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I wanted to be a medical doctor. I volunteered at hospitals, local first aid groups, I even took the prerequisites (anatomy, organic chemistry, etc.) while I wa

I wanted to be a medical doctor. I volunteered at hospitals, local first aid groups, I even took the prerequisites (anatomy, organic chemistry, etc.) while I was in undergrad for electrical engineering. My pie-in-the-sky hope was to combine my knowledge and skillset in electrical and software engineering, with medical training to create new innovations in medical technology. I didn't know exactly what I was going to do, but I knew the path I wanted to take. Heck, it's even why I did a Master's in medical imaging (didn't write my thesis though.) I wrote my MCATs, got a 33S, which I was super proud of. Had a 3.5 GPA. Not stellar, but I thought it was good considering my workload and degree choice. I applied all over Ontario, in hopes of getting in. I never even managed to get an interview. I guess I shouldn't have bothered to believe the medical schools when they said they look at each applicant holistically. They just care about the raw numbers. I mean, it explains why the entrance average at some Ontario medical schools is higher than even Harvard. I gave up. Sure, I looked at the Caribbean schools. Plenty of my friends in the sciences went there. My sister is there now. I looked at going to the US. I didn't want to do that. I wanted to study in my home country. I mean, I am who I am because of the investment of my fellow Canadians in me through their tax dollars. I wanted to try and start to pay that back, while also continuing to reap those benefits. I lost hope in my Master's degree. I didn't see the point anymore. I became depressed. Things were going downhill. I left the program, and took a few months to pull myself together. I sought out help. I tried to go back to my Master's program, but it was all for naught; I couldn't get back into it. I tried going back to what I loved: creating things. I fleshed out my mobile payments startup idea, went through a whirlwind ChallengePost competition, lost, but had a ton of fun. Then I taught myself to create Android apps, and took on a contract for a friend in San Francisco. Proposed to my girlfriend in Rome with the money from that contract. Took on another contract doing Android development in Palo Alto. Decided to go full-time, moved to Palo Alto. Facebook bought us, and I worked at Instagram for a while. I left to pursue my own ideas back in Toronto, having tremendous amounts of fun and success doing it. Got married. Have an amazing wife, an amazing place, and amazing family. Like I mentioned, my sister went to a Caribbean school. She's in Chicago right now doing rotations. She went straight out of high school, so she'll be a doctor before she's 26. The Caribbean schools can definitely give a second-chance to folks really keen on becoming a doctor. If you're truly passionate about helping the sick and injured, do it. I decided I ultimately wasn't passionate enough about it. I found my passion in my old love of software. And I'm grateful that I did.

mailshanx 12y ago
You life has all the ingredients for an excellent story: passion and enthusiasm, a long and hard struggle for the subject of your passion, multiple unexpected turns and finally, sweet, sweet success :)
hkmurakami 12y ago
That's an amazing story. Glad everything worked out for you in the end! Many of my friends are in medicine, and some of them lament that if they could do it all over again, they would pursue some form of engineering. It's hindsight bias of course, but the grind is just so bad in the states and the debt can be crippling. 4 years undergrad, 4 years med school, 3 years residency, possible 2-3 year fellowship. That's a really really long time for a person to have to grind through the competition, the residency politics, etc in order to be able to finally make it to a place where they can actually practice medicine. Apparently 95% of doctors wouldn't recommend someone to pursue medicine today. It's disheartening.
jsnk 12y ago
That's an inspiring story. Can you share what you are working on in Toronto? Toronto is my hometown, so I like to hear about projects coming out of that city.
Scoundreller 12y ago
The sad result is that in Ontario, over half of newly licensed physicians and surgeons did not graduate from a Canadian medical school (this being a mix of Canadians that went elsewhere for school, and immigrants). It's sad that we don't train our own people for respectable and honourable work, and instead import from elsewhere. (Don't take the above as a slight against the quality of graduates from non-Canadian schools, but as evidence that we've constrained supply of local education spots at the expense of our own people)

mailshanx 12y ago

You life has all the ingredients for an excellent story: passion and enthusiasm, a long and hard struggle for the subject of your passion, multiple unexpected turns and finally, sweet, sweet success :)

hkmurakami 12y ago

That's an amazing story. Glad everything worked out for you in the end! Many of my friends are in medicine, and some of them lament that if they could do it all over again, they would pursue some form of engineering. It's hindsight bias of course, but the grind is just so bad in the states and the debt can be crippling. 4 years undergrad, 4 years med school, 3 years residency, possible 2-3 year fellowship. That's a really really long time for a person to have to grind through the competition, the residency politics, etc in order to be able to finally make it to a place where they can actually practice medicine. Apparently 95% of doctors wouldn't recommend someone to pursue medicine today. It's disheartening.

jsnk 12y ago

That's an inspiring story. Can you share what you are working on in Toronto? Toronto is my hometown, so I like to hear about projects coming out of that city.

Scoundreller 12y ago

The sad result is that in Ontario, over half of newly licensed physicians and surgeons did not graduate from a Canadian medical school (this being a mix of Canadians that went elsewhere for school, and immigrants). It's sad that we don't train our own people for respectable and honourable work, and instead import from elsewhere. (Don't take the above as a slight against the quality of graduates from non-Canadian schools, but as evidence that we've constrained supply of local education spots at the expense of our own people)