Tag: Medical School
10 Famous Exit Strategies From Medical School
Start with the end in mind – Stephen Covey, 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People
Whether you’re robbing a bank, starting a business, or going to medical school, you need to be able to answer one question:
What’s your exit strategy?
As in, your “pre-planned means of extricating yourself from a situation that is likely to become difficult, dangerous or unpleasant”?
When it comes to the world of Medicine, the 2 default exit strategies are:
Retirement
Death
You will be a Doctor and practice Medicine until the day you die or retire, whichever comes first.
Now while these exit strategies may be the favourites of hospital managers, politicians and our parents’ generation…what about those of us who feel stuck, trapped and are looking for a way out of their medical career?
What about all the “happy” doctors who die by suicide?
I’m not a dropout…I’m an Exit Strategy
Thankfully, you don’t have to die or wait for retirement in order to get out of a miserable situation. Many of your predecessors have found their way out and modeled different Exit Strategies from the world of medicine.
Here are 10 famous exit strategies to inspire you.
Exit #1: Become A Teacher And Start A Family
Cindy dropped out of her 3rd year in medical school to become a teacher and start a family.You can read more about that here on her blog.
Exit #2: Pursue Your Lifelong Passion For Astronomy
Roshaan quit in his 4th year, to pursue a lifelong passion for astronomy, despite the lack of support or esteem from his community in Pakistan.
Exit #3: Finish Writing Your Sci-Fi novel (And Have Steven Spielberg Direct It As A Movie)
Michael graduated from Harvard Medical School, did a postgraduate fellowship study at the Salk Institute of Biological Studies…and then quit to become a full time science fiction writer…creating novels, movies and franchises such as Jurassic Park, ER, The Andromeda Strain, Twister, and many others.
Exit #4: Start A Rocket Ship Company
Peter wanted to fly into space…but went to medical school to make his parents proud. He launched a space company in his 4th year, graduated after promising the Dean he would never practise medicine…and launched the $10million X Prize, Planetary Resources (an asteroid mining company), just to mention a few projects.
Exit #5: Lead A Marxist Revolution In Argentina
Ernesto was inspired to tackle the diseases of poverty and inequality whilst travelling across South America. So he completed his medical studies and transformed the world of Argentinian politics as the force of nature we know as Che Guevara.
Exit #6: Join The NBA And Win 2 Championships
His mother was a doctor, and his father a senior nurse in Barcelona, Spain. And with two medical parents, Pau Gasol was set to follow in the family tradition. But along the way, Pau’s passion for basketball developed into a career that led him away from medicine and into 2 NBA championships as a professional basketball player.
Exit #7: Act In A World Famous TV Sitcom called Friends
After completing a psychobiology degree at Vassar College in New York, Lisa found her path to medicine hijacked by her love for show business and improv. This lead her to pursue a career as an actress, resulting in her being cast as Phoebe in one of the world’s most famous sitcoms.
Exit #8: Start A Comedy Troupe Called Monty Python
Graham went to the University of Cambridge to get a medical degree. Instead, he ended up deferring his studies to start a little comedy troupe called Monty Python.
Exit #9: Build A Private Medical Practice Designed By Your Patients
Pamela qualified as a Doctor, but quit the traditional pathway to build a medical practice designed by her patients.
Exit #10: Just Walk Away
Sometimes the simplest exit strategy…is just to simply walk away. Maria walked away from medicine 4 years after qualifying. She told TEDxJohannesburg it was the best thing she ever did.
You Are Not A Failure…You Are An Exit Strategy
Things are not as hopeless as they feel, and it’s never too late to change your mind and make new decisions based on new information. And when you’re ready to make a change, but feel guilty or condemned by those who choose to stay miserable, remember this:
You are not a dropout or a failure: you are an exit strategy.
QUESTION: What’s one thing that’s holding you back from making your exit?
Don’t forget your Vitamins
There are 2 classes of biomolecules: macro and micro.
The macro molecules are the ones that hog the limelight: Proteins, Carbohydrates and Lipids. We eat a lot of these each day and we break them down to create ATP …the Energizer bunnies that keep our bodies alive.
But the micro molecules…vitamins and minerals…Don’t get nearly enough attention.
For one thing, we only need a small amount of each one each day (miligrams or mjcrograms). And another thing, is we don’t create any energy from their breakdown.
However.
Even though minerals and vitamins don’t release energy from being broken down, without them it would be impossible to create energy from the Macro Trio of Proteins, Carbohydrates and Lipids.
In other words, the little guys run this show when it comes to regulating the metabolic pathways that keep us alive.
So here’s the question: what are your Vitamins?
I don’t mean your Thiamine, Riboflavin and Vitamin A.
I mean the “little things” that don’t have anything to do with what you’re supposed to be doing…and everything to do with who you really are.
They’re the interests, skills and hobbies that so easily get put off till “later”. They’re also the things you need if you want to generate the maximum ATP from whatever pathway you’re pursuing.
Remember, you only need 900 micrograms of vitamin A each day to maintain your vision.
But if you keep neglecting your intake of it…because it’s only 900 micrograms…the end result could be blindness.
Be honest with yourself about what your Vitamins are…and then be brave enough to prioritise your intake of them each day.
Harmonic layering of Anatomy
This is an idea I borrowed from Scott at Scott’s Bass Lessons.
When it comes to playing a bass line, he starts with the rhythm, then the chord, then the chord tone (arpegio) and then finishes with the chord scale.
In other words, he doesn’t just try to play a Groove (Registered trademark).
Instead he lays it down, one layer at a time.
You can do the same thing with anatomy or anything that you’re learning.
So with anatomy, start with a stick man.
I’m serious.
Head, legs, arms, stick body…an extremely simplistic representation of a human being.
Congratulations, you know that humans have 1 head (Not two) and 2 arms and 2 legs.
Great! What else can you tell us?
You could then draw eyes, nose and mouth.
Fantastic! Tell us more!
And then step by step you just keep adding layers to the picture you’ve drawn until it fully represents the human body.
The more layers you can add, the more points you get.
But the point of this game is to take away the fear and feeling of being overwhelmed when studying a topic full of minutiae.
You know way more than zero.
And you can learn all the details if you’ll build up your picture/knowledge, one layer at a time.
Become Batman
Don’t kill yourself.
Instead, kill the identity of your old self…and stick around to explore who you can be right now.
That’s how 8 year-old Bruce Wayne became Batman.
Wracked by grief after seeing his parents shot dead in front of him, young Bruce decided to secretly bury the life he was supposed to have before his parents were killed…and create an alternate identity that let him explore who he could become now.
He wore his old identity as a mask to give him the freedom of expressing his true self as Batman.
They think you’re just a focused medical student on track to making them proud.
You know you’re more than that. But don’t worry about trying to change this image.
Instead, use it as a mask that frees you to explore your true secret identity…and get to work on achieving your Escape Velocity.
This is a taster from Escape Velocity: a personalised email course that guides medics step-by-step in how to successfully make the transition from being stuck in medical school…to living a life of happiness, freedom and fulfilment. Admission is by invitation-only. Click here to apply for your FREE invite.
Master the 33 strategies of War
The only way to successfully escape or transition from a dead-end career in Medicine…is to stop thinking like a Medic.
Instead, think like a military strategist who deploys tactics and manoeuvres to overcome obstacles and defeat insurmountable foes.
One of the fastest ways to do this is to devour “The 33 Strategies of War” by Robert Greene.
Read it, listen to it, take notes from it…and you’ll suddenly see a clear path open to you as you apply these strategies in your current situation.
Stop thinking like a Medic, and start thinking like a military strategist.
This is a taster from Escape Velocity: a personalised email course that guides medics step-by-step in how to successfully make the transition from being stuck in medical school…to living a life of happiness, freedom and fulfilment. Admission is by invitation-only. Click here to apply for your FREE invite.
Your parents are not the enemy
Your parents are not the enemy.
Instead, they’re just pawns in the bigger game that’s playing all around you.
It’s the game of the broken “Healthcare Factory System”. And the goal of the game is to recruit as many replaceable cogs (see: Doctors) to keep the system going.
Your parents are unwitting pawns in this game. They’ve been tricked into believing that the best thing they can do for their children’s future is to set them on the path to becoming a Doctor.
And that’s what they did with you.
Not because they hate you or even because they despise the dreams you’ve shared with them.
All they’re thinking about is the idea they were sold:
If my child becomes a Doctor, everything will be okay.
You already know that everything will not be okay.
But they don’t know that, and trying to convince them that they were wrong is an exercise in futility.
In other words: it’s never going to work.
What you need to do, instead, is give them a different story to tell themselves about you…a story in which you get to do what you’ve always dreamed of doing.
And the way you craft such a story, is by understanding one crucial thing:
Your parents are not the enemy…they’re just pawns in the bigger game that’s being played around you.
This is a taster from Escape Velocity: a personalised email course that guides medics step-by-step in how to successfully make the transition from being stuck in medical school…to living a life of happiness, freedom and fulfilment. Admission is by invitation-only. Click here to apply for your FREE invite.