Quitting a Career in Medicine for Youtube: Ali Abdaal is the New Jaclyn Glenn.

flooding is a game and i don't play
games well i kind of decided i wanted to be a doctor when i was 16. what did i know about it absolutely nothing you know is this really the right thing for me if you're in the habit of talking to old people like not so much my age maybe like double it they all have this familiar story about how in their particular field in their particular discipline there was this one golden generation of talented people who came back from world war ii and that somehow the unique circumstances in the post-war reconstruction era just produced these wonderful brilliant well-intentioned people in their field in their job and you know what you know what it is it's exactly what this idiot said just now those people didn't choose their profession when they were 16 years old kind of decided i wanted to be a doctor when i was 16 what did i know about it absolutely nothing do you know what world war ii gave them time people came back from world war ii and they were maybe 22 years old or 24 years old and they were handed a ticket for free tuition at all the great universities in the western world canada united states europe each of these countries had a slightly different deal but one way or another tuition was either free or almost free for these people and they were older and more experienced than people who decided what they wanted to do at 16 years old and you know of course there are many ways in which i don't believe in the glorification and nostalgia for the post-war generation but think about a discipline like anthropology i have met and spoken to people who decided that they wanted to be an anthropologist at 16 years old they're really screwed up people and like how can i possibly communicate to them look kid you say you want to be an anthropologist you don't even really know the meaning of the word like you think you do you've looked it up in a dictionary you've looked it up wikipedia but there's a really meaningful sense in which you don't know what the study of anthropology is like and you definitely don't know what your career would be like after that and people make these decisions as this guy did to become medical doctors at 16 years of age and yeah imagine how much different this piece of shit's perspective on life would have been if when he was 16 years of age he had maybe a four or five year career in the military he might have come out of that with a degree of self-knowledge some particular interest in the world some particular passion some sense of direction and yeah he might have just come back with shell shock and ptsd and you might have just become an alcoholic and a gambler because after world war ii that happened a lot too guys you know as i mentioned i'm kind of worried that i'll wake up in the mornings and not really know what to do with myself i'm kind of worried that when i do decide to go into a specialty i actually won't like it and i'd want to leave the specialty and i'm worried that if i end up not enjoying medicine it won't be because of the medicine itself it'll be because i am choosing not to enjoy it and i'm kind of worried that because in a way because i've got the option to not do it that i will choose to exercise that option and that i'll end up quitting medicine completely these different streams of income i feel i've gotten to a point where i really don't need to rely on medicine to make money the original video is over 30 minutes long you may not think i'm doing you a favor by editing it down to just two minutes but really i am and there you heard in about five seconds what his message boils down to he got rich he got famous right here on youtube and now he's questioning why bother being a medical doctor anyway now if you saw my earlier youtube video about this guy you will have already guessed i'm making this video because i'm a bit stunned by the contrast by his former bragging outright bragging that he woke up in the morning and saved lives every day the description of his life of his heroism on a daily basis as a doctor the bragging he engaged in about his education in the medical sciences and then the profession he was now professing it's a very very strange juxtaposition to this blunt admission that now that he's got fame and fortune on youtube waking up and working at a hospital every day just doesn't seem so meaningful or rewarding after all there are some people who absolutely love it and do it for fun and it also happens to make money which is absolutely fantastic but for me like i think if given the choice the way that i've spent the last two years is not how i would choose to spend the rest of my life like i would not actively choose that on average five days a week and for 48 hours a week i'm gonna drive an hour to work drive an hour back and spend time in a hospital i think what i would choose is that two or three days a week i'd want to do medicine because it's fun but i wouldn't want to do it much more than that there's one question of your devotion to the art of medicine and there's another question of your devotion to the life of public service helping people i remember i spoke to a guy who described to me that he was the head of ob gyn in a hospital in africa so they dealt with delivering babies among other things and he said that on paper his shift was supposed to be something like 9 a.m to 5 p.m but in reality 60 to 70 of the women came in to give birth between the hours of midnight and 4am so the reality was like i think he said to me like his kids went all the way through primary school and he never once saw them during daylight hours or something he worked impossibly long hours he was awake all hours of the night but you know why that is the job that's not a drawback to the job that's not just part of the job that is the job and you know he wasn't from africa originally i mean he moved there to be a part of that struggle and do that job and help those people that's not his community it's not even his first language but he was devoted to working with that little team of people in that hospital and making that department work and helping whoever showed up pregnant with uh some other problem needing that help i mean that's that was his devotion to that kind of public service and sure i mean i do think you know on a personal level it may be your devotion to your team maybe your devotion to your department that matters more in terms of motivating you to get out of bed every day keep doing the job rather than that more abstract devotion to the art or public service but sure um you know the development of your craft matters too if you're not putting in the hours if you're not devoted to this day after day after day and the other doctors around you are how are they going to look at you and how are you going to look at them when it's like well hey i got here last night at midnight and worked till 5am but not you huh you're a part-timer you know maybe the other doctors would be nice about it but there are a lot of things in this life where you know the question is look are you devoted are you giving this 110 of what you have to give or not because if it's or not get the hell out because the rest of us are you know and i admit you know medicine it's a very limited art form it's not like painting or playing music we're putting in more and more hours is going to make you a better and better surgeon or a better and better ob gyn specialist or make you 10 better at delivering babies but you know nevertheless i think i think those are really meaningful questions we all have to ask ourselves about what we're doing in our lives and i'm self-critical about it i mean there was a time when i was doing humanitarian work there was a time when i was in school to become a baker and there are times when i'm studying chinese and i have to ask myself can i really be devoted to this as an art form can i really be devoted to this as my form of public service making the world a better place as my role in society am i really in this 100 percent or not you have to have the honesty to recognize that in many cases either it's a hundred percent or it's zero either you're in or you're out the other thing i worry about is that well you know people are only following me on youtube because i'm a doctor and i went to cambridge and stuff in a way i feel like i have the security blanket of multiple streams of income why this youtube channel and other things to not have to do medicine notice the wording he uses there he has the money to not have to do medicine maybe this is the tragedy of choosing choosing your major at age 16. in a way i feel like i have the security blanket of multiple streams of income by this youtube channel and other things to not have to do medicine you have the money to not practice medicine that i'm just saying it's a little quick turn of phrase there but it tells you on a pretty deep level how it is he thinks about this but if i wasn't a doctor would my youtube channel be a successful probably not that show business even now kind of with the size of this youtube channel and the streams of income lol it still feels like a house of cards that could come crumbling down at any moment and i still kind of feel a sense of every time we put out a video and it does badly on the analytics i think you know it's the beginning of the end now people have realized that i'm a fraud and my youtube channel's not worth anything and it's gonna unravel and that's show business the stresses of having a normal job is like what does my boss say think of me and am i going to get that promotion so it's it's a different sort of stress kind of doing this sort of entrepreneur self-employed business lifestyle type thing that i'm doubling with okay say it with me one more time that's show business and of course the peculiar thing about youtube is that it brings together people of such diverse backgrounds people who started studying for their medical exams at age 16 had this preconceived notion their life would be all wrapped up in chemistry biology the applied sciences and medicine and so on and so forth they thought that would be the world that they inhabit and then they find themselves suddenly and unexpectedly instead in this world of theater broadcasting and yes yes y'all show business that's kind of what it feels like on the inside um and so every time we do get a video it doesn't perform well you know every day when i kind of look at the stats and see the comments from people and get the dms on instagram and stuff i almost can't can't believe that it's real and i think that's partly where the the fear comes from that all of this could come crumbling down at any moment you might have noticed that he referred to himself as an entrepreneur and not an entertainer not a filmmaker i think he is pretty fundamentally still in denial but the extent to which he has gotten himself a job in show business or you could say he had a hobby in show business and he's let it take over his life he's let it take over to his life to the point where he has not dropped out of med school dropped out of the medical profession when he'd finished med school and when he'd actually finished his period of internship as a junior doctor who does this remind me of hmm jacqueline glenn youtube's original med school dropout who has now become in medieval european parlance the [ __ ] of babylon it's in revelations people the problem with youtube is that people lose their sense of purpose they lose the sense of meaning and mandate that motivated them to come on camera and deliver their message in the first place and jacqueline glenn may be a terrible example of a whole lot of things but she's a perfect example of precisely that pattern [Music] the tragedy is that she was in med school and she started making youtube videos to talk about atheism because she felt she understood and could explain you know the theory of evolution better than other people who were on youtube engaged in those debates at the time including by the way the amazing atheist a major part of how her channel grew was that she did collaborative videos the amazing atheist funny little story and just look at her now now what i'm concerned about here are not the optics i'm not here concerned about her hair her makeup her dress or her bikini or lack of bikini that really doesn't interest me my concern is precisely about the distinction between having a sense of motivation a mandate that you came on this platform in the first place to make meaningful content to make the world a better place as a filmmaker no matter how humble or low budget our filmmaking process may be here as youtubers and then you lost that i mean theoretically you could dress up like jacqueline glenn every day and you could take you know you could sell sign photographs of yourself in a bikini and all the rest but really have a passionate sense of mission and mandate whether that's you know more on the research side of things or on the activism side of things whatever it might be you could be doing something meaningful in a bikini and yet there's this strange cycle the the banality of youtube seems to catch up with these people because whether they're aware of it or not and in most cases like this i think it is or not they're being consumed by the show business aspect of what it is they do here they feel as this guy's just explained to you they feel nervous they feel unhappy anytime their number of views declines the ratio of thumbs up to thumbs down is against them they get drawn into this life of chasing fame of pursuing the largest possible audience which is of course to say the lowest common denominator and what they lose along the way was precisely that sense of mission and mandate that made youtube worth doing back when it wasn't about the money and you know what that's the most meaningful question of all to ask about medical school why did you want to be a doctor back when it wasn't about the money why would you or would you not want to be a doctor now if it wasn't about the money because the truth is the amount of money you make as a medical doctor it will never be enough it will never compensate you for the loss of your time the loss of your sleep the loss of your dignity you can never pay someone enough money to wipe the poo off of somebody who's suffering from diarrhea they have to on some deep level of personal commitment feel there's something really meaningful about being a part of that struggle and that really does save lives diarrhea really does kill people all around the world today every day if you don't feel positive with that if you don't feel motivated to be in that struggle for so many reasons that have nothing to do with money you know what quit now and i can say the same damn thing about youtube say the same thing about show business think about all the reasons that were there before the money that are still there now outside of above and beyond the money if you're not devoted to the art form if you're not devoted because of some sense of making the world a better place some kind of public duty ask yourself what is it you're devoted to what are you doing with the rest of your life the money will never be enough