional” means the registration is only temporary, and is conditional on you completing internship – that’s when you become fully registered, and can continue renewing your registration and exclaiming “What did you just call me? Bob? That’s Dr Bob to you!”. If you’re fully registered, but you don’t renew your registration, you still can’t continue legally calling yourself a doctor.

3. You had to consider the issues affecting different bodily systems, and how these systems all dynamically affect one another.

4. Most psychology experiments are about testing one variable (occasionally two or three), while keeping everything else constant (or randomised, which is the same as keeping things constant, as everything is equally randomised, if that makes sense)

5. If clinical medicine was my true calling, the sheer force of the passion and purpose would have provided sustainable motivation, bypassing the psychological friction against starting and maintaining stilted social interactions (i.e. talking to and examining ppl clinically, which normal folks almost never do on a daily basis, unless they’re massively into ASMR, have some less-unconstructive form of the Messiah Complex, or something).

6. Of course, I cannot speak for all entrepreneurial types, as you can be entrepreneurial and oriented towards clinical medicine, or have learnt to embrace it, as it fits with your wider purpose.

7. When you get into medicine (particularly if you’re from a more collectivistic culture [e.g. south-east Asian]), you can start to find that your medical dream becomes your family’s medical dream, and then your extended family’s medical dream. I would not put it past some families to gladly trade “there’s gonna be a grandson in the family!” with “there’s gonna be a doctor in the family!”, even if the bun’s already in the oven.

8. I wasn’t groomed from birth to pursue medicine, so I didn’t subscribe to the dogma that is “Medicine is all, and Medicine is great, and one is nothing without Medicine”. I also didn’t have the academic rigour or scientific background that helps with grasping and integrating medicine. Passion was the thing that got me into medicine, and it was the only thing that could have made me thrive in medicine. And it was no longer there, and I was stuffed.

9. Like, say, mushrooms (which are delicious).

10. By this stage, my dad was aware of my entrepreneurial aspirations, and had to keep me from quitting, by telling me that once I graduate, complete internship, and work a few years, I would have medicine as a backup career, and have built up enough capital to start whatever thing I had lodged in my head. The analogy of host-graft rejection and immunosuppression comes to mind.

And so each of us kept up our end of the charade: Dad probably thinking that he can convince me to stay a little while longer as I got further in med, and me thinking that I’m going to (at most) finish internship, then just up-and-leave. It was a massive joke, and no one was laughing.

11. And I didn’t see many throughout med school.

12. Every patient is a unique story; and approaching patient after patient with a basic script and no accumulated experience, makes me as confident as a journalist interviewing non-English-speakers with a basic vocabulary that never got any bigger, because he wasn’t motivated to learn it. Every time I had to see a patient, I felt like running away.

13. Tip: If you’re serious about med, and you don’t have a science or medical science background entering med, learn the fundamentals properly: If you don’t, you may be able to bullshit your way to graduation (see why later), but nothing will make sense as you progress: You won’t understand how drugs work, or how diseases develop and progress, and you’ll have to learn almost every concept by rote rather than logic (which is the most difficult and painful way to learn).

Worse of all, you’ll never get to a point where everything suddenly “clicks” – where you develop an intuition about what to ask, look for, or expect; or start to reason out unfamiliar situations by applying your knowledge. A good parallel would be when you learnt your native language to the point where you could understand it without effort.

Bonus Rounds: You’ll also have the time of your life struggling to do research, answer questions when you give talks, and feeling like you belong in medicine. If you didn’t spend all your life seeing yourself as a doctor, you might go through med school with a tinge of impostor syndrome – that’s natural. What’s not natural is becoming the imposter itself.

14. The popularly-known first tenet of the Hippocratic Oath (which doctors swear by ethically) is Primum non nocere – “First, do no harm”. The higher up the medical ladder, the harder it would be to uphold this point if you didn’t know what the stuff you were doing.

15. There’s actually one more main reason, but it’s unrelated to perspective, and fits better in a later section – so read on to find out.

16. AKA boiling the frog slowly – which doesn’t work in real life, but the case is still useful as a popular metaphor.

17. GGGS, pronounced “G-G-Geez!” (closely related to “J-J-Jesus!”). You have to say it with a tsundere blush too, otherwise you’re not doing it properly.

18. Who was I kidding that I was learning medicine at a level that I could even apply it properly, much less do it as a job?

19. Considering how risky and uncertain entrepreneurship is perceived by mainstream society, I should have embraced the change of moving out of home and quitting medicine.

20. It’s like having your feet on the gas and the brakes at the same time: Instead of spending some energy going somewhere, you’re spending twice the energy going nowhere (you also apparently fuck up the gearbox – in this case, that’s my mental health).

21. “You’ll need capital for your startup, and med is the [only] job that will give it to you”

“You need a backup – and that backup is medicine. Do you think you could get another job with no bankable qualifications or work experience?”

“You’ve always graduated. What are you gonna do? Not graduate? When you’re past the halfway mark? After investing all this time and energy and resources already?”

22. Don’t ask me how I did it, cos I’m not telling: It takes a very specific level of not-wanting-to-do-medicine to get kicked out of med school, and a whole different level of torture to claw your way back in.

23. If you’re in my situation (where your academic foundation is already crumbling, you’re certain you don’t want to do med, and you feel trapped by family expectations), just quit: You’ll disappoint your family either way — and at least this way you waste less of everything (time, money, effort), and may even leave with some semblance of dignity and honour.

24. The social convention is to climb the social leader-board: Get the “best” job (coolest-sounding, highest-responsibility, highest-paying, high-on-the-totem pole, etc.), get the coolest ride, travel internationally, buy a house, date then marry someone socially acceptable, have children, keep up with the Joneses, maintain a bitchin’ Instagram account (even call yourself an Influencer, if you’re that good).

The biggest risk by social convention is to fuck up your reputation score, by flunking out of school/uni, or quitting a sweet gig, or taking a shitty-looking job, or date/marry someone your family and friends aren’t cool with, or stop playing the game and become a gypsy, a shut-in, a hobo, or a ramen-phase entrepreneur (someone who’s minimising expenditure in finances [e.g. living on instant-noodles, renting a cheap place, driving an old car] and time and effort [by taking an entry-level, dead-end job, instead of one in a university-approved industry with career progression and stuff] in order to save as much resources for their startup).

25. The upside is that you’ll be able to do a brown version of Yoga Fire, which is, um, already inherently a brown thing to do. (This is one of the rare times I will use racist humour outside of a self-deprecating context, but this setup was too meta for me not to go there [in case you didn’t know, I love meta – I recently had the privilege of being traumatised by Doki Doki Literature Club, and I enjoyed it]).

26. For non-Australians, that’s slang for “to sell”. It also means to fap, but that’s quite beside the point here (quite).

27. Or just me living vicariously through you: I’ll be your anti-Tiger-Mom, in that I don’t want you to try to do med then regret it, as I have.