Navigating the Medical Journey: In-depth Interview with a Med Student | Dear Asian Community

Before reading, check out the video interview here!

In this insightful episode of the Dear Asian Community Podcast, join us for a captivating 15-minute interview as we sit down with Michelle Yin, a dedicated and passionate medical student, to delve into the intricacies of pursuing a medical career. Whether you're considering a career in medicine or simply curious about the life of a med student, this interview offers a firsthand perspective that is both informative and inspiring. Don't miss out on the wisdom shared by Michelle, as we explore the path of becoming a healthcare professional.

Michelle is in Columbus Ohio and just started her first year of medical school in August. She’s originally from Cleveland, and she grew up, staying there for 18 years. She then went to The University of Virginia for undergraduate school, took a gap year, and is now in medical school.

What inspired you to become a medical student?

Yin describes her inspiration as a gradual process of elimination. She didn't have a specific moment of realization that she wanted to pursue a career in medicine but she has always loved science and problem solving. It’s been something that she’s always been curious about. Even outside of school, she loved listening to podcasts about it and learning about the human body. In addition, just knowing people's parents who are doctors and having her own experiences with physicians, it was always in the back of Michelle’s head that this was a possible career choice to pursue so she went out and started shadowing and volunteering at the hospital as well, and all of this in culmination with her academic interest in the subject has pushed her there.

What motivated you when you were having trouble?

Inevitably, as teenagers, there are moments when we are not fully motivated to keep going. Michelle concurs that almost all people who go into the medical field can feel competition and lack of motivation. Something important for her was that she went into undergrad with an open mind, exploring different classes like computer science, business, and a lot of random classes. This confirmed for her that she was most interested in medicine. According to Michelle, in high school, while you get exposed to a little bit, it's still quite far away from medical school, so it's very common to compare your path in medicine to other people because it's a lot of investment, it’s a lot of time, and you don't start making money until much later than other people who are pursuing other professions. As for the competition aspect, Michelle says that although it is likely elevated in environments like pursuing medicine, finding people that you have in the community who are supportive will be important, and surrounding yourself with people who are collaborative and supportive and want you to do your best is going to be helpful. Even in high school, that was important for her. With the people who aren't as supportive, she would say they are inherent in any field that you want to go into that is competitive, so just remind yourself that comparing your path with anyone else is not going to do anything. While it’s not easy, she tries to remind herself, “I am on my own path and there's no reason to compare.” A great reminder. Sometimes it's hard to ignore what other people are doing and other people can have a lot of effect on what we think or what we do.

How has your immigrant background affected your values? Were you ever discouraged?

At least for me, I'm on the volleyball team and it’s hard to find myself identifying with some of the other people on the team. I started volleyball when I was in like fifth grade, and even now, I just still feel like sometimes there can be a bit of distance between us. I was wondering how Michelle might have dealt with similar experiences, to which she said that it's a unique experience and she’s found that when she was younger growing up in Cleveland, there wasn’t a huge Asian Community, but she’s grateful that her parents are pretty involved in the Chinese Community. Michelle’s parents immigrated around 1995 and she was born a few years later. She’d been going to Chinese school until 8th grade, and that helped her to develop an appreciation of where my parents come from. Being confident in my parents' culture, she thinks, is important growing up, and being surrounded by other friends whose parents were Chinese allowed her to have deeper conversations about those unique experiences. She had a great network of people to talk about her shared experience, which was extremely helpful because that allowed her to go into college and meet people from different backgrounds and finally feel more connected to them because she was comfortable sharing my own experience so they could share their differences rather than just having that difference and making it feel like a distance as I had explained with my volleyball team.

Were there any instances where your cultural background provided unique insights?

Michelle says that her cultural background is a big part of who she is. In terms of medicine, it's very interesting. She starts to reflect on the movie “The Farewell,” where a Chinese grandmother back in the mainland is diagnosed with cancer and the doctor tells the family but doesn't tell the grandma, the one with terminal cancer. The ethics of medical autonomy are different in China than in the US. In China, it's based on the family to decide whether to tell the grandma that she has cancer or not. As with Michelle, her family talked about it, and it seems that a lot of consensus is that it's better to not tell the grandmother for her to live the rest of her life without worry. Whereas, in America, the patient is the one who is authorized to have this medical information so they're going to be the first ones to know and you can't hide it from them, which highlights one difference in attitudes in medicine between the cultures. Michelle found it eye-opening to have this cultural understanding.

Is there any moment in high school that is ingrained in your mind?

For background, Michelle went to an all-girls private school for high school from 9th to 12th and there were a lot of memorable moments; good and bad. She remembers in her freshman year, she tried out for the varsity tennis team and she thought she was so good, says that she thought “I'm going to beat everybody and I'm going to make this team and get into, like, I don't know… I don't know what I was thinking…” Unfortunately, she didn’t make it, which made her very embarrassed. “I was crying, I was like, do I just quit? I didn't think I was being treated fairly.” Michelle eventually continued tennis and felt that it was a good learning experience she got to play Varsity for the next three years and she enjoyed it even though it was a big time commitment. I thought that it was interesting that she still decided to keep doing tennis and she still ended up doing pretty well in school, so I asked her for some advice. She said that the most helpful thing was that, especially when I was going through hard times, she just wanted people to listen to her and understand her feelings and that it was a matter of maturing and growing up. One piece of advice that she has found extremely helpful is “rejection is redirection.” Although she does feel that she had a lot of sensitivity to rejection because she had suffered from perfectionism a lot in her life, getting over that by seeing the new opportunities and being an optimistic person has helped a lot. She’s grown to try to see things more positively, believe that good will come, and be more hopeful overall, even if things don't work out. This has drastically altered her quality of life.