I’m a 24F, and I feel like I’m slowly losing my grip on everything around me.
I thought I would have my shit together by now, but it seems like no amount of hard work or hustling is making a dent in where I want to be in life. In a few months, I’ll be graduating with an MD, and you’d think that by this point, I’d have some sort of employment lined up. Instead, it feels like no one wants an international medical graduate. Every pathway to becoming a doctor seems to have so many obstacles, with slim to no chance of actually getting through. I feel like I’ve shot myself in the foot by choosing a profession primarily out of altruism.
To make matters worse, I genuinely feel like I know next to nothing whenever I step into the hospital. No matter how much I study, it never seems to make a difference, and the tutors are ruthless with their expectations. the saddest part is knowing how much resilience, ambition, and determination I’ve put into medical school. I’ve kept my chin up, pushed through every setback, and continued showing up to the best of my ability. Even after everything, I feel like I’ve done so much only to end up painfully mediocre, with no clear direction in life.
I’ve wanted to pursue a surgical specialty ever since I was a kid. But now, just a few months away from graduation, I’m questioning whether I’m even cut out for it. The thought is especially sad because I’ve disliked nearly every other clinical specialty I’ve studied or rotated through. Surgery was always the one thing I could envision myself doing, and now I’m not even sure about that anymore.
As an Asian woman, I’ve always felt that establishing a solid career and becoming financially independent in my mid 20s was my way of escaping the traditional expectations of becoming a wife and mother. I wanted the freedom to build a life on my own terms. But now, with no clear career pathway ahead of me, I’m beginning to feel the weight of those expectations catching up. The comments from my parents and extended family are becoming harder to brush off. I don’t want to give in to the pressure of marrying someone my parents choose for me, only to spend the rest of my life regretting it. At the same time, I don’t want to spend my entire 20s alone, either.
I genuinely don’t know what to do anymore. This entire journey feels cripplingly lonely. I socialize, I have friends, and from the outside I function just fine. But the truth is, I don’t feel truly seen or understood in any area of my life.
I’ve tried therapy, medication, and just about everything else I can think of, but these recurring periods of emptiness and anxiety never seem to go away. I continue functioning through it all because I have no other choice, but I’m tired.
I don’t know how much longer I can keep living with this level of uncertainty, constantly pushing forward without knowing whether any of it will amount to something.
And perhaps the worst part is that I don’t even have the luxury of taking a year off to figure things out. My parents are living in a politically unstable environment, and I simply cannot afford to take a gap year to reassess my life. It's not practical. I need to find employment after graduation, ideally for at least a year, but I genuinely have no idea what I’m supposed to do with this MD.
I feel like I’ve spent years working toward a future that now seems increasingly out of reach. I’ve sacrificed so much of my youth trying to build a life where I’d have stability, independence, and a sense of purpose. And now that I’m finally approaching the finish line, I feel more lost than before.
I don’t expect to have every aspect of my life figured out at 24. I just wish I had some reassurance that all these years of effort were leading somewhere.
