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Watch The Episode

About Our Guest

Xiao Yue is a Malaysian medical student currently pursuing her MBBS at Universiti Malaya. Curious, reflective and always keen to explore the realities behind a career in medicine, she is interested in the different paths that doctors can take and what life in healthcare actually looks like beyond medical school.

Outside of medicine, Xiao Yue is also a Youtuber/podcaster – check out her channel at this link – and enjoys having conversations about education, careers and the experiences that shape the choices we make. Her journey as a medical student has given her the opportunity to explore different healthcare environments, including gaining exposure to medicine in Singapore, and to think more deeply about what she wants her own career in medicine to look like.

Synopsis

When Xiao Yue was in high school, she thought she wanted to go into politics. Then she considered law, biomedical science and eventually medicine. In this episode of We Didn’t Plan This, we sit down with Xiao Yue, a second-year medical student at Universiti Malaya, to hear how she ended up choosing medicine and what she has discovered since starting medical school. We talk about everything from shadowing doctors and figuring out what kind of work actually feels meaningful, to the reality of medical school once the glossy career brochures are replaced by anatomy, physiology, exams and a rather all-consuming hospital world.

But the conversation goes beyond just studying medicine. Xiao Yue opens up about feeling lonely during A-levels and medical school, finding ways to maintain friendships and family time, and her various “side quests” including running, hiking and conservation. We also get into a bigger question that I think a lot of medical students and young professionals eventually have to confront: who are you outside your degree or job? How much of your identity should come from being a doctor, and how do you build a life that still leaves room for everything else you care about?

As she gets closer to clinical training and eventually housemanship, Xiao Yue is still figuring out what kind of doctor she wants to become, whether she even wants to specialise, and what she wants her life to look like beyond medicine. And perhaps the most fitting takeaway from the episode is her advice to her younger self: choosing one path doesn’t mean you’re locked into it forever. Sometimes you have to make a decision, see where it takes you, and trust yourself to reassess along the way.

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Episode Transcript

Isaac
Hi, I’m Isaac

Faith
And I’m Faith, and welcome to the We Didn’t Plan This podcast.

Isaac
So today we have our special guest Xiao Yue from UM, Universiti of Malaya Year 2 and we’re here to talk a little bit more about healthcare in Singapore, in Malaysia but most importantly Xiao Yue’s own lived experiences as a medical student from across the Causeway. So expect lots of jokes, lots of little little tidbits about the good, the bad and the ugly of what you are studying right now. Hopefully we rekindle some memories about our own days as medical students too.

Faith
It’s more like PTSD but yes.

Isaac
Okay so I mean to preface this episode as well, it’s not really our system versus your system kind of thing and honestly if we make any generalizations the sample size is n=1 and n=2 on both sides. So she does not represent anything from the university, from the system. We do not also represent anything.

Faith
We are just three people talking on a weekend.

Isaac
Yes, don’t bring us into the Singapore versus Malaysia debate on Threads. So we are just talking about our own medical experiences. And fun fact, our medical systems aren’t exactly strangers.

They both are descended from the British colonial system. And okay, I’m reading this. So Singapore’s early Medical School was established in 1905 as the Straits and Federated Malay State Government Medical School.

And after that, this institution evolved through several forms, became Universiti Malaya, National University of Singapore, and had its own distinct path since then. So in a way, we’re kind of like talking about two cousins of the same family. So without further ado, okay Xiao Yue, maybe walk us through the journey of how you ended up studying medicine in UM.

Xiao Yue
Okay so hi everyone I’m so happy to be on this channel. So initially when I was in high school I always wanted to do politics. Politics was my first choice and very ironically I my idol was Lee Kuan Yew and I got to know that he studied law so I thought oh actually law is a very good base to become a politician. So I started like working on my resume for law. So I joined a bunch of like debate, public speaking, model United Nations and then I gradually like came to the age of A levels and I wanted to like broaden my options because everyone says that if you do sciences then you can always end up doing arts later on.

Yeah, so I took like three sciences and one maths and then I went with that. Until the time to apply for uni came, I really struggled because I’ve always wanted to keep my options open. But I can’t do that anymore because I have to pick.

You need to commit enough. Yeah, so maybe a fear of commitment or something. So then I went and shadowed at a law firm.

Then I saw like, oh the culture was not really what I expected because maybe it’s just specific to that law firm. The partners there they were like, oh if you want to buy a bunch of like luxury bags and not be a stay-at-home housewife then you should come to our firm and be a lawyer. And I was like, that is not what I want to be you know.

Faith
Yeah that’s a weird angle to pitch to a young student.

Xiao Yue
Yeah, so because I was short on time, I was like ah okay, I don’t want law. And then also I saw like this huge stack of papers on each desk in the law firm.

So the law firm was like very small and then it’s like a lot of tables, a lot of papers and I was like wow, can you imagine just sitting there and having to do all these things. So I thought based on the vibes, I just thought maybe law is not for me but retrospectively maybe I could have given it a little more thought but then I went to shadow another doctor it’s a part of the UM’s own shadowing program where we go to different departments in UMMC which is the university hospital and we and we like just shadow the doctors there. I went to general surgery, emergency medicine and O&G.

So I saw different procedures being done and I really saw the doctors, their passion and how they think. The whole thing is just very fascinating because it’s like things happen spontaneously. You can’t predict when the next patient comes in, what they present with and then it’s the idea of that because I’m also someone who loves something that’s spontaneous. I love having like, oh, you need to come and do this. So it’s very interesting to me.

And also it’s just something that’s brand new because we see how trusting the patients are to the doctors. And with that level of trust, you have the responsibility to do what you can for them. And I found that to be so touching.

And also it showed that like your occupation was something that was not just a job, but it’s something that brings meaning to you and the patient. Yeah, so as opposed to like a lot of other jobs that I considered, you know, like maybe office jobs and I thought that, okay, I’m just exchanging my time for the money that I get, but maybe just for me, not speaking for everyone. But yeah, I just thought that I want my job to be something that I can look back on when I’m like 80 and find that I have done something that means a lot to myself.

Isaac
Personal statement linked in bio.

Faith
That was very introspective and you covered everything from what made you decide to go from politics to law to medicine.

Xiao Yue
Yeah, it was a huge journey and at one point I also considered biomed. So I went to the lab to like culture, those like Staph Auerus (bacteria) stuff. And I thought I really cannot do lab work.

Faith
So you really tried everything and you knew your options exhaustively.

Xiao Yue
But I think it was also long because I was planning to apply to medicine first, like the UM. I also applied to UM Law and I got UM Law. I was also planning to take the LNAT to go to UK.

But I tried a few papers and I thought like, well, this LNAT thing, I just don’t want to do it. So I just gave up, you know, natural selection. I’m not meant to be a lawyer.

Isaac
Wow, that’s very insightful for someone who was just graduating high school. I think 80% or 70% of people who are studying med here might not have that true level of insight.

Faith
Yeah, I don’t think any of us really thought that deeply about it.

Isaac
But then I have a question for you if I was your interviewer. Did you by any chance try interning at a law firm that happened to use Microsoft Word?

Xiao Yue
No. Wait, why is that? I’m confused.

Isaac
It’s paper, paper, paper. And when we come back, she’s year two right now. This is three years ago, a law firm that’s using stacks of paper.

Faith
Yeah, actually it should be digitised already, right?

Isaac
If you went with a company that was Google Docs enabled, your experience might have been different.

Xiao Yue
Everyone would be wearing fake glasses.

Faith
But it would have looked less scary. But in your school, was there this expectation that most of you would go into medicine, law, or the more prestigious professions?

Xiao Yue
I think during A-levels, Okay, it’s a different story in high school. Because in A-levels, only people start thinking about what do I want to do for the rest of my life, right? There was a lot of people who got into engineering.

But I think a lot of my friends, they got into biomed. Yeah, which is why I also, as a very easily influenced person, I also stayed to biomed and found out I didn’t like it. I don’t think there was a pressure because it’s all very up to ourselves.

Yeah, at least for me. My parents never pressured me. But I did have this one friend who was in debate with me also. He has always wanted to be a doctor. And we’re pretty close. So he also kind of inspired me to do medicine.

Because there’s always like a conflict. Like, how can I like law and medicine both at once? It’s like, I should only be one thing. But now I like both. So what do I do with that? So he kind of like showed me that I can like something, but still choose another thing. I can be both things at once.

Isaac
That’s actually very well reasoned out. I think most people that I’ve met who apply to NUS Law and NUS Medicine do it because it’s the top two most hard to get in degrees. So I will say that, you know, you really, really put your thought into it.

I have a curious question. When, I mean, most of your high school activities seem to be very humanities oriented, right? And you were gunning for something like politics or law, do you feel like any of those skills or experiences are helpful to you now as a medical student or that you think might be helpful in your future career?

Xiao Yue
Very ironically also, I feel like I got a lot less eloquent over the years. Because before this, when I was gunning for the politics thing, I read all the classics, you know, like, Tolstoy, all these things like literature, poetry. I like to analyse all like, I read those history books.

And I thought, wow. I thought like, okay, during the time I was very eloquent. But as time moved on, and now we learn about all this anatomy, physiology, like we rarely speak also, so I am not sure if those skills are still within me.

Isaac
Oh my god, I was talking to my friend about the exact same thing because she posted a throwback photo on her IG of this. history essay she wrote when she was 16. So it was about the nuances of the Bolshevik revolution and the different precipitating causes. Then I was like laughing with no like, what is my English now? My English now is said abdomen was pain since Thursday and stopped hurting on Thursday night.

Faith
And then “plan: home today”. You’re just talking like cavemen already.

Isaac
So now that you’re in UM and going through your medical education, is there anything that surprised you about what studying medicine is like compared to what it felt like when you were in high school, when you were shadowing, etc.

Faith
Yeah, when they advertised it on Open Day and said, join medicine.

Xiao Yue
Okay, so when I was in high school and I thought about the career of being a doctor, I always just saw the life of being a doctor instead of thinking about medical school. It’s like, yeah, it’s like it didn’t occur to me at all how life at medical school would be. But I guess in A-levels, when I got to know a bit of people who were studying medicine at that time, I had the perception that it would be very tough.

I mean, it is very tough, but I thought that people study 24-7. Like they just do academics and there’s nothing out of that. And they’re all miserable and sleep deprived.

But now that I am in med school, I’d say that looking back in my first and second years, I think it’s quite manageable because it’s very self-guided. Like if today I want to aim for like Dean’s List and aim for like 90% of my grades, then I can be studying 24-7. But if I decide to take like a more chill approach as I am, Then I can still spend time to socialise, go out with my friends, go out with my family, and still be a happy person. Studying doesn’t take up all my time.

Isaac
So outside of medicine, what are the things that do take up your time that you love and that you sometimes obsess over?

Xiao Yue
So it’s very typical. I spend time with my family. I spend time with my partner, my friends. And over the past two years, I’ve been going into running. So I joined like run clubs.

Faith
Are you in a run club?

Xiao Yue
Yeah.

Faith
Aren’t you in a run club too?

Isaac
I’m not in a run club.

Faith
You strike me as a run club kinda guy.

Isaac
Well, well, well.

Xiao Yue
Then I joined a few run clubs around Petaling Jaya, around my school. Then we got to meet new people, try our different running exercises, like running drills. Then I got into hiking. So I did like a few ultras that I didn’t complete. Because it’s too tough.

Faith
Oh my, but you’ve been side questing so much. And I mean, do you think that’s going to change a lot once you, I don’t know, start work?

Xiao Yue
That’s hard to say. Actually, right, some others, I think like for running and hiking, they might not be so affected. Because we always have like off days.

But before this, I also like, I’m really into conservation. So I went for this boot camp over at Terengganu, which is so magical. So we had workshops about the current problems in the ocean conservation landscape.

And like, for turtles, everything. So I think these kind of side quests may be the main ones that are affected. Because we can’t just randomly take out one week of our time when we start housemanship.

Faith
Fair enough.

Xiao Yue
And I doubt if I’ll ever do this again, like now also. Because clinicals are starting.

Isaac
So I guess when you talk about all these different things that you do in your free time, if you had to prioritise, which one would you keep? And how would you make sure you keep it?

Xiao Yue
It’s definitely family time. Because, I mean, what can we hope for? What other things can satisfy us if not time with your family? At least for me then how i plan to keep it up if i do end up working in malaysia then of course I’d like to hopefully be at a hospital near my house so then i can at least like see my family after a long day or like post call and when i’m studying I think it’s pretty achievable because from PJ to my house is just like 30 minutes drive yeah so i think I will make the effort to carve out time for them?

Faith
So what are your internal pillars throughout all of this? Who do you lean on or what kind of inner strength do you draw on when things get tough?

Xiao Yue
I think my number one, I think first you just have to let yourself go through it. Because sometimes when you’re in a rut, nothing will help unless you just let yourself go to the lowest point. And then regardless of what happens, as time passes, you will get out of it. But I definitely do rely on my parents a lot and like it’s just very assuring to see that throughout everything your parents are always there to be like a like the anchor of the ship.

Faith
Yeah, you see them, you feel reassured, you know that things will be okay when you get home from a hard shift right?

Xiao Yue
Yeah so I think that’s very important to me and also friends outside of medicine as well because that reminds you that you have a life outside of medicine. This is not everything.

Faith
Yeah, because when you hang with med friends, you just end up talking about work or school and studying.

Xiao Yue
You just talk about the cardio system, different physiology.

Isaac
Has there been a point where these systems of emotional support have really been challenged throughout your time as a med student? I mean, honestly, if you want to share something from your A-level high school period, that’s fine too.

Xiao Yue
I think A-levels was a little bit similar to med school, honestly. Because, okay, in high school, me and my group of friends were always very tight-knit. As in like, because you see them every day.

But in A-levels, because the exam itself is so taxing, and you have such a short time to get all your knowledge together. So we find that like, especially when you’re in a different class from your friends, it’s so difficult to link up. Because whenever you have time, you have to do past years and like revise the concepts. So I definitely felt a lot more isolated. I think that was the first time where I felt truly lonely in my life was during A-Levels.

And similar to med school, ’cause nearing the finals in my year one, which was last year, yeah, last year, last year. Yeah. Then I felt very lonely during that phase also because everyone’s preparing for exams and I don’t want to be the friend who like says, “Oh guys, I’m feeling so sad right now, I need someone.”

Then, okay, I just couldn’t bring myself to do that. So I think that was a very tough moment for me. But I found that everyone faces the same feelings. Because afterwards, when we discussed how our experience was like preparing for finals, everyone says that they got super depressed, then they felt very alone. I think it’s just the stress of dealing with exams itself.

Isaac
I think you’ve gone through a pretty tough journey in academics and all that. It sounds like you have a lot of soft skills that have lots of potential to develop as you go into the next phase. So all the best with that.

I guess to segue a little bit into something a bit lighter as well, what do you think are some things about being a medical student in Malaysia that no one tells you about until you’re in it? Because I mean, even if you are in Malaysia for high school and all that, sometimes people think about studying abroad, people start off thinking of studying other things. So, you know, Malaysia medical student versus all the other parallels.

Xiao Yue
Okay, so I think that studying in Malaysia is a very unique experience in itself because okay for myself I’ve always dreamed of going over to the UK or like the US to do my bachelor’s but I didn’t go also because of financial constraints so I find that in Malaysia things don’t change because you’re always in the same environment that you’ve been for the past like 19 years so that’s that is one aspect of it but being in medical school is a very closed-off experience at least it was for me because it’s very unlike other degrees. Let’s say today I’m doing engineering, I can think about like industrial – I don’t know correct me if i’m wrong – but some of my engineering friends they go into like some hackathon competitions they learn about like economics and then because they want to it can be a business right yeah so it’s about everything all at once yeah or if you do like actuarial you have to learn everything also business, econs and you have to look at the trends outside like in the real world, but for medicine it’s all just like textbook-based, your slides, your lecturers and basically the hospital is your world so we don’t need to look at what’s happening outside. W don’t even need to know what’s happening to the country or like what’s going on in the news

Faith
It’s like you just function in a box sometimes

Xiao Yue
Yeah that’s why they say a lot about like finance and medical doctors because we have very low exposure to like how to invest how to to structure your finances that you may be exposed to if you’re in another field. So it’s a bit more like, you need to make an additional effort to look for that yourself.

Isaac
Do you think that that could be a cultural thing that’s actually very common to most Singapore and Malaysia? Because interestingly, when I was studying in the UK, there is not as much direct copy paste from degree into vocation as what I definitely felt in medical school, in law school, where over there, I mean, partially it’s because of the problems that are plaguing the NHS and all that. But there are so many medical students, those who post content, those who quietly are exploring these options.

But so many of them think about, oh, should I go and straight away go to the US, should I join management consulting? Should I join pharmaceuticals right after MBBS? And when I was studying law, it was the same. In Singapore, everyone who studies law becomes a lawyer.

But then over there, I will say up to 30 to 40% of my classmates were thinking, oh, should I join investment banking? Should I join consulting? Should I join the philanthropic sector, NGO, international development?

So I wonder if this is a Singapore and Malaysian thing as well, and the way we relate to our careers.

Faith
Just flowing from your degree to your job.

Isaac
Yeah, thought starters. But true.

Xiao Yue
I mean, it just makes sense because a lot of people go into medicine or law because of the certainty that it provides. You know that you complete five years of med school, then you have the entire pathway laid down.

Faith
Yeah, the whole Asian concept of iron rice bowl, right? Yeah. So conversely, what assumption do you have about becoming a doctor or med student that turned out to be completely wrong?

Xiao Yue
Oh, okay. I had this concept that being a doctor is all about like saving lives and like being a great person. You know, that is the dream.

But reality isn’t like that. So when I entered med school, even before I entered, this was a huge dilemma for me because we all know that it’s very difficult to be a doctor because of the hours, the mental stress, the amount of work you have to do. So it was a dilemma for me to whether or not I want to trade my life for this job.

Because even if you don’t want to, you will end up trading a significant amount of time to do this thing. So I think this was something I had known before I came into med school. But once I entered, it slowly slowly grew.

However, I do find it good that I have already seen the possibility of this and accepted this risk. But I think this is something that many people who enter medicine don’t consider enough.

Isaac
I mean, it does sound like you’ve thought ahead and at least tried to anticipate and reflect on some of the challenges that might come in the future, the long term indications of this career. So as you draw closer to starting housemanship, house officership, day one as a doctor, what do you feel your life will look like after graduation and how are you feeling about it right now?

Xiao Yue
What I think life will be like after graduation, it would be tough as for like all industries when you’re like stepping out to work for the first time but also we hear a lot of horror stories for housemanship and I hope to be mentally prepared for that I feel like all in all right there’s two ways to deal with it I’ve seen seniors who are in housemanship now who like they go to work and then they treat it like something that is fun because you have so many patients it’s sort of like a game I think that’s how they view it

Isaac
That’s crazy

Faith
That’s a very positive mindset

Isaac
We need to like teach people these mental gymnastics you know.

Faith
You can become a life coach already, inspirational

Isaac
You get 20 patients today

Faith
Like yay, I’m so excited that’s not enough of a challenge

Xiao Yue
Because you know like all those like cooking games on App Store

Faith
Oh like time management games

Xiao Yue
Yeah and then you just plan what time you want to give what time I want to take what time I want to do this active plan. So I guess that’s how they make it fun. And then when they have like a very tough case, they just take it as like a very intense level.

Yeah, so that’s how I know some people deal with it. I know they might be like super full of energy or they’re just very intelligent people to begin with. So that’s also a second way to deal with it that I think I might fall under .

I think for the first type of person, right, they’re very like type A because they know they can deal with the stress they can do everything on the spot yeah you do have to have like some mental flexibility to do that I feel like for most cases you might just take a longer time to adapt which I think is the case for most people either ways and but gradually you’ll find rhythm within it as well and I always believe that like I don’t want to fear something that’s like 10 to 15 years down the line and I don’t want to expect the worst because I know that at any point in life, everything comes one at a time. So I’ll always feel like it’s manageable if I take it one step at a time. And at any point, if I feel that it’s not for me, then I trust that I will follow my heart and make a change.

Isaac
Well, that’s I think two very interesting ways of… one more interesting than the other.

Faith
I’ve never heard anyone be so excited.

Isaac
I’m gonna say, we are putting this in a short that’s going on IG. I wish I had someone like you working alongside me when I was doing my Housemanship.

Faith
It’ll be so motivational.

Isaac
Honestly.

Faith
We’ll see a long list and then someone will be like, and then the rest of us will be like, oh my god.

Isaac
Sushi Go round time. Then, let’s zoom out to some more macro questions, right? Perhaps if you could keep one thing about the medical training culture that you really like and change one thing, what would they be? What are some great positives about the way you feel medical education is being done? What are some things you think could perhaps improve?

Xiao Yue
One thing is I feel the patients at my university hospital, they are very open to students and they won’t be like, it’s not like, oh, hi uncle, my name is Xiao Yue, I’m a second year medical student. Can I like take a history? They won’t like push you away.

They will just be quite welcoming in most cases, as long as you don’t go and, like, clerk a patient in severe pain. Yeah. So I think that allows us to learn a lot more because then we won’t be afraid of clerking patients, doing examinations.

And the consultants there are also very willing to teach. So sometimes when they’re, like, maybe there’s, like, a liver transplant case because it’s quite rare to have a liver transplant, right? So the consultant will, like, tell students, oh do you want to come see the patient before they go for the operation so then you can have like a better picture of what happens and how they look like what are the challenges changes that they go through i think that’s very valuable for students learning as well.

Isaac
I mean what she what she said about the the learning experience i mean it does resonate quite a lot yeah because I feel I feel like the patients here and the way our medical education is delivered these days is quite protected, so to speak. I mean you hear that once upon a time when dinosaurs roamed the earth, medical students are given official duties on the wall.

Faith
Yeah, like they had to deliver babies because there was just not enough manpower. But now it’s like you can only observe and you stand at a safe distance.

Isaac
But I think it’s crazy to think that once upon a time, If we were final year med students, they would ask us or entrust us to deliver a baby or something.

Faith
Yeah, maybe 20-30 years ago.

Isaac
Yeah. No, and I think we do as well, thinking back to our med school days, appreciate the fact that our learning is always very protected. And you know, they don’t expect you to, oh, you know, you must go and throw this, you know, send this paper or run this tube down to somewhere.

Faith
Yeah, you still feel like a student to some extent.

Isaac
Is it true that when you are studying in UM, or at least like for most med students in Malaysia, you must do on-call shifts quite regularly throughout your posting? Is that a thing?

Xiao Yue
Starting from year four, I think it’s year four. You have to do on-call shifts, but it’s not actually an on-call because it’s more like a night shift, if that makes sense. They stay until like 12 am. But I do know some students, because it’s also self-directed, so let’s say I want to do 24 hours. Then I can also follow.

Faith
So they can stay to practice.

Xiao Yue
Yeah. One thing I would change is, like the… I feel that in pre-clinicals…

I might not give a very complete picture, because I’m still in year two. I feel like in pre-clinicals, we focus too much on by-system learning. That suddenly, when you go to internal medicine in third year, it will be very culture shock.

Because what do you mean I have to consider all these different systems at the same time and interpret all these lab tests and imaging? I feel like we could have some more exposure to this beforehand. Yeah. Or at least maybe it would be a self-effort to put in. Maybe that’s what I wish I would have done.

Isaac
So I guess now that we talk about medical training and graduating and all that, It does feel like there’s a lot of shared aspirations that seem universal to being a medical student. Singapore, Malaysia, everywhere in the world. Even, you know, you scroll MedTok enough, you see more than enough people from across the ocean saying the same things.

But let’s forget the white coat for a moment. If you detach this whole thing, right, your future from the idea of being a doctor per se, right? you just think about what you want for your life or what do you see yourself becoming as a person or a professional?

How would you describe that version of yourself five to ten years’ time? Live an impact, create a life for yourself, take care of your family, all those things. What’s the most important things to you?

Xiao Yue
Honestly, I had this conversation with my friend a few days ago and it was kind of depressing because before I started med school, I had a lot of these aspirations. And I guess that’s the conversation about potential. Because when you’re young, you have a lot of potential to do so many different things.

But as you get older, it naturally just gets narrower as time goes on. So I found that during my conversation with my friend, that aside from med school, I probably am not doing anything significant in my life. But after thinking about it, I do think that family is still number one.

But I’m also thinking about what else I can be doing. Because it’s the question of what is your identity? Because am I the things that I spend time doing?

Does that truly define me? But these things change over time as well. Let’s say I like to do conservation. Does that define me? And who am I? I think that’s something that people may not be able to answer even as they go to the age of 70. But I’m also curious, what’s that like for both of you?

Isaac
Searching, searching.

Faith
But the identity, I feel like it can be nebulous. Like you don’t have to box yourself in and say, I am only a doctor. You can be a doctor who does other things or you can be, I don’t know, like for Isaac, you’ve got so many side quests and you’ve got your business on the side. So it’s like you have multiple core identities and all of them can be weighed equally.

Isaac
I think to me, it’s just about getting, like to me, there’s an aspiration, which is very murky and abstract. And then there is a bottom line, which is more concrete things that involve money, that involve, you know, relating to my friends and spending X amount of time on certain things. I feel as if the minimum to me is like, okay, I want to have a certain level of financial comfort, which doesn’t have to be like crazy out of this world.

But okay, I need to not have to worry about housing. I want to not have to worry about debt or loans or things like that. I want to be able to spend time with my friends.

After I finish Housemanship and I’m in a slightly more forgiving posting right now. I have this one friend who I go and run with at least once a week, and we call it our mini-run club. And I think that is kind of what life is supposed to be, just spending time with people who are close to me.

But I think the more abstract version of that is that I would want to savor as much of what life has to offer. That to me also means professionally seeing what really opposite ends of the spectrum are seeing. if I get really pretty damn good at this medicine thing, how does that look like?

But if at the same time I develop soft skills, I build a good network outside, I’m able to open opportunities, be it business, be it professional, that I might not have seen before, then that to me is a life well lived as well. And it doesn’t have to come under the label of doctor or co-founder or whatever. So I don’t know.

I think that’s what it means to me. But then if I were to flip that back around, If you think of in broad strokes, what kind of a doctor you want to be like, what would that be? I realize so many people have different answers.

Some people feel like my whole idea is to be a doctorpreneur. Some people say that I really want to be just a super super specialist. I want to be the world leader in transplanting X kind of thing. Some other people say you just want to broaden your impact, teach a lot, research a lot. So I don’t know, what is that medical identity look like for you?

Xiao Yue
Well, this is a very good question. So, I don’t think I have experienced enough of medicine to say, but you know the thought, okay, the dream is always to be hyper-specialized, like for any medical student, I feel, like much of my peers as well, especially when you’re in pre-clinicals, I think. But I do know that when time passes, it will change.

For myself, I might not be able to visualize myself hyper specializing in something. Because I know that I have always been a very open option, like a person with many options.

Faith
Yeah, just explore first rather than committing.

Xiao Yue
Yeah, it’s a bit scary to think that at the end of it, I’ll be like super specialized in one thing. Like what does that mean for other things in my life?

Faith
Like what other doors do you have to close right? To walk through that one.

Xiao Yue
Yeah, and that is a bit scary. So that’s why I am a bit hesitant to say that I would be someone hyper-specialized.

Faith
So okay, our last question. If you could sit down with your 18-year-old or, you know, a younger version of yourself, what’s a piece of advice you would give her?

Xiao Yue
Well, honestly, I don’t even know if I have the answer. But I’d probably just say, like, don’t worry about the decision that you make for what to choose for like your degree because it will not define whichever path you choose to take because whichever whichever path you decide to take, it’s gonna bring you to a new destination that you can then reassess and see if it’s right for you. So I think no decision is ever wrong because if you’ve never made that decision to begin with you wouldn’t have the knowledge required for you to do something more that could be better for you in the long run as well.

Isaac
Thanks for those wise parting words, Xiaoyan. It’s going into another short clip.

Faith
Very insightful.

Isaac
Definitely going into a reel. So thanks so much for entertaining our questioning and our jibes today. This brings us to the end of our episode and see you on the next one.

Faith
Bye!

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