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Synopsis
Episode 1 of We Didn’t Plan This is essentially our origin story. We sit down (in Isaac’s office, which is also a side quest chamber) and attempt to introduce ourselves. That means tracing back how two people in their late 20s both ended up in medicine via very different, very unplanned routes — and what that says about the systems that shaped us.
Faith talks about starting her blog Chasing Faith and Love in 2016 almost by accident, writing about med school admissions because no one else was, and how it became both a cozy community for junior doctors and her own coping mechanism during housemanship.
Isaac talks about studying law abroad because he was an arts student and that’s just what you did, eventually doing enough legal internships to realise he didn’t actually want to be a lawyer, and somehow ending up in medicine at 24 — after seriously considering becoming a dive instructor in Bali.
Both of us arrived at the same uncomfortable question: was this what we really wanted?
There’s a lot in this episode about the pressure cooker of Singapore’s education system, the identity weight of a medical career, and what it looks like to build a life where your job is only one part of the picture. It’s also just two people being real about their quarter-life crises — and it sets the tone for everything that’s coming.
Topics covered:
- Our career and personal journeys
- Law school to medicine
- The blog that started it all
- Singapore’s meritocracy and education system
- Side hustles, bonds, and balance
- What it means to not just be your job
Episode Transcript
Isaac:
Hello, I’m Isaac.
Faith:
Hi, I’m Faith.
Isaac:
And welcome to the We Didn’t Plan This podcast.
Faith:
We really didn’t plan this.
Isaac:
So this is the first episode today in hopefully a long series of yapping sessions where we unpack everything from side questing to careers to our own personal stories. And hopefully, if time permits, we want to invite a nice, colorful range of guests from industries all ages with all their stories to share a little bit more with our audience about how we two young people in our 20s are navigating a very very big world of uncertainty.
Faith:
So let’s dive right in.
Isaac:
Before we start yapping a little bit more, I guess we want to tell a little bit more about our own stories and let’s start off with yours. So to the general public and to all the fans. You are the very long-time writer of a blog called Chasing Faith and Hope.
Faith:
And Love.
Isaac:
Sorry, okay. Close enough. So I guess my first question to you is what are you chasing these days?
Faith:
Oh okay, so I am chasing a lot of things, probably too many things, I mean including this podcast. So these days I’m now working as a locum GP. I do blogging on the site, I’m trying other side like content creation, singing arts and crafts, writing a book, lots of other fun stuff. What about you Isaac?
Isaac:
Well that’s a lot. I tried to keep track of it on my fingers but I ran out of fingers which is a good thing. I guess I could call myself a fellow healthcare colleague. I’m a very very junior doctor right now. I finished med school not too long ago but we are actually the same age.
Faith:
We were both born in 1997.
Isaac:
Yes, year of the ox apparently.
Faith:
Which makes us almost 30 next year.
Isaac:
Yes, big three.
Faith:
Let’s not think about it. But yeah, you’ve done a lot before hitting big three.
Isaac:
Yeah, so I mean, I wouldn’t say a lot. It’s just my confused quarter-life crisis self-navigating thing. So I actually came into the profession, you can call it a little bit later, because I came into it as a graduate. I had a first degree before that. And since I like to make self-destructive decisions and torture myself, I entered medicine at the not very tender age of 24. So that’s where I’m at right now. Outside of medicine, I’ve been involved in education for the past between 8 to 10 years, depending on how you spin it.
Faith:
8 to 10 years? That’s a really long time. Wait, so like after army or before army or when?
Isaac:
Well, for legal reasons before and after army.
Faith:
Okay, yes.
Isaac:
Not at all during army, ever.
Faith:
Not at all for legal reasons.
Isaac:
But I mean like all A-level students do, started tutoring a little bit back in the day.
Faith:
Wait, for real? We were in the same batch. I feel like none of my friends were tutoring. You were definitely more entrepreneurial than the rest of us.
Isaac:
I just had too many travel plans after A-levels. And also because you have this false period of purgatory between NS and graduating, you just do every bunch of stupid things you can think of. I remember the hats I wore included being a personal trainer for a while. I also interned at this little travel startup that I just went to sleep every day for like the whole afternoon. But then it was quite interesting. It was one of those ideas where you know you go to the airport and then they just give you a currency and they give you an air ticket and you go to any country that you want.
Faith:
Oh yeah, I feel like I’ve seen some content from that. Yes, yes, yes. I don’t
Isaac:
know if they’re still around but interesting concept. But education. As I moved along throughout the years, obviously I was neither smart nor committed enough to teach tuition consistently. So back when I was in uni, I started dabbling a little bit in the education, consulting and mentorship side of things. So it was more along the lines of much older students and things like personal branding, interview coaching, things like that. So I mean, these were all very good part-time side hustles when I was in uni. I was abroad for my undergrad education.
Faith:
What did you study when you were undergrad?
Isaac:
It’s this other very masochistic degree called law.
Faith:
Yeah, so this here, we have a lawyer and a doctor. This isn’t some overachiever on what’s your next side quest going to be? Becoming an astronaut?
Isaac:
Space agency apparently. An astronaut, that’s what everyone wants to be, my whole self-fulfilling prophecy. So I guess for that, I guess it started off as like a very much hourly, you know, tutoring kind of thing. Then when I was back in Singapore, I realized that, you know, perhaps it’s something I want to grow a little bit because it’s quite an interesting industry. It’s not just about like, oh, you know, help people do their SATs or study for their LNATs or whatever acronym standardized test it is, right?
It’s a much bigger industry that involves working with clients across a longer period, building profiles and personal brands and stuff like that. So I was with a company locally for a little while, had a promotion thanks to their good graces. And then after that, left together with some of my former colleagues to start my own little outfit. So you can call this the side quest chamber over here. But this is the setting where some of these early entrepreneurial dreams were made. So that’s a little bit about me.
Faith:
Yeah, so we’re actually filming this in his office. Cool right? Which house officer is going to work like 70-80 hours a week and still run a side hustle and come and film this podcast with me on a weekend?
Isaac:
All the credit goes to my very amazing team, one of whom is working in the office right now actually. Which gives me the time to come out and say stupid things on YouTube or whatever channel you’re looking at.
Faith:
For us to start yapping.
Isaac:
So I hear that we’ve been talking about the professional side of things. I guess that’s a lot to unpack, right? But let’s talk about the small tiny things we do to keep ourselves alive. You mentioned things like arts and crafts and dancing and singing and somersaulting and backflipping.
Faith:
And you go to space next.
Isaac:
What sort of things do you do for fun, Faith?
Faith:
For fun, okay, honestly, I’m a bit of a homebody. So I’m an introvert in INFJ. So I enjoy a lot of like me time and alone hobbies. So like, okay, not very exciting Netflixing. I like reading books to get inspiration for my writing.
So like every month I force myself to write like a monthly blog post. I mean, honestly, my blog feels like my baby. I started it (Chasing Faith And Love) in 2016 by accident. I realized that there was no one writing about how to get into Singaporean med schools, but I felt like a lot of juniors were asking for it. Kind of similar to how you also identified that gap in the market.
And I was like, okay, since I’m in it, I might as well give people information so they know what kind of hell they’re getting themselves into. Yeah, I can say “hell” now that I’m out of the system. I feel like back when I was in the system, my writing was a little bit more restrained. Because I mean, I was scared that obviously someone will see and like, I don’t know, not let me graduate and finish housemanship and screw off to the private sector.
So yeah, but over time, somehow writing became a really big hobby and source of comfort for me. Like I would post blog posts on the 25th of every month, which I still do because that was the day that we started housemanship for my batch. So like every time I posted it, it was like, okay, one more month down for our bond. So it’s like, so I’m just, you know, counting down and coping mechanisms for myself and my readers who are also going through the same situations. Yeah.
Isaac:
Wow. 25th is a milestone date. And today is the 8th.
Faith:
We are 17 days. Not due anytime soon.
Isaac:
And you know, you’re not just saying this about yourself. The reason why I even got in touch was because of the blog. So fun fact, long before I reached out, before I even came into medicine, your blog was one of the reading pleasures that I had.
Faith:
Oh my gosh, really?
Isaac:
Yeah, before I even decided I should put in an application, I read your blog quite a lot. I hope I don’t sound like a crazy fan right now.
Faith:
Wait, did I write enough to scare you off? What are you doing here?
Isaac:
I guess you failed to convey that intended message.
Faith:
Okay, I failed. Sorry for all the people I failed, especially you.
Isaac:
And what I really liked about your blog was that you wrote it in a very honest way. I think there’s a lot of content these days that is quite extreme, right? Like there’s either people who over-glamorise or people who over-criticize. But I think as you wrote about things like your med student days, I remember you had the whole series that was like M1, M2, M4.
Faith:
Yeah, it’s reminding people, hey, we’re still alive. This blog is active, but not that active. But at least you know what you can look forward to as a junior reading it.
Isaac:
Yeah, and I mean, there’s like a real community, I suppose, that you build around.
Faith:
We’re cozy, but yeah.
Isaac:
Yeah, and I think so the reason why we didn’t plan this is that actually, About a year ago, I reached out to you to hope that you could give a little bit of a sharing and a bit of a speech. Yes.
Faith:
Correct. I think, was it?
Isaac:
Correct. Something to that. For my juniors. And then, as fate would have it, we reconnected this year. I think we have a lot more to talk about at the pace things are going. Yeah.
Faith:
Because for context, you are a house officer. You just started. So, that’s why now he’s going through all the stuff that I was writing about. So, we can all trauma bond together here. This is a safe space.
Isaac:
And while there is the trauma to bond over, there’s also bond bonds.
Faith:
Yeah, there’s good bonds.
Isaac:
There’s good bonds, there’s financial bonds, there’s trauma bonds.
Faith:
Yeah, the financial bond is the biggest one.
Isaac:
So I mean with that blog, I’ve been really curious. How do you keep yourself committed to a writing schedule? It’s evolved to have a lot of different personal brands as well. You have at some point your identity was a med student and then a junior doctor and then a junior doctor venturing out as an entrepreneur. Okay so I’m gonna stop counting but you get the gist. How has the trajectory of the blog evolved across the past few years?
Faith:
Yeah so I guess also just to quickly recap like basically where I came from and where I am now. So I think 2016 I started med school graduated in 2021. Yes and then back then the blog was not super active it was just like maybe a couple posts here and there, a little bit of med life, a little bit of traveling and some introspection.
And then when I started housemanship, I was like, oh my gosh, how am I going to cope? The months are passing so slowly. I’m like, okay, at least I should write about it. So if I write about it, I get the feelings out because I mean, my therapist said whatever works. So I found writing to be a great source of comfort. And I was like, surely I’m not the only one feeling this way. If I write about it, I can hear advice from seniors who’ve been through it. At least people know I’m struggling too and maybe they’ll resonate to some extent.
So as I posted like these monthly posts, I got more and more DMs from people like juniors saying, oh your admission content was really useful. Some parents messaging me saying like, oh can you help me coach my kid and get them into med school? I was like, yeah I can do a little bit of that. And then the part of the people messaging me were like either batchmates or seniors who were also going through it and suffering in the system. They’re like, thanks for speaking out about this, because a lot of us live in fear and you know you always get like what if I speak out and there’s repercussions my department sees this MOH sees this maybe they want to like fire me or something.
So of course I was very careful to present very nuanced and well-researched things. Like if I wanted to state statistics about like “oh people are quitting people are like burning out” I would google and make sure the stats are from MOH’s website or like you know like in parliament you know so that people won’t see I’m just yapping baselessly and making noise for the sake of it. After housemanship, I worked a few more months as a medical officer. I broke my bond to the tune of half a million dollars but yeah we’ll talk about that some other time.
Isaac:
Yeah it’s gonna be a “Finances and navigating your 20s in terms of personal finances and career.” We will have that as a theme at some point in time.
Faith:
Yeah so after leaving I tried working as a full-time GP for a while. Didn’t like the restrictiveness of it. I ended up as a locum. Then I tried setting up my own clinic with a few other co-founders for a while. That didn’t work out but that’s a story I can’t share for legal reasons. And then yeah so since then it’s been back to working as a locum GP.
Yeah I think I mean I feel like all of us push ourselves a bit too hard in life sometimes or we’re too hard on ourselves. We’re like “I must do my best in the rat race”. I must spend like my entire I mean I mean honestly we’ve all been studying, we’ve been studying hard for like law school then med school and I mean even the years before that, all that effort and all those years of our life, like what does it lead to in the end? Like if we can’t pursue all these other side quests, for those of us who don’t equate our identity with our career as doctors.
Isaac:
Yeah, no I think you hit the nail on the head right there, which is that when you ask people from our parents’ generation, they always have a key identity and the key identity always their job right. “This person was a teacher.” Even more so, in that generation they were always tied secondary school like “This person was a Saint Pats boy and became a civil servant.”
Faith:
“And this Rafflesian became a PM” or something. And then like oh that person’s a doctor they’re very good that person’s a very smart and that’s true if you’re like some other less conventional job they’re like cannot study or what kind of job is that?
Isaac:
Yeah I know right and I think one thing that’s been really good in our generation is that people are… there’s this… the line between what is a side quest and what is a main hustle or main quest kind of gets quite blurry and I think that’s just a factor of the job market right? You know there’s a lot of other things you can do but there’s also a lot of uncertainty and in many ways that kind of was my journey into medicine as well because it feels like you know you’re a great student and you studied hard and you went straight to med school and your parents were very proud of you.
Faith:
Yeah, but what inspired you to go into law school? And then what possessed you to go into medicine after that?
Isaac:
So chronologically, what was so uninspiring that made me to go into law school in the first place was that I was just like any other art student in JC. As all Singaporean kids in JC who do not think about their future do, if you do arts, you think about either law or business. Correct me if I’m wrong. I think this generation of 18, 19-year-olds are a lot wiser than that.
Faith:
That was our generation.
Isaac:
Right, which tells you the gap already. No 6, 7 or any of that stuff. But at that point in time, I just thought that I’m an art student, my friends are studying law, I had this dream of going abroad to study and let’s just do it. That was literally the thought process. I think there was a period in my head in NS where I wanted to get a scholarship, go to the US, whatever. But then someone told me there was this thing called the SATs. I was like, okay, the helmet is on my brain and the brain is sitting at home. So that’s alright. But that was literally as simple as the story got.
Faith:
Wait, so did you ever do legal internships or think about why law and not something else?
Isaac:
Not for a moment. imagine that right like you study so hard and use so much brain power on your econ’s essays but you don’t actually think about that question.
Faith:
Yeah true right we don’t have the bandwidth it’s always just like okay it’s the next milestone you’re just rushing you never have time to sit and think about like what do we want in life what shows our personality the best.
Isaac:
Exactly, and i can trace that feeling all the way back to even in JC. I don’t know how much of a shared experience this is but I remember being very swamped by CCA milestone after CCA milestone then you have like a JC1 exam and then another CCA milestone and then it’s like prelims A-levels.
Faith:
Yeah, and then prelims and then if you’re a girl you have to start applying for university already, like all the overseas unis and after that, it’s the end.
Isaac:
And that’s crazy like as a guy who didn’t like to think about my future, I found it inconceivable to even think about uni when I was studying for my A-levels but that would have been the period you were thinking about medicine for the first time. So what was going through your head?
Faith:
No, honestly, so I remember the biggest culture shock. So let’s go all the way back to like primary school. I was I ended up in RGPS GEP. So that was really the start of like, you know, the red race intensifying. And then after that, I went to RGS, I remember my first week of school, there was this girl who was just like, I need to start preparing my portfolio so I can get into an Ivy League school. I was like, I was like, girl, what’s a portfolio? I was like, what’s a CV? I didn’t even know what was going on. But like, I mean, that already set the tone for like the next couple of years.
I was like, okay, everyone else is competing so hard already. We’re only 13. So I was like, I bet I just have to get on this train because if I don’t, then I’m going to get left behind. And then if I decide I want to do something big with my portfolio in the future, then if I have no portfolio, I’m screwed. So yeah, so that’s how it led to med school. Because I mean, science stream, obviously.
In JC, I was BCME, biochem, math, econs. That’s like the typical med student, aspiring med student thing. And I was in Interact Club, which is also where all the aspiring medical students go to get community hours and to prove that they really love helping people. I mean, we do. Don’t get me wrong. We love helping people. But it has to be a bit performative to some extent, right? To show that you’ve got your hours, you’ve earned your stripes.
Yeah, so basically, and then a lot of us did job shadowings in hospitals just to show that we are really dedicated and we’ve thought about this for many years leading up to it. But in retrospect, did we really think about it? Or was it just like we were taking this milestone like, okay, I need to get a job shadowing so I can get in. But instead of thinking, do I really want to get in? Do I want med school? Do I want some other path in life? Yeah. So what was that like for you when you decided you wanted to go to post-grad med?
Isaac:
That was, wow, that was a whole journey. Before we go into it, I thought it was really interesting. You brought up that nuance about, you know, the journey to get into med school in the first place. Because I mean, all these experiences are supposed to be experiences where I go and serve a community, right? Like I go to a whole folks’ home and then I find out and discover whether I really like, you know, being with the elderly, with health problems. But it feels like in this day and age, by the time you hit that, you are already striving for something.
Right? And that’s something I’ve seen in a lot of my students because as, you know, with the kinds of things I do, I still work quite actively with students and all that. We do have competitors or other people in the market who, you know, they do explicit, university prep kind of courses, right? Like, you know, do your SATs in the US, do your LNATs and your BMATs for the UK, things like that.
But actually, the majority of the students I work with are even younger because we thought that actually, right, if you want to even get them to have a semblance of autonomy or agency or ownership over their own journeys, you need to hit them much younger. And you realize that you already have these 15, 14-year-olds who say, okay, I want to get into medicine.
80% of the people who we ask what they want to do, if they’re from science, they say medicine. And I think a lot of the work that I’ve done in education is to help try and ask them, “Have you considered something else?” The path might still be medicine, the path still might be law, it might still be business or whatever it is you want. But I think a lot of it is getting them to go out there and experience for the sake of experiencing, which is things that I wish we both had when we were at their age.
Faith:
It’s not saying that our parents hothoused us, but I mean society just hothoused us, right? By virtue of the school that we’re in or the people surrounding us. If everyone else is applying to med school, you don’t question. You just go along with the flow because it’s easy. I mean, like one third of Interact Club got into medicine in the end.
Isaac:
Not surprised. As I wander the halls of the hospital, I see so many old batchmates who I’ve never seen their face or saw their name in years. Then you scroll the documentation.
Faith:
I mean there were so many Raffles batchmates who went overseas to study medicine. And that’s when you scroll, now they’re doctors too, they all just came back.
Isaac:
Yeah, it’s crazy right? And I guess that made my own journey that you asked about feel a little bit different. Because at that point in time, my entire circle, whether it’s from secondary school, even uni, obviously we’re all humanities students in a specific academic stream, right? And then that also means that later on in life, all of my friends ended up in different industries, be it consulting, banking, finance, government, you know, all these kind of things. But I actually didn’t have any doctor friends, like literally not a single one.
Faith:
Oh, because you were a humanities kid.
Isaac:
Yeah, yeah. And that by itself is, I don’t know if that says something about the system that brings us up where, you know, I don’t know if you watch shows like Divergent, you know, where they’re kind of a clan, right?
Faith:
You’ve got your science faction, you’ve got the physics nerd faction, and you’ve got the humanities and the really artsy people.
Isaac:
Exactly, exactly. And I think when I was thinking about medicine in the first place, I was coming at it from a point of view of actually, I don’t see myself doing law for the rest of my life. Because I’ve done a few internships by then, obviously seen nothing much of the real industry. But I think at that point, it was enough to tell me that actually, this is not what I want to spend the most of my career doing. whether it’s in the end goal in 50 years or it’s in the day-to-day, you know, M&A agreements or going to court, fight a case, right? Like, I mean, what especially made that decision clear for me was, I think funnily enough, I was honoured to be around people who actually liked what they did. And that was very different from, you know, when you’re in JC, everyone just studies for A-levels for the second.
Faith:
Yeah, I mean, no one has a choice.
Isaac:
Correct, correct. And that made me realise that these people like what they’re doing, they find this M&A agreement interesting.
Faith:
Oh, like the lawyers actually really love that they’re on fire for their job.
Isaac:
Exactly.
Faith:
Yeah, that’s radical.
Isaac:
Yeah, it’s quite crazy right? And that made me realise that if I don’t feel that way, maybe there’s something else I could or should be doing. And funnily enough, I was considering two things at that point. It was either going to medicine or move to Bali or Thailand to be a dive instructor for the rest of my life. I do wear the occasional hat of being a diving instructor on some weekends, But thankfully for the sake of my wallet, I went into one rather than the other. I went into some online forums actually. I was like, how much do dive instructors earn on? Then I inserted all my favourite dive spots. And I was like, okay, this is going to be a bit scary. So I decided to, instead of getting a lower paycheck, put myself into a six-figure debt instead.
Faith:
Smart choice.
Isaac:
Yeah, I’m obviously not coming into the financial theme here as an advisor. I’m more a facilitator or a negative example.
Faith:
It’s okay, me too. We are wasted money.
Isaac:
The things we do is with our money. We should have a separate episode.
Faith:
Yeah, we will cover that in another episode.
Isaac:
I think at that point, what really struck me about medicine was that I felt like, number one, on a day-to-day, I could really resonate with the things that some of them did, even after seeing the ugly side of things. Because you know what they say in most jobs, even the ones that you love, 90% of it will just feel like work, but you kind of stay for the 10%, whatever that 10% is. I’ve met people who love yoga, became yoga instructors and then hated it after they…
Faith:
At least they tried it.
Isaac:
And I think that was what rang true for medicine for me. I mean, this is not going to be, this is my road to why medicine or whatever. So TLDR, TLDR, I just thought that it was very human. And I thought that I could really have a platform to have. It’s a privilege to have these difficult conversations, perhaps use my hands and really do procedures and things like that that can impact someone’s lives in a very, very instant way, without too many T and Cs, no pun intended, in my past life. And that was that, right? So I worked that whole journey.
I went through, after many, many difficult cold emails, finally shadowed a General Practitioner. I also did a bunch of other things like do the volunteering and all that. I spent some time with the hospice actually and I thought that it was really good work that they did because you kind of see what these patients are like in their primary care setting which is home. And other than that, one thing that I found really interesting which a lot of people get very surprised to hear is that I feel like actually the way your brain approaches law and medicine is actually very similar. It’s more similar than any other subject I’ve encountered.
Faith:
Oh really? How so?
Isaac:
Yeah, I think because people always see law as like a humanities and medicine as a science right but what I’ll say is that both are subjects that think very algorithmically.
Faith:
Oh I had no idea.
Isaac:
Very very. So it’s like you know like in medicine you’re like stable or unstable right?
Faith:
Yeah unstable, unstable, and then which system is it affecting? Which specialty needs to see them?
Isaac:
Exactly. And for law, I mean, if you think about, at least from a uni student’s point of view, you learn about, okay, is this a crime? First of all, there’s like five different criteria that meets within the definition of that crime. And then if yes, if no, then you bring up certain cases or evidence to support it. And then within each of those branches of your decision-making tree, there’s a bit of uncertainty and a bit of reasoning, a bit of negotiating, right? So I thought that actually, medicine scratched my brain in a very similar way. And I thought it was not bad. And what better way to have the outcome be than a real person instead of a…
Faith:
Yeah, instead of a giant corporation. At least it feels like the whole starfish analogy, right? You’re just helping one’s starfish is better than helping the ocean in general.
Isaac:
Exactly, exactly. So that’s what brought me to medicine after a really long route. I mean, yeah, it’s not all doom and gloom, which is something I really enjoyed from the way you wrote about your career as well, right? Because you’re not just, yes, there was really bad bits of it, but I think there must be a reason you’re still practicing medicine actively today. So what keeps you going and what do you like about patient care?
Faith:
Oh, so, okay, honestly, so I went into medicine with my best friend thinking that both of us would become psychiatrists, actually. Yeah, because both of us are like really into psychology, thinking about how people think and we’re like, we really care about people’s emotions and mental health. So in my first two years, I was in a psychiatry interest group. I was in the executive-committee of that. We were writing papers. I was like, just wholeheartedly gunning for psychiatry.
But then I met family medicine and I was like, oh my, this is what I can see myself doing. So I remember in M3 clinical, during our clinical years, where we spent most of the time in the wards, learning, bedside tutorials and interacting with patients. I was like, okay, do I really see the rest of my life like, you know, doing ward rounds, working in a setting where everyone’s like lying in bed, sick.
And I don’t know, I mean, just being around people who are like that ill every day, kind of, I don’t know whether it weighs on you, but like for me, I was like, oh no, I don’t feel too well myself. Like I’m confronted with mortality every day. I’m like, there’s some old person who was about to conk in front of me. I’m like, that doesn’t feel too good.
Isaac:
I wanted to be like… MRSA worming its way into your brain. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Faith:
And then MRSA, you have to gown up. Yeah, the idea of spending my entire life doing ward rounds was a bit sien. It was a bit of a horrifying and boring thought. And then I remember doing my internal medicine posting, there was a doctor, I shadowed her in a thyroid clinic. Then she was like, okay, there’s three of you medical students. I’ve got three simple patients coming in, just hyperthyroidism. She said, okay, each of you take one patient, under her supervision, of course. And then when I got to sit down inside the clinic at the doctor’s desk and typing the notes and asking the patient questions, I was like, this is radical. Like something in my, I don’t know, my rat brain or goldfish brain clicked. I was like, this is what I can actually see myself doing. Like I enjoy clinic work. I did not enjoy ward work.
So I was like, okay, yeah, I have found my new path. I didn’t want to, I stopped thinking about psychiatry already. It’s like, you know, you don’t think about the guy after he’s out of your life, right? So I was like, okay, psychiatry, bye-bye.
I wholeheartedly locked in on family medicine or like, you know, just clinic-based work which I mean GP life is 100% attuned to that so I feel like the reason why I could break my bond so early and rather why I chose to is because I had a clear career direction I knew I didn’t want to do a residency and I didn’t want to be put through like any more like calls and what when I knew that wasn’t training in the area that I was interested in yeah.
So I mean that’s why I’m still working I mean I work part-time these days as a locum the flexibility gives me time to explore all my other side quests. Yeah, which is, I mean, our life shouldn’t be all about just what works. I mean, if we do have the privilege and financial stability to, I think it’s more precious to spend time on the things that matter to you or the people that matter.
Isaac:
And no, I think I got a lot from that. Just even to inform my immediate career priorities in medicine, right? And I will say that truthfully, truthfully, this is not just for legal reasons, but truthfully, I’m also figuring out where my medical career is going to go, even in the next two to three years. Because there’s such a variety of work that you can do out there. Right now, I obviously am in the midst of that said ward work, right? Some parts of which are great and some parts of which are not so great.
Faith:
Yeah, some days you just sit here all grinding… So, I mean, to give our viewers an idea, like a walk around, you’re literally just pushing this massive computer on wheels. it’s like a table you’ve got two massive screens or something and you’re typing notes while pushing it try not to kill your consultant or run some poor nurse over and then you just bounce around from patient to patient 20 patients in one morning it’s an absolute grind some days isn’t it and there’s like no air-con in some boards so you can imagine being on your feet for three four hours.
Isaac:
Yeah it’s some parts of it are painful and i i think what i’m hearing what i heard overall from you is also that you have all the things that give you meaning in life and you want to be able to up-titrate and down-titrate each of them. It’s not like you left medicine entirely, but it’s having that right amount of it to keep you going across a year, across five years, across ten years.
Faith:
Yeah, it’s all about balance. So speaking of balance, how do you manage everything in your life?
Isaac:
So, well, I get asked that question quite a lot. Big plug to, I’m not sponsored, but this Whoop band I’m wearing on my wrist over here, it tells me a lot about regulating. And I guess the answer is a lot of caffeine, not very healthy sleeping habits. But underneath all that, I feel as if one of my core principles for my life is that everything needs to be done for two reasons or more. Like for everything. Even, I mean sometimes, there are obviously parts of my life that are segmented off from that. Friends and family will always just be friends and family and they’re valuable for their own reasons.
Faith:
Yeah, the intrinsic value is there.
Isaac:
Correct. But I think for everything else, right, like career decisions, one of the things that I thought about even going to medicine by itself, other than the pure, “Wah, I love it, want to help people, blah blah blah.” There were a lot of hygiene factors at play over here, such as in my 30s at least, it’s going to be a grind, but is there at least one route within the many routes in this career where I end up a little bit more comfortable or is that a fallback?
So I think that was a stability that this career path gave me. I think the other thing that I guess could be a good example of this was why I would even bother to run whatever I do in education right now. Because obviously my rent doesn’t pay itself. That is an absolute like its own reason. But then above and all that, what I chose to do it for is that it’s one of those things I’ve been doing for a long time. I thought that it could give me the professional development and growth that I was really craving.
Because you know, if you think about it, in medicine, the way you develop as a professional or as an individual is very confounded by how technical it is. Because you spent so many years just knowing how to manage diseases, right? And rightfully so, rightfully so to everyone who’s ever seen a doctor, there’s a lot of effort put into making sure that we don’t kill people.
But at the same time, that also means that we don’t do a lot of the softer things, right? Like managing projects, like interacting with clients’ clients, or doing organisational problem solving. And I think that’s one of those things that really interests me as well. And knowing that I have this other parallel skill and setting, an environment in which I can realise some of these goals, be it going from just the operator to a junior manager at my previous company to starting my own thing, experimenting, without having to come up with an entirely new core skill. Some people sell t-shirts, some people want to sell F&B right? I’m like, I cannot mix a drink to save my life, neither can I keep that well.
So I have this so-called skill of something on my CV somewhere and I thought, yeah, let’s go into it. So that serves, I suppose, not just the financial reason, but actually like the truth of the matter is I barely earn any money from it, right? Shamefully. But really what keeps me going at it is the sense of professional fulfillment I get from it. And I think the dream is that maybe you share this as well, that at some point down the road, these skills from the different worlds that we inhabit eventually converge in something.
Faith:
Yeah, I mean I’ve always been a firm believer in the whole jack of all trades master of none. I mean obviously if I wanted to be a master I’ll be a resident right now, training in a specialty but I think that didn’t scratch the right right set of itches for me. I don’t really crave exams and being an expert in one subject field because I feel like because of all the time and effort spent in doing that you neglect all the other cool skills that you could pick up management or like business getting to meet people.
I feel like once you’re in medicine, it’s actually very insular. You can be like the top cardiologist but if you ask them something about, I don’t know, diving? Okay I mean yeah maybe some of them do dive but I mean why do I want to lock myself into one box so early on in life? So I’m also all for just upskilling. If you view life as a video game, we’re just collecting stats in many different aspects rather than some people who just want to upskill in the intelligence aspect or something.
Isaac:
And I think that even when you do meet these people, they kind of give you a lot of perspective as well.
Faith:
Yeah, it’s like the contrast. It’s like, this is what our lives could have been if we chose that path. And then this is our path. But I mean, we can all still be friends.
Isaac:
And professionally, you do need these people.
Faith:
Yeah, 100%. As a GP, I can’t tell you how many times I have to refer to specialists.
Isaac:
Exactly, exactly. And I mean, even from hobbies, I feel like I’ve learned a lot that I can apply in my professional life. Like diving, right? I do teach some courses on the weekends. Every now and then, it’s purely on a volunteer basis, unfortunately. It’s fun, it’s fun.
Faith:
You really love unpaid labour and low-paid labour.
Isaac:
Yes, yes, yes. I live of unpaid labour. But what I thought was really fun and really informative about that whole process was that the way I was taught to teach diving taught me a lot about how to educate students and children who learn with me. Because if you draw parallels, diving is something that is very methodical. There are certain things you have to do when you are underwater. Things that help you breathe, that’s not good to miss. but how we teach is often through a lot of reinforcement, through a lot of repetition, but also through a lot of choosing a focus.
Because let’s say every time you jump in the water, especially as a beginner, there’s 10,000 things you will not do so well, right? Like some equipment will be dangling, you will not be moving as optimally as you should, you might have made a mistake, you might have navigated wrongly, but every interaction or encounter has a key takeaway that you want to hammer home to the learner. And I kind of brought a lot of that into the way that I teach in a more academic sense or even mentor in a more non-academic sense.
And I see a lot of these features in, even if you take the other world which we inhabit, which is healthcare, I see a lot of these features in the best clinical teachers that are encountered as well, right? Like they are the ones who don’t just like go, like why, you know, this other drug has a slightly better renal clearance rate and then they just miss the whole plot, right?
So yeah, I guess at the end of the day, with side quests and main quests, they all converge on the same character. And I think hopefully, as we talk more in our other episodes, we’ll bring on a lot of people who have all of their big projects, whether they are Intelligence 100, Athletic 100, and we’ll learn a little bit more from them. I think today we talked so much about, we did a throwback to JC, man.
Faith:
We recapped our whole lives and how we got a job. So yes, thanks for listening to us yapping. And we’ve got many exciting guests planned for you.
Isaac:
Yeah, we talked about where it all started. I guess whether or not we admitted the main identifier, professional identifier is always that little healthcare thing that we have going on. It comes from so many factors, be it cultural, be it social, when we are that age. and I guess across the years, you kind of learn and as you start becoming a more sentient being into your 20s, you get these reflections.
And hopefully, if you’re watching this from somewhere in your teen years or somewhere in your 50s or somewhere from across the world, maybe some of these mistakes will be relatable to you too. So see you next time on We Didn’t Plan This.
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