I was honoured to receive a scholarship from the society representing my grandfather’s hometown. I’m very close with my grandfather. He has always been a huge inspiration for me to study hard because he left his hometown at age 12 to further his studies and ultimately become the first (or at least one of the first) from his hometown to attend university and become a well-respected surgeon. My grandpa has always been supportive of my goal to become a physician and I’m grateful for his support.
My grandpa’s also a cancer survivor and his initial diagnosis provided an extra push for me to apply to medical school as early as I possibly could. I always wanted to the physician to my own grandpa which I now realize that’s impossible because you’re not allowed to treat your own family. But I still wanted him to see me get into medical school. I’m now working hard so that he’ll be able to see me be able to become Dr. Yeung when I graduate in four years time.
Since I frequently get asked what the timeline of applying to and starting to medical school looks like, I should explain the context. The average age of people starting at our school is 24. It used to be standard to apply after 4-5 years of undergrad but nowadays, it’s common to complete a masters and/or work for several years. The cool research and jobs that my classmates have done leave me in awe. There’s also a handful of us that will be 24 when we graduate instead. We get a ton of friendly teasing from classmates and doctors and our teaching staff about being babies. One of the physicians tells patients that I’m “one of the youngest baby docs you’ll ever meet” because my last name is also Yeung (do you get the pun?). I know I’m lacking in a lot of life experience compared to my more mature classmates better than me so I’m working hard to try to work on those deficiencies. If any of you still have questions about the timeline, feel free to comment and I would be able to write a whole post about it.
