A colleague of mine quit med school at 500 Level (fifth year out of six).
Everyone was shocked. We’d hear about people quitting university, but that reality was distant and far away, abroad. Bill Gates and such. Not here at home in Nigeria. What was he thinking?
Worse yet, he wasn’t quitting to build a software product. He was quitting to focus his efforts on his lifelong dream of become a professional soccer player.
Through providence, I was fortunate to be a part of his journey. After telling his family about his decision, he was without financial support. I came across him one divine afternoon, and he let me know how things were going for him. Things were tough, and he did not have a place to stay. I was on a fast at that period, and had just returned from a church service. Suffice to say I was in a spiritual state. I promptly invited him to come live with me.
It turned out to be the most shocking thing our student community could have ever expected from me. I was very big on boundaries, high standards and protective of my personal space. He was a good person, but hardly a friend. Nobody expected such a generous act to come from me. I would never have thought of doing something like that either. But in the moment, it seemed perfectly fine. It was just God.
We went on to live happily together for several months before I graduated med school, and he went on to live elsewhere. During those months, we had lots of precious conversations, and mined deep insights to one another. That period must have been one of the highlights of med school for us both.
I went on with my life and career, and he went on with his pursuit. I admired his courage, and supported him heartily. But years passed, and things were not changing. His career was not taking off. Promises from sports agents to sign him and take him abroad were not materializing. Time and time again, promises evaporated. Sometimes, his friends were being picked up, and he left behind. But he kept training, hoping, and was fully convinced it was only a matter of time.
More years passed. I relocated to Canada. He was still roaming, training, appearing to be stagnant. I began to doubt his paths. I suggested he return to school, finish his degree (he had actually deferred his admission, not outright quitted, but after so many years that deferment must have expired) and move on with life. I was worried for him. His younger siblings had completed their degrees and were living as responsible adults. He was getting older, and the sports field is highly dependent on one’s age. It was all looking grim. I did not want his life to ruin completely in the course of pursuing a dream that had proven unrealistic.
He appreciated my care and reassured me that he was on the right track. That things would take off soon. Soon? I asked. He had been saying that for years. How soon was soon? He reassured me that everything was going to be fine. I acquiesced and held my peace.
Eventually… Almost a decade after, one day I saw a tweet from my friend. He had been offered a contract by a sports agency, and was relocating to a different country to join a team. He was now a professional footballer. Everything had worked out just as he had said. He wrote in the tweet, which was accompanied by a photo of him in action on the field, that he was grateful to all who had supported him and that he had no regrets in all the time and cost he had suffered in getting to this point.
He was successful.
I was thinking this morning about him. He never finished med school, so he is not a doctor. I think that turned out to be a good thing during his years of sojourning. Why? Well, because he never had to deal with “I left medicine to play football”. Medicine would have become a weight, a heavy burden for him to bear. So he intentionally cast it off before the credential landed, allowing him to run freely towards purpose.
I am always having to explain why I am working for myself in the free market like a vagabond, like the rest of the world who had no advantage, as if I did not have the most prestigious training a person could ever hope for. I have been embarrassed, questioned and harrassed for not working as a doctor. I sometimes wonder if I would have been better off studying something less impressive. Then I would have less weight on me as I build.
It’s just a thought. I studied the course because I wanted to be a doctor. No regrets there. And as for this distraction, this weight, it only matters until it doesn’t. And when things pan out, that same boulder, viz my title, will then be a feather in my hat. Until then, I carry it, and even stand on it intentionally.