How IMGs waste so much time and money doing the wrong things and thinking the wrong way.

“There are some people who live in a dream world, and there are some who face reality;

and then there are those who turn one into the other.”

- Douglas H. Everett

I was an IMG once applying for ophthalmology in the US, and I had a completely wrong map of how to get where I wanted to go. I met a more experienced physician early in my career who gave me a realistic picture of what I need to do, but my ego was too big to set aside and understand what he was trying to tell me. I did what I wanted to do eventually, but realized that he was right in giving generic advice when he didn’t know who this advice is for. So even though this advice is generic and there are exceptions, it’s likely that most of the readers of this post are not the exceptions, so listen carefully.

The problem with being too emotional …. Many IMGs with no clinical experience after medical school go after their emotions and decide that they want surgery or orthopedics or neurosurgery or some other very competitive specialty. They never look at what’s possible and what’s a shorter cheaper more attainable goal than what their romantic feelings are telling them. They get motivated by stories of people who made it to these competitive specialties without acknowledging the extreme hardships these people went through and the odds of this working for them even if they do all the right things.

They get offended and their ego hurts if they’re told to think differently or be more realistic and consider it an attack on their dreams and aspirations. I know exactly how that feels because I was in that place one day and went with what my ego was telling me and got lucky. But from seeing the experiences of hundreds of other people I realized that not everyone gets lucky when they follow their emotions and ego.

So what did I learn from all these experiences ?...  I learned that staying flexible and keeping all options open is the shortest way to reach a lot of what you’re dreaming of. Being rigid and having very specific outcomes for yourself is the surest way to struggle for a long time and lose money and effort and never accomplish anything, or even worse get to the dream you always had and realize it wasn’t what you wanted all along.

What do I mean with being flexible ?.... I mean not being fixated on the final outcome , so instead of saying “ I have to be a famous plastic surgeon in Hollywood, California“ you can say “I want to work with my hands , do procedures and impact people’s lives in a good way and live in a city with good weather” . This change in the way you think will open up so many more options and training opportunities and places to live in and will help you network and meet more people and find better ways to reach your goals.

Being too specific in our dreams usually sets us up for failure because it assumes we know exactly what we want and what our future selves will be happy with, and that’s not entirely true.

So am I telling you not to have a dream ?.... Absolutely not, you have to have a dream or else you won’t have anything to aspire to, but make it a less rigid dream which gives you wiggle room to grow and mature into. A dream that acts as a compass that gives you direction instead of a destination that you’re forced to end up in even when you see much nicer places along the way. So dream big, but don’t be rigid and give yourself flexibility to achieve things greater than you thought possible but not necessarily in the setting or order you had in mind.

“Dreams come in a size too big so that we may grow into them” 

-Josie Bisse

M.Soliman