When I was done with my internship, I struggled to find an institution with graduate courses that satisfied my interests.
I was enamoured by the cell. Franklin Harold’s book, The Way of the Cell, was a vivid treatise of what Stephen Spielberg would do if he were to take an audience through a movie unfolding the happenings inside the cell. I was so taken aback by microbiology.
However, from the classes I took in medical school, microbiology was merely a fraction of my interests. Furthermore, every time I mentioned my interest in the field to my peers, they always told me to think of infectious diseases. That was not my interest was always my response, but concealed in thought. I wanted to study the cell only because I was interested in it, not the pathological strains. By pathologization, medicine can bend one’s reality to always find diseases even when none exist, and in some cases, impose the recategorized diseases on patients because doctors need to pay bills. I wasn’t interested in that either.
Reality quickly hit me that nobody would want to fund a scientist interested in the art of the cell. A scientific artist or an artistic scientist would be an apt description for my aspirations. Grants are awarded if they can be justified. Proposals need a rationale to validate the need for highly specific studies, but my interests are also not that specific.
Years ago, immediately after completing my internship, I applied for a master’s in clinical pathology at one of the leading institutions in the region, Aga Khan University Hospital. I qualified through all the stages, until I got to the interview panel, and the kind of questions I got made me reconsider. The course was never going to satisfy my zeal for microbiology aside from the medical inclinations. It might have been evident from the way I answered the questions. Plus, I was the youngest applicant. It’s likely I wanted to get the spot because I was also running broke, but I doubted I would be sated.
I wasn’t accepted.
Microbiology forms a third of my interests. The other third is in evolutionary biology. Complexity makes for the final third. Where do you find such a course?
Midway into my internship, I enrolled for online courses from the globally leading institution on complexity — the Santa Fe Institute. I preferred the free ones. They were funded. Might as well take the opportunity. I also binged the podcast episodes. I read books. I watched YouTube videos. I was chasing my dreams, while my pockets chased the pits.
Months later, I discovered a graduate course covering most of the fields I had an interest in. I didn’t think twice. Not even the fact that it would weigh heavily on my bank account. I was chasing my dreams.
I had already published a book. I needed a permanent record confirming my contribution to evolutionary biology. While at it, I discovered writing. I’m not the best writer, but the returns from my feeble attempts at penmanship have yielded unforeseen positive rewards. I write daily. It’s gotten to the point where I may not know why I feel off until I write and have the disoriented feeling fade away. Now I just want to read and write about what comes to mind and develop essays around these three fields of interest.
To my knowledge, no doctor in my country is pursuing these kinds of interests. All alone, I struggle explaining myself and my unique path as I continue to chase dreams, not following trends. But you may ask, what are the trends?
Dream-reality balance vs work-life balance
I’m bout to cash in my thoughts
Give you a compass, then tell you get lost— Kendrick Lamar
Trends in medical school are imposed on you before you graduate. Lecturers begin to shape the kind of future they wish for students, weaving stories of various specialties so much that by the time you’re almost done, the regular question becomes: what do you want to specialize in?
As one of the tallest in my class, the orthopaedic in charge would always select me to interpret X-ray images. I got really good at it. I fancied orthopaedics since it also touched on a subject I will forever hold dear — physics. However, although I loved surgery, microbes already got the better of me.
Such specialization trends begin in medical school. The pressure mounts once you’re done with internship. The same question now comes with increased amplitude: what do you want to specialize in?
Why? Because the colleagues you started undergrad with have already enrolled for their graduate courses. That question comes closer to the heart when you begin to ask yourself: What do I want to specialize in?
On the contrary, I believe the question jumps the gun. It should have begun with: Do I want to specialize? After which, the next one, if the former is yes, should be: What do I want to specialize in?
In biological science, there’s an idea called the test-retest theory. The goal is reproducibility. When you ask yourself the same question more than once, you exercise, knowingly or unknowingly, the test-retest theory. One can make it shorter by asking themselves: Do I really want to specialize?
For someone with my interests, I never have a clear answer. My responses, therefore, usually give the impression that I am confused. Or I lack focus. So the next question follows: So you want to be an MO all your life?
That right there shows the power of trends. Kendrick Lamar understood my conundrum before he blew up when he rapped:
I’m tryna follow dreams, you want me to follow trends
MO (pronounced em-oh) is shorthand for a general practitioner. Stay for years before picking a speciality and you’re given another label — a chronic MO, an anathema of a title. Implicitly, it signals someone who is not ambitious in life.
I enjoy working in the ICU so much that I have considered pursuing my master’s as an intensivist. But I would be following a trend, pushed into a path just so I can silence the voices surrounding me and stump the question with finality. But my heart is not in it.
Trends are easy. Dreams are hard. Dreams can make you question the validity of your chase. They are the spark that ignites your path when surrounded by heavy, eerie darkness, only showing where to set your foot, one step at a time.
Lucky ones have their dreams superimposed as a trend. It looks natural. They thrive in their fields because they didn’t follow trends, but their dream, which just so happened to be a trend. Often, because of the drive they get from pursuing their interests, they are the most vocal, contributing significantly in various fora and audiences. It then looks like those who are not on the same path as them have not gotten their goals right.
They also happen to interact with the young doctors, interns, and students while on campus. The younglings get trapped in the conflated suggestion and start choosing which of the options will best suit them. A mixture of good income and a life that would not be a significant burden. Basically, a work-life balance.
A work-life balance implies there is no life in the work you do. It’s just that, work. A healthy balance becomes the pursuit of billions of people, so much that speakers, coaches, and trainers have developed a niche, a business to tap from this never-drying pool of people who, according to those who have risen to various ranks, are unfocused.
Trends are easy even more because you will find someone who shares the same struggles as you. Social proof is enough to convince anyone that you’re on the right path. If everyone is doing it, you have saved yourself a ton of explanation because every other person is on the same path. Dreams then become sclerosed. Sad to say that misery loves company.
I’m not a fan of a work-life balance.
I prefer the dream-reality balance. Success by my own terms. Chasing dreams and making them a reality, the definition of living. You can get so engrossed in your dreams that you come off as insane. Perfect. Better get insane chasing something you enjoy than get driven insane pursuing a trend hailed as the best option.
The harder option is chasing your dreams. Often alone, but one whose only pursuit can be enough to keep you going. Lonely and alone are different. You can be alone and suffer bouts of loneliness, but it’s much more comforting than the hollowness of not sticking with what keeps you up at night.
Shane Parrish adds:
The math is simple: if you do what everyone does, you get what everyone gets. If you want different results, you have to diverge.
However, the second you do something different, you become a target. Some people criticize from fear, some from threatened egos, some from genuine concern disguised as caution. But criticism is the easy part.
The hard part is that you lose the map. If you’ve outsourced your definition of success your whole life, having to define it yourself feels like losing the GPS mid-drive. You have to build your sense of direction while you’re already moving.
Meanwhile, conventional path parades its rewards right in front of you every day: the promotions, the vacations, the security. You see exactly what you’re giving up, while what you’re building remains invisible.
Most people optimize for comfort. They choose being one blade of grass among many over being a tall poppy, the safety of the group over the risk of criticism for being different.
Outliers pick their own game, choose how to keep score, and then pay the price to play it.
In his famous speech, J.F. Kennedy remarked that the highest calling for an artist, writer, or composer is staying true to their art. Courage is necessary. Deviation from the course feels like a betrayal of oneself, a most unpleasant feeling. I know that feeling. It’s why I write about it, because trends will always outnumber dreams. Bold stances are required to stick it out for your dream.
I know how daunting it can be, but for your own sake, spare some time for it. Your dream is like a low-birth-weight neonate, requiring kangaroo care to build strength. This special bond is built in its infancy. The dream may not have the physique of a child, but depriving your spawn before it can get a chance to flex its abilities is unfair to oneself.
People will always talk, but in the end, it’s not their life. Once it’s all said and done, we will all be forgotten. Why, then, not live your dream?
What I’m trying to say is…
In total, around 120 billion people have ever lived. We barely remember the ones we once held close and left us, snatched by the jaws of death, all because we continue to run the unfulfilling rat race.
I don’t advocate for completely quitting. Reality can be a mean bite at your flesh, reminding you of your bills that don’t care whether you chase your dream or not. The least I can ask of you is to resuscitate your dream with regular engagement. Build it steadily. Don’t let it die.
The Medici family financed the Italian Renaissance. Presently, such families are scarce. At best, individuals fund their dreams.
Naysayers, critics, and the corrupt world will tell you otherwise, but nothing feels more fulfilling than creating your own terms for success. You owe it to yourself.
This song inspired some of the lines used in this article. Source — YouTube
All through medical school, I wrestled with this very concern. My dream was never ‘conventional,’ and since it still hasn’t materialized, the fear of shooting in the dark lingers. It’s reassuring to know I’m not alone in this experience.