July 30, 2025

Beta, Why Don’t You Study Medicine?

Dear Reader,

I’m Prerak, an anaesthetics doctor in training. I’m 31 years old and I feel I have a few lessons to share given my age and experience. Pardon me if that sounds presumptuous, but hopefully my musings can justify it.

This isn’t an article on career advice – I just didn’t feel like writing that type of piece, and there are lots of sources of info on that (try YouTube for a start). I finished medical school in 2018, then did my Foundation year 1 and 2 (FY1 and FY2) – my first 2 years as a doctor, which are compulsory in the UK before going into any specialty.

I applied for Anaesthetics at the end of my FY2 and failed spectacularly. I applied again while working in FY3, as it is now called. That time I failed less spectacularly, but nonetheless, had to work another year as an “FY4”, this time in Accident and Emergency. Finally, I got into Anaesthetics training in 2022 and have enjoyed the journey.

Let me go back to my time in training and tell my story. Hopefully sharing with you the most important lessons I learned along the way.

Let’s meet an awkward, naïve 16-year-old who was trying to figure out what to do with himself. At the time, 16-year-old Prerak had little idea of what careers would be suitable. The choices were rockstar, army officer, journalist – not that he knew what any of these involved or how he’d pursue them. He wasn’t much of a singer, and later realised he wouldn’t be much good at following orders, even if he was an obedient, nice Hindu boy.

Before teen Prerak could pester the BBC for an internship, his dad suggested “Beta, why don’t you study medicine?”. He didn’t know what that meant – “Medicine? Won’t that make me a pharmacist?”.

Younger Prerak had done a week-long work experience placement in a Pharmacy aged 15 and it was the most painfully boring week of his life – more insufferable than any purgatory a teenage mind could invent. “Arey Buddhu, Medicine is what you study to be a doctor!”. Doctor? Seemed like a cliché for a British Indian. However, a lot of cool people he respected were doctors. Teen Prerak was alright at science, so thought why not?

This brings me to life lesson one: there are no perfect decisions. There are no perfect directions. There are no perfect callings. In an increasingly agnostic intellectual landscape, educated people are expected to be sceptics. Common sense nowadays is increasingly agnostic. However, strangely, our modern culture makes an exception for our careers and our romantic lives. We are allowed to be mystics when it comes to our work life and love life. What do I mean by this?

For some reason we are expected at the age of 18 to know enough about ourselves and our FUTURE self to know what calling is …”well……calling to us”. What is calling us? What is the caller ID? Is it a scam call? We are supposed to accept that someone will give us a call telling us what occupation is perfect for us to the core of our being. Hogwarts’ sorting hat isn’t real, my friends. There is no mystical force to put us in our perfect problem free profession as soon as we turn 18.

Has it made sense for me to be a doctor? Overall, the answer is a resounding YES. I have really lived a life because of it. I have learned medical science, learned to problem solve, learned to trust myself, learned to lead, learned to REALLY talk to people. I have also had real hardships and the challenges of a lifetime. I have definitely had doubts about my career and looked back to think “was this all a mistake?”. Becoming a doctor is not a “Perfect Decision”. It isn’t happily ever after because that doesn’t really exist.

The delusion of “calling” is that you are led by your calling to a problem free high paying niche. Youngsters are taught that your calling is like the mythical Excalibur – pick up the artefact/paintbrush/guitar/football/pen/ microphone and you will magically be gifted with a problem free life of happily ever after. There really aren’t perfect choices like that. Has it made sense for me to be a doctor? Yes, BUT it could very well have been a NO if I didn’t make it work for me. There are no perfect decisions, directions or callings.

I think most of life’s important decisions are made by paying attention to subtle hints from our psyche. There are gentle pulls and pushes from our intuition and these only give us general directions. One purpose of education is to let us sort the wheat from the chaff. For example, if I think my intuition is guiding me to get signed by WWE then I should stop to examine this logic. Hopefully even as a 16-year-old I would have been able to second guess such an idea (I am 5 foot 8 and easily get injured in contact sports! Also I dislike the WWE). Once the NON-sense ideas are filtered out by GOOD sense, the inklings that remain are the imperfect directions we could take in life. At any time, the best we can do is pick the BEST imperfect decision, direction or calling.

This leads me to Lesson Two – it is not your fault but it is your responsibility. It isn’t your fault that you’re not perfect. It isn’t your fault that you don’t know everything. It isn’t your fault that you weren’t taught something. However, it is DEFINITELY your responsibility to do the next best thing. Remember there are no perfect directions, so you will face snags and bumps. It isn’t your fault if you get stuck but it is your responsibility to unstick yourself. It doesn’t matter how kind or innocent or nice you are. There isn’t magic to fix the things that aren’t your fault. It is your responsibility.

Let’s meet Prerak when he was 18 going on 19. Late teens Prerak is slightly less clueless than 16-year-old Prerak but isn’t fully evolved yet. He had injured his knee with foolish exercises so couldn’t exercise any more. He doesn’t know much about work/life balance and feels that as long as he does his work sincerely, he will be rewarded for his sincere sentiment.

19-year-old Prerak had a short bout of depression in his first year at university and failed one of his exams in his first term. In the long run these things are miniscule but they highlight some very important messages.

Wellbeing isn’t automatic, it is your responsibility. It isn’t your fault necessarily if you face adversity. It isn’t anyone’s fault if they are predisposed to low mood, or if their life is hard. However, it is one’s responsibility to deal with things. To quote a book (the courage to be disliked by Koga and Kishimi) everyone has their own tasks in life, that no one else can do for them. Looking after one’s own wellbeing (certainly for adults) is one’s own responsibility. This doesn’t mean living like John Rambo alone and aloof – you have to get help from your community when you need it. Knowing when you need help is your responsibility. Knowing when you don’t know something and asking questions is your responsibility. It doesn’t matter how clean your heart is or how sincere you are, your wellbeing won’t automatically sort itself. Someone else won’t sort it for you without effort on your part. Your own wellbeing is your own responsibility.

It wasn’t my fault necessarily that I was miserable, however it was my responsibility to figure out what would make me less miserable. Years later I realised that I needed to exercise regularly, and if my knees hurt, I just had to exercise in a way that didn’t hurt my knees. My sleep wasn’t great and I wasn’t very good at managing stress.

All the details are too much for this article. It wasn’t my fault that I didn’t know all the right things to pass my exam (even if it was just a mock).

But it was my responsibility to find these things out. Being sincere didn’t mean I deserved a good grade, I had to do the stuff that is expected in the right way.

So my dear reader that’s 2 lessons and a lot of words, enough for now.

I hope my words were of some use.

Prerak is an Anaesthetics Trainee Doctor working in the UK. He studied in London and has since worked all over the UK as part of his training pathway. His interests are fitness, philosophy and psychology. He enjoys listening to audiobooks that can change his perspective and spending time with his family.

3 Comments

  • Sonal
    July 30, 2025

    Very well said <3
    I am proud of you @prerak

    Reply
  • Sheetal Raina
    July 31, 2025

    What a thoughtful and honest reflection on the journey to becoming and being a doctor. I appreciated how you emphasise that there are no “perfect decisions” or flawless callings. That each step requires responsibility for not just our careers, but also our personal wellbeing. Your openness about setbacks, doubts and the non-linear path in medicine resonates strongly, especially in a world that often glorifies certainty and upward trajectories.

    Your insights serve as a comforting reminder that it’s normal not to have everything figured out and that learning from bumps along the road is part of real progress. Thank you for sharing these life lessons with such humility and clarity. I’m sure your words will be a source of encouragement and perspective for many readers who are wrestling with similar decisions.

    Reply
  • Kamlesh Kumar
    August 3, 2025

    Beautifully said — truly spoken from the heart.
    It feels as if we’re tuned to the same frequency. Your words mirror my own — as if you’ve spoken what I’ve long carried within me.
    You may not know me, but somehow, you’ve captured my voice.

    Your flow pulled me into your perspective, as if I were stepping back in time — to your teenage years, when the world was still unfolding.
    By the time you were choosing your career, I had already changed mine three times over the course of 34 years.

    My journey hasn’t been linear.
    As a teenager, circumstances pushed me out of Kuwait.
    At 27, I returned.
    By 34, I had rewound my life back to the United States.
    Each of those moves meant starting over from scratch — a new country, a new chapter, a new career.

    The road wasn’t smooth. It came with its own turbulence — full of failures, risks, and uncertain restarts.
    But I’ve come to believe one thing with certainty:

    “You cannot truly know success unless you’ve tasted failure.
    And true success only comes when you carry those failures with you — not as burdens, but as lessons.”

    Reply

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