I'm Moving to America - Life Update - Ali Abdaal
I'm Moving to America - Life Update - Ali Abdaal
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How to guarantee you regret your life:https : //dai.ly/x93180y
My honest advice to a perfectionist:https : //dai.ly/x9319i4
My honest advice to someone who’s doing too much : https://dai.ly/x9319ty
My honest advice to someone who feels behind in life : https://dai.ly/x931a78
My honest advice to someone who wants financial freedom : https://dai.ly/x931ex2
If I Wanted to Be a Millionaire Before 30, I'd Do This : https://dai.ly/x931gzm
The Best Book I've Ever Read about Making Money : https://dai.ly/x931j9y
How to Go From $0 to $10,000 a Month in 4 Steps : https://dai.ly/x931kb6
How to Make $10,000 Month Writing Online : https://dai.ly/x931l42
How to 10x Your Income The 4 Ladders of Wealth : https://dai.ly/x931ldm
Why You Feel Lost in Life by Ali Abdaal : https://dai.ly/x933252
How to Figure Out What You Really Want in Life : https://dai.ly/x933hm8
How to Change your Life in a Year - 3 Simple Ideas : https://dai.ly/x933u78
dailymotion.com/arshian
How to guarantee you regret your life:https : //dai.ly/x93180y
My honest advice to a perfectionist:https : //dai.ly/x9319i4
My honest advice to someone who’s doing too much : https://dai.ly/x9319ty
My honest advice to someone who feels behind in life : https://dai.ly/x931a78
My honest advice to someone who wants financial freedom : https://dai.ly/x931ex2
If I Wanted to Be a Millionaire Before 30, I'd Do This : https://dai.ly/x931gzm
The Best Book I've Ever Read about Making Money : https://dai.ly/x931j9y
How to Go From $0 to $10,000 a Month in 4 Steps : https://dai.ly/x931kb6
How to Make $10,000 Month Writing Online : https://dai.ly/x931l42
How to 10x Your Income The 4 Ladders of Wealth : https://dai.ly/x931ldm
Why You Feel Lost in Life by Ali Abdaal : https://dai.ly/x933252
How to Figure Out What You Really Want in Life : https://dai.ly/x933hm8
How to Change your Life in a Year - 3 Simple Ideas : https://dai.ly/x933u78
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LearningTranscript
00:00Hey friends, welcome back to the channel.
00:02This is gonna be a bit of a long,
00:03rambly life update sort of video.
00:06It's not really gonna add any kind of value
00:08to anyone's life, so feel free to not watch it,
00:10especially if you haven't been following
00:11like my medical journey and stuff
00:13and you don't care about this stuff,
00:14please leave the video now, watch something more useful.
00:17Watch anything by Thomas Frank or Matt D'Avella or,
00:19anyway, this is a life update video.
00:21Basically, so for the last few months,
00:24I have been sort of talking about taking an exam
00:27called the USMLE, the United States Medical Licensing Exam.
00:31It's basically an exam that everyone in the US
00:33and outside the US has to take
00:35if you want to be a doctor in America.
00:37And I've been kind of toying
00:37with the idea of doing this exam
00:39because I've been toying with the idea
00:40of moving to America and leaving the UK by definition.
00:42Anytime I do that, I always get sort of like
00:44dozens of Instagram DMs being like,
00:46oh my God, you're moving to the US, like what's going on?
00:47So I asked people to send in some questions
00:50and in this video, I'm just gonna kind of
00:52generally talk about what my current plans are for life
00:55and like where the UK versus medicine versus the US
00:59kind of fits into all of that kind of stuff.
01:01The first thing to say is that my plans change
01:04on a fairly frequent basis.
01:07I'm not really one for believing
01:08in kind of a long-term plan.
01:10I think given that the future is so uncertain,
01:12like personally, three years ago, two years ago,
01:14I would have had no idea about the effect
01:16that this YouTube channel will have on my life
01:17and now it's like literally shaping
01:19the direction that my life is going.
01:20That's complete uncertainty.
01:22A few months ago, no one had any idea
01:23what was gonna go with coronavirus and all this stuff.
01:26The world is so uncertain
01:27and so having any sort of firm plan,
01:31like five-year plan, 10-year plan,
01:32all of that is all a complete myth
01:33because at best, it's just a guess
01:35and at worst, it's kind of holds you to a future
01:39that you might potentially not want when you get there.
01:41So everything I'm gonna say here
01:42is gonna be with that caveat that my plans always change
01:45but I'm just literally making this video
01:46to tell you what the current state of my plans are right now
01:49bearing in mind all of this uncertainty
01:51and the fact that you can never really predict the future
01:52or plan the future or whatever.
01:54So what I'm saying is that I reserve the right
01:55to change my mind on this
01:56and this video is in no way me making
01:59a sort of legally blind-binding pledge
02:01to do the things that I'm intending to do
02:03because I change my mind all the time about various things.
02:06Anyway, the US.
02:07Yeah, so a bit of context.
02:09I am approaching the end of my first two years
02:11of being a doctor in the UK.
02:12Those are the foundation years, FY1 and FY2.
02:15For FY1, I was working at Addenbrookes Hospital
02:17like 10 minutes from where I live in Cambridge,
02:20sort of outskirts of town but in Cambridge.
02:22This year, I'm working at a hospital
02:23called West Suffolk Hospital in the West of Suffolk
02:25which is about an hour's drive
02:27in a town called Bury St. Edmunds.
02:28So that's kind of how it works.
02:29Usually, you work in a different hospital for one year
02:31and then a different hospital for the second year
02:33but then after this two years in the UK,
02:35the way it works is that at that point,
02:37you can apply for a training pathway
02:40and I suppose the equivalent
02:42would be a residency pathway in America.
02:44In America, it's kind of weird
02:45because you go straight into residency
02:46straight from medical school.
02:47So you decide you want to be a plastic surgeon
02:49and you apply to a plastic surgery residency program.
02:52Whereas in the UK,
02:53you decide you want to be a plastic surgeon
02:54so you graduate med school,
02:55you work for two years as a foundation doctor
02:57where you're doing rotations in everything,
02:59so six rotations in different subjects
03:01and then you do another two or three years
03:03as a core surgical trainee
03:05where you do sort of surgery
03:07and all sorts of different types of surgery
03:09and then at that point, you go into plastic surgery.
03:11So you have this sort of four or five year period
03:14before you actually specialize in any one thing in the UK.
03:18In the US, it's not like that.
03:19You specialize immediately after med school.
03:21So it's kind of a different system.
03:22I'm approaching the end of these two years
03:23and my last day of work is August the 4th, 2020.
03:26So at that point, I'm gonna be unemployed
03:28and the reason I'm gonna be unemployed
03:29is that I haven't applied for any training program.
03:32The applications were around about November time.
03:34I kind of made a joke in a podcast and a video
03:35that I forgot about the applications.
03:37I was never really intending to apply
03:38for a training program.
03:39I was thinking of maybe applying
03:41just to see what the interviews are like
03:42but then I kind of forgot.
03:43So I was like, oh, whatever.
03:44I wasn't gonna apply anyway is what I'm telling myself.
03:46This is very common.
03:47More than half of the people in some figures
03:49say 70 to 80% of people in my position
03:52don't apply directly to a training pathway.
03:54Instead, a lot of people,
03:56once you've done your two years of being a doctor
03:58in the UK as a foundation doctor,
03:59you take some time out, you take a year out,
04:01maybe more to do other things.
04:03Most people will do something related to medicine.
04:05For example, you might do an extra year
04:08working in emergency department in London
04:10just to get some experience.
04:12You might do six months of research
04:13and then six months of traveling.
04:15You might go to Australia for a year in locum,
04:18do extra shifts in an emergency department there.
04:19People do all sorts of stuff with this.
04:21In fact, the whole going to Australia thing
04:22is very common.
04:23More on that in a sec.
04:24And so you basically have this kind of gap year
04:25or sabbatical where you sort of do what you want
04:27and then most people will apply to a training program
04:29within a year or two.
04:30And most people will say that they don't regret
04:33not going all the way through
04:34because you go through school,
04:35you leave school at 18, straight into medical school,
04:38six years of medical school,
04:39two years of the foundation program, that's eight years.
04:41I've basically been either in full-time education
04:43or working full-time my whole life.
04:45And this is the first time that I've got
04:46from August the 4th where I actually have a break
04:48where I can kind of do what I want
04:50without being kind of tied down to formal employment
04:54or formal education.
04:55So the next question is,
04:55what am I gonna do in that break?
04:57The answer is, I don't really know.
04:59I was thinking of hashtag traveling the world,
05:00but then the whole coronavirus thing happened
05:02and who knows whether I'm gonna actually be able
05:03to travel the world.
05:04I had this long plan, right?
05:05I was gonna, a friend of mine was getting married
05:08in Singapore in September.
05:09So I was gonna go to Singapore for that.
05:11Then I was gonna kind of roam around Southeast Asia
05:12just for the bounce.
05:13And then I wanted to learn snowboarding in Japan
05:16for like December and January and February.
05:18And then I was gonna go to Australia and New Zealand
05:19for a bit.
05:20And then I was gonna go to South America for a bit.
05:21Like that was my vague plan,
05:24but then the whole virus thing happened
05:25and I don't know if that's gonna happen anymore.
05:26My vague plan while doing all this traveling stuff
05:29was that I prepare for the USMLE,
05:30which is this US medical exam,
05:32partly because I kind of like exams,
05:34partly because more knowledge is never a bad thing.
05:36And I forgotten the bulk of what I knew in medical school.
05:39And although you don't really need it as a doctor as such,
05:41it's still kind of nice.
05:43It's nice to know stuff
05:44and I would like to know stuff again.
05:46But the main reason is because I wanna keep the option
05:48of moving to the US open.
05:50And that brings us on to why do I wanna move to the US?
05:53So we have loads of questions from Instagram
05:54being like, why leave?
05:55What is wrong with the UK?
05:56What is wrong with the NHS?
05:57Why the US specifically?
05:58When are you going?
05:59And is earning money one of your main motivations?
06:01Why do I want to leave the UK?
06:03I think that's the first question to answer.
06:04And I think I'm not fully 100% on this.
06:07This is just sort of a very tentative plan.
06:08But my thinking on this is that firstly,
06:10the future is uncertain.
06:11No one knows what's gonna happen.
06:12But in general, what we wanna be doing,
06:15whatever field we're in,
06:16is that we wanna be trying to keep our options open.
06:19We wanna maximize randomness and optionality,
06:23which is a phrase that I like to come back to.
06:25And there are so many good things in life
06:27that happen because of pure serendipity.
06:29Like if you ask people how they met their significant others
06:31or how they landed their biggest deal
06:33or how they got their book published,
06:35or like all sorts of like big events in life,
06:37a lot of times it's just down to being in the right place
06:39at the right time.
06:41Like this opportunity just randomly,
06:43serendipitously came about and I took advantage of it.
06:45And then here we are.
06:46And the more of these sort of like business type books
06:48you read, the more you see this luck factor.
06:52Like people get these different kind of luck events
06:55and they can capitalize on the luck events
06:56and then good things happen in life.
06:58One of the philosophies that I buy into
06:59is this idea that we can't control
07:01the luck events that hit us,
07:03but we can increase our surface area
07:07for luck events to hit us.
07:08By increasing that,
07:09like if we have a greater surface area for luck events,
07:11it means that we're exposing ourselves
07:13to more interesting kind of things.
07:15Like let's say extreme example,
07:17you were in a little village in the countryside in the UK
07:20and you never ever left that village.
07:21Chances are you've got a small surface area
07:24for serendipity to strike.
07:25You're not really gonna meet many new people.
07:28You're not really gonna stumble across new opportunities.
07:30Like no one is really gonna know you exist.
07:32It's difficult for a serendipitous event
07:34to really change the course of your life.
07:36It still can do.
07:36Maybe some person is roaming through town on their carriage
07:40and it just so happens that you meet eyes
07:41and you fall in love and you get married or whatever.
07:43It can, but it's unlikely, right?
07:45That's a very, very extreme example.
07:47Now let's say instead that you're the sort of person
07:49who moves around and every two years
07:51you live in a new country
07:53and you're also create, like you've got a personal blog
07:56and you're putting yourself out there online
07:57and there are hundreds of thousands of people hypothetically
07:59who read your personal blog, who know who you are.
08:01And so anytime you go to a new country,
08:02you can sort of post on Twitter and be like,
08:04hey, who wants to hang out?
08:04And you're meeting all these kinds of cool people.
08:07That sort of person is increasing their surface area
08:08for serendipity.
08:09Like there are so many, infinitely more possibilities
08:11for interesting things to happen
08:13if you're that sort of person
08:14than if you're the person who stayed in this little village
08:16all their life.
08:17What I wanna be is more of that second person.
08:18And the way that you become that second person
08:20is that you keep your options open
08:22and you meet loads of new people
08:24and you expose yourself to sort of situations
08:27that you're unfamiliar with.
08:28I've been in Cambridge for the last eight years.
08:30I'm very much becoming this village person
08:31just like sitting here in Cambridge
08:32doing absolutely nothing else.
08:33I mean, apart from the fact that I put myself out
08:35on the internet, which is its own serendipity vehicle,
08:37more on that in a video at some point.
08:38But I'm kind of becoming the sort of person
08:39who just kind of sits in Cambridge.
08:40And partly this whole kind of moving to the US thing
08:42came about because I was actually watching
08:44an Unjaded Jade video.
08:45Some of you might, if you're still watching this far,
08:46you might be familiar with Unjaded Jade.
08:48She's a very good study tuber.
08:49And she had a video called like,
08:50how to decide what to do with your life.
08:52I was like, oh, sick, I'm gonna click on this.
08:54And she described this idea of the Odyssey plan,
08:57which is apparently an exercise
08:58that Stanford business students get taught.
09:00And the Odyssey plan is that you write down
09:02in painstaking detail what your life will look like
09:05five years from now,
09:06if you continue down your current path, that's number one.
09:09Then you write in painstaking detail
09:10what your life will look like five years from now,
09:13if you took a completely different path.
09:15And then you write what your life would look like
09:16five years from now,
09:17if money and societal expectation was no object,
09:20and you kind of write that down.
09:21Then you see, like, how do you feel about that?
09:23And so I watched this video and I was like,
09:25okay, I'm actually gonna do this exercise.
09:26So I spent a while, like half an hour,
09:28just kind of typing out what my life would look like
09:31five years from now, if I stayed in the UK,
09:33if I stayed in Cambridge,
09:34as I was previously planning to do.
09:35And I actually shared that on my email newsletter
09:38close at the time, a few months ago.
09:40So you should subscribe to my email newsletter
09:41if you aren't already.
09:42If you're watching this far,
09:43then hopefully you've subscribed
09:44because you care about what I have to say.
09:45Anyway, I did this Odyssey plan thing.
09:47And what I found was that
09:48the life that I could see in front of me in five years time
09:50when I'm 30, at the time I was 25, I'm 26 now,
09:52but you know, like I'm 30 years old.
09:54I'm doing part-time training in anesthetics,
09:56maybe doing some emergency medicine stuff in Cambridge.
09:58I'm physiology supervisor on the side for some colleges.
10:01I'm continuing to continue to make YouTube videos.
10:03Maybe I'm in a relationship at this point,
10:05probably not, realistically.
10:07And I go to the gym and stuff and hang out with my friends.
10:09And I was like, okay, that's fine.
10:12That's a very good kind of existence.
10:14But I just found myself thinking that, is that it?
10:17Like, is that really what I want from my life?
10:20And then I kind of started having
10:21this little like sort of like mini crisis
10:23where I was like, oh, well, it just seems a bit too easy.
10:25Like, I know that, you know, if that was what I wanted,
10:29I could, I'm basically there.
10:31Like, I just need to follow the yellow brick road
10:33that's laid out in front of me and I'm just there.
10:35Like, there's no challenge to it.
10:36There's no discomfort.
10:37There's no growth.
10:38It's just a case of following this path
10:40that's been neatly laid out in front of me
10:41and be like, yeah, this is a pretty easy life.
10:44And then I was thinking, okay,
10:45what if I do something completely different?
10:46What if I just kind of travel the world?
10:47And that's where this idea of traveling the world
10:48came about because when you travel the world
10:50and you force yourself to like interact with
10:52and meet new people,
10:52you apparently increase your, people say,
10:56makes you more appreciative of what the world is like
10:58and you broaden your horizons and all that stuff.
11:01And that would be very much a case
11:02of increasing your surface area for serendipity,
11:04which is what I want for myself
11:05and for everyone that I know.
11:06And so that was where that idea came about.
11:08So the Odyssey plan and kind of going back to this US thing,
11:11the reason I don't necessarily wanna stay in the UK
11:13is if I stay in the UK,
11:14I'm limiting the amount of sort of world experience
11:18that I'll have.
11:19Yeah, I could leave Cambridge.
11:20I could go to London or something,
11:21which would be an interesting experience.
11:23There'll be a whole kind of new range of people.
11:24But even if I'm in London,
11:26my friendship group will basically be the same
11:27as it currently is.
11:28I'll basically be hanging out with the same people.
11:30I'll make a few new friends with the doctors
11:32that I work with.
11:32Maybe I'll go on a few more dates
11:34because there's more people on Tinder in London.
11:36But that's kind of it.
11:37And life in London will be very similar
11:39to life in Cambridge.
11:40And so what I'm thinking is that, okay,
11:42it would be kind of nice to move to a different country,
11:43at least for a bit, just to see what happens.
11:46And I think it's almost a no brainer.
11:47Like if you've got the option of moving to a new country,
11:50then you might as well, right?
11:51Because I don't think anyone is gonna be on their deathbed
11:54thinking, oh, I wish I'd stayed put.
11:57I wish I hadn't done,
11:58I wish I hadn't had that new experience.
12:00Like no one's gonna be thinking,
12:01I wish I hadn't traveled the world.
12:03They're gonna be thinking,
12:03damn, I wish I'd traveled the world.
12:04And it's sort of in 50 years time when I'm dying,
12:07hopefully not 50 years, but you kind of get the point.
12:09Hopefully I will look back on this time and think,
12:12I'm really glad I decided to live in America
12:14for a few years or whatever,
12:16rather than just stay in the UK and do my thing.
12:18So that is where this idea of going
12:20to another country came from.
12:21I feel like I've sort of stagnated a bit
12:23just kind of being in Cambridge and I like,
12:25I'm sort of craving the sense of adventure,
12:27at least for a while.
12:28The next question is why America?
12:29There's a few different reasons for this.
12:31So Australia is an option, Canada is an option.
12:33Canada isn't really an option because firstly,
12:35I don't know many people who have done medicine in Canada
12:38from being international students,
12:39international medical graduates.
12:40From what I've heard, it's notoriously difficult to get in
12:43because of the whole visa system
12:44and the whole medical system in Canada means that
12:46as an international graduate, you are sort of,
12:50I was speaking to a doctor about this like just yesterday
12:52and he was saying that the way that the Canadian system works
12:55is they would rather choose the worst Canadian graduate
12:58than the best international graduate.
12:59And so you're gonna end up in the sticks
13:01in the middle of nowhere
13:01and not necessarily in the place where you wanna be.
13:03So that was kind of what I've heard about Canada,
13:05although in fairness, I haven't really given it a shot.
13:07It's still on the cards.
13:08Secondly, Australia is an option.
13:10Australia is kind of cool.
13:11I was chatting to a doctor yesterday over the phone
13:12who works in Australia and moved from the UK to Australia
13:15and absolutely loves it.
13:16And so Australia would be an option.
13:17It's generally a lot easier to get into Australia.
13:20You don't have to jump through so many hoops.
13:21The medical qualification in the UK is accepted there.
13:24You just have to sort of do a few visa bits
13:26and then you're done.
13:27So it's relatively straightforward to get into Australia.
13:29So fine, that's an option.
13:31The other option is the US.
13:32In general, I want to move,
13:33I want to do my medical training in a place
13:35that is sort of broadly similar to the UK.
13:37So Australia, Canada, the US.
13:39I don't wanna go to some place like Cambodia
13:40because that would just be a totally novel experience.
13:42Yes, it would be very good experience and stuff,
13:45but I think that's probably pushing the boat a bit too far.
13:47I want to stay in a sort of a big developed country
13:49as it were.
13:50So what does America have going for it?
13:51Well, the annoying thing about America
13:53is that you have to take exams to get in.
13:54You've got to take the USMLE Step 1, Step 2,
13:56Step 2CK, Step 2CS, blah, blah, blah.
13:58That's more exams.
13:59Do I want to take exams?
14:00I kind of like taking exams
14:01and kind of like what I said at the start.
14:03You know, more knowledge is always a good thing
14:04as my mom always tells me.
14:05And so the fact that I have to take exams
14:08is not necessarily a factor against going to America.
14:12In fact, arguably, because I make videos
14:15like Study With Me videos
14:16and videos about revision tips and stuff,
14:18and I haven't really been studying properly for exams
14:20for the last like two years.
14:21In a way, it benefits my YouTube channel and my audience
14:25and therefore myself to be able to study
14:28like explicitly for an exam to then create content out of.
14:31And that is sort of a synergy that is somewhat unique
14:35to someone in my situation where I've got a YouTube channel
14:37where most people taking the USMLE
14:39aren't gonna be in that position
14:40where they are actively incentivized to take that exam.
14:44So that's partly why I'm not shying away
14:45from taking the exam.
14:46And also I love exams and more knowledge is always good.
14:49The benefits of going to the US
14:50are that firstly, it unlocks a lot of opportunities
14:54for collaborations.
14:55Like most of my YouTuber friends are in America, right?
14:57And so if I wanna do a collab with like Thomas Frank
14:59or Matt D'Avella or Sara Dietschy,
15:00or these other people that I connect with,
15:02but like practically everyone in my YouTube agency standard
15:04is from America.
15:05Like it just unlocks so many new interesting opportunities
15:08for collaborations from these people
15:10that I'm already like internet friends with.
15:11And it just seems that all of the other people
15:13that like most of the people that I follow on Twitter
15:15who I'm internet friends with,
15:16most of the people I follow in the worlds of productivity,
15:18people like Tiago Forte, Nathalie Aysen,
15:20you know, there's so many people on the internet
15:23that I've kind of gotten to know
15:24through this YouTube thing who all live in America.
15:27And so being in America means that
15:30you sort of unlock
15:31those interesting collaboration opportunities
15:33and I get to meet these people in real life.
15:34That's another kind of big plus for going to America.
15:37Thirdly, a big plus for going to America
15:38is that the bulk of my audience is actually in America.
15:40Like looking at my YouTube analytics,
15:42about 27% of my audience is in the US,
15:46only about 12% is in the UK,
15:48about 12% is from India
15:49and all the other countries
15:50make up smaller and smaller chunks.
15:51So the US makes up is the significant,
15:54sort of the significant minority of my total audience.
15:58And so if I were to go to the US,
15:59that would be kind of interesting, right?
16:00It would be interesting from a content perspective,
16:02it would be a case of sort of,
16:03you know, I can vlog the journey of moving to the US,
16:05it would be interesting from a medical perspective,
16:07I can actually actively compare the two systems,
16:09UK versus USA having been working there.
16:11And then like for the significant minority of my audience,
16:14it would be kind of interesting,
16:15because like, oh, this dude's coming to our country.
16:17And even for people in the UK,
16:18for people in India and stuff,
16:20like people who haven't been to America,
16:22there is this sort of allure of America,
16:24to like to an extent that Canada
16:26and Australia don't really have.
16:27Like people would generally be more wondering of,
16:28I wonder what life as a emergency medicine resident
16:31is like in America, like, you know,
16:32in ER and like Grey's Anatomy for surgery
16:34and house and stuff.
16:35People have less of that kind of sort of intrigue
16:38when it comes to places like Australia and Canada.
16:40Like I've never once thought,
16:41hey, I wonder what life as a Canadian surgeon is like.
16:44And the only exposure I have to sort of medicine in Canada
16:46has been through Becky and Chris's YouTube channel,
16:48link in the video description.
16:49So America has all these different factors going for it.
16:51The main reason I wanna go there is not because of medicine.
16:53Like, yeah, the residency is interesting.
16:55It's a shorter program, you make more money,
16:57but like, I don't really care about the money
16:59because I make enough money from this YouTube channel
17:00and the other side businesses.
17:02The residency program is shorter,
17:03which is sometimes can be a good thing.
17:05I think for emergency medicine,
17:06which is what I think I wanna do,
17:07it's either three or four years.
17:09Whereas in the UK, you would do two years
17:11of acute and critical care STEM,
17:14and then you would do one, two, three, four,
17:16four or five years as an ED registrar.
17:18So you'd sort of be doing the seven year thing,
17:20whereas in America it'd be three or four years.
17:22So there is that side that it's a bit more accelerated.
17:24In America, the work is apparently a bit harder,
17:26but hey, how hard can it be?
17:29So America has so many different sort of peripheral factors
17:33entirely unrelated to medicine
17:35that places like Canada and Australia,
17:37and certainly the UK don't have,
17:39which is why America is sort of top of my list
17:41of this would be an interesting place to go to
17:43to do the rest of my training,
17:45like to do residency in America.
17:47And so to answer some of the specific questions,
17:48why leave, what's wrong with the UK?
17:49There's absolutely nothing wrong with the UK.
17:51I've just been here forever.
17:52And so maximizing randomness and optionality, serendipity,
17:55it just makes sense to move abroad.
17:56What is wrong with the NHS?
17:57Again, nothing in my opinion wrong with the NHS.
17:59It's a fantastic service.
18:00I love the NHS.
18:02I love the UK hospitals, they're great.
18:04Not saying a bad word against that.
18:06It's just being in the same place for a long time,
18:10it's just inherently less interesting
18:12than being in different places for short amounts of time,
18:14at least in my book, at least for someone like me.
18:17Why the US specifically?
18:18I think I've talked about that.
18:19When are you going?
18:20That's a bit weird.
18:21That's also very plan dependent.
18:23I'm not too keen on plans,
18:24but apparently it takes about two years
18:25to do the whole process.
18:26So I'm hoping to take the USMLE maybe end of this year,
18:30maybe early next year.
18:31So between like December and February, 2020 to 2021
18:34in theory, and then sort of maybe I'll end up in America
18:38in 2022 or something like that.
18:40Assuming I don't take time out along the way
18:41or assuming something else doesn't turn up
18:43and assuming I actually get it, of course.
18:45Is earning money one of your main motivations?
18:47No, not really.
18:48Like my end goal has never been
18:49to work full-time as a doctor.
18:51My end goal has always been to work part-time as a doctor.
18:53Like I think two or three days a week
18:54working as a doctor would be quite fun.
18:56In America, you work two or three days a week,
18:58you make 200 to $300,000 a year.
19:00That's all right.
19:01I'm, you know, I make more than that of YouTube videos.
19:04Like the fact that you earn lots of money
19:08as a doctor in America is not at all one of my motivations
19:11because for me, being a doctor is absolutely not
19:15how I wanna make money.
19:16I wanna make money on the side doing lots of other things.
19:18And then I wanna do medicine for fun,
19:19which has been something that I've been sort of
19:21telling myself since like first year of med school
19:23that this is the goal, to do medicine for fun,
19:26to earn money doing other things.
19:28So money is not one of the motivating factors
19:31to go to America.
19:32Technicalities, where in the US are you planning
19:34on going to?
19:34No idea.
19:35New York seems cool.
19:36How long are you planning on staying?
19:37I think it would be cool to do residency there
19:39and then think about moving back to the UK
19:41or moving to Canada or moving somewhere else potentially
19:43for being an attending, being a consultant.
19:46But that's so far in the future
19:47that there's completely pointless to think about it.
19:49What will happen to your flat slash flatmate?
19:51My flatmate Molly is moving out in August.
19:52So I'm gonna have this flat to myself.
19:54And if I leave the country, I'll put it on rent.
19:55Like it wouldn't be too hard.
19:57What will you do with all your tech?
19:59I've actually been thinking about this a lot.
20:00I'm gonna get these big suitcases
20:01and I'm gonna create a sort of traveling studio setup.
20:05So I'll have this light and a few stands
20:07and a proper camera and stuff.
20:08And the idea is that anywhere in the world that I go,
20:09I'll have my sort of little pop-up studio
20:12that I can set up.
20:13So I'll probably need to sort of pare down some of the tech,
20:15but otherwise I'll just leave it in the house.
20:17Cause when you rent out a flat,
20:18you can rent it out furnished.
20:19And I don't think anyone's gonna complain
20:20that there is a standing desk
20:23and you know, what other tech is there.
20:24It's all the video stuff really.
20:26I can take the video stuff with me wherever I go.
20:27And what specialty do you wanna do?
20:28And I'm leaning towards emergency medicine.
20:30Let's not talk about the USMLE.
20:31So that's the medical licensing exam.
20:34When would you recommend starting to prepare for it?
20:35And are you sitting it because you miss studying?
20:38Partly I'm sitting it because I'm miss studying.
20:39My brother's cynical view would be that,
20:42you know, from August, because I won't have a job,
20:44I'll have this kind of void in my life
20:46that I'll need to fill with something.
20:48And it's a very easy thing for me to say,
20:50hey, why don't I just take this exam?
20:51You know, I need to do something.
20:52Taking this exam is something to do,
20:55therefore I will take the exam.
20:56And there is some truth to that.
20:58Like it's a very nice security blanket
21:00being able to prepare for another exam.
21:03And if I was really being true to myself,
21:05if I was really thinking, you know,
21:06do I really wanna spend six months of my life
21:08preparing for this exam?
21:09Instead, could I not just travel the world
21:11for six months or something?
21:12Yeah, that's probably true.
21:13I could probably get a lot more value out of that.
21:15But I'm in general a fairly risk averse person.
21:18And I like having the security blanket of,
21:21yeah, you know, I'm doing something legit.
21:22I'm preparing for an exam.
21:23And so at that point, my sort of full-time gig
21:26will become preparing for this exam.
21:28And my side gig will still be the YouTube thing.
21:30And then so I can still tell myself
21:31that YouTube is just a side hustle for me.
21:33There are so many psychological benefits
21:35to having something like YouTube being a side hustle
21:37rather than being a full-time job.
21:38If it becomes a full-time job,
21:39it means I'm reliant on it for money.
21:41It means I'm having to do it.
21:42Whereas when it's a side hustle,
21:43it's something that I want to do.
21:44And so I want to sit down and make this video.
21:46I don't feel like I have to do it.
21:48And I feel like it would lose some of the charm
21:49if it became a proper full-time job.
21:51So that's partly why, for me,
21:52I want to take this exam, kind of,
21:54because, well, that's kind of the point.
21:56So those are some of the background reasons
21:58about why I want to go to America.
21:59But the thing that really sparked it off
22:01was that I've got these two friends
22:02who are in New York at the moment.
22:03Names are Osama and Shireen.
22:05They're married.
22:05They're a very cute couple, et cetera.
22:07She's got an Instagram page that's pretty big.
22:08We were sort of chatting on Facebook Messenger,
22:10like, in 2019.
22:12And they've been running this course for the last few years
22:14because Osama is a dermatology resident in Manhattan.
22:17And every year he flies back to the UK
22:18and does this sort of physical course
22:20about how to make it in America
22:21with a company called Liberty Medics,
22:23how to make it in America.
22:24And every year they sell out to, like,
22:25hundreds of students in the UK
22:27who potentially want to move to the US.
22:28And so he kind of guides you through the process.
22:30And so these guys were in America.
22:31And so I was chatting to them.
22:32I was saying,
22:33have you guys considered doing an online course about this?
22:35Because, you know, online courses are great.
22:37When you run a physical course,
22:38and I would know having done lots of physical courses,
22:40it's a real ball lake.
22:41You have to book a venue.
22:42You have to deal with logistics.
22:43You have to print stuff out.
22:44You have to deal with people in person.
22:46When you have an online course,
22:47and again, I would know because I have online courses,
22:49it's fantastic because you film it once
22:51and then you profit from it forever.
22:52And so I was saying to these guys,
22:54have you considered doing an online course?
22:55You know, if you do, give me a shout.
22:57I can help you get set up in things.
22:59And a few months later, he reached out to me.
23:00He said that, hey, we should kind of go in,
23:02sort of go in together as a business venture
23:05for this online course,
23:06Liberty Medics, how to make it in America.
23:07And I was like, yeah,
23:08that sounds like a good idea actually.
23:09And so pre-lockdown,
23:11like on the second of January, 2020,
23:13they came around my house.
23:15They flew from America to London,
23:17immediately came to Cambridge.
23:18And we spent two solid days filming this course.
23:20For most of the first day, I was just the cameraman.
23:22I just had the camera set up, the lights and everything,
23:24and it was, you know, it was looking quite pretty, et cetera.
23:26But then the more I was sitting behind the camera
23:28and hearing Osama describe what life in the US
23:31is actually like and how to get into it,
23:33the more I was thinking, hang on, this seems kind of cool.
23:35Why don't I do this myself?
23:38And so we sort of changed up the structure of the course.
23:40Initially, it was just gonna be him talking to the camera
23:42and Shireen talking a little bit at the camera.
23:43But then we added these whole new segments
23:45where sort of he and I were like filmed
23:48lots of discussions that we had
23:49where we were both sitting on the sofa
23:51and I was asking him questions like, you know,
23:53how much money do they own in the US?
23:54What's it like?
23:55What's the work-life balance like?
23:57You know, why do you hate the NHS so much?
23:58And the question that was like,
24:00that I really wanted to ask was this idea of
24:02if you're in the US short,
24:03like how can you possibly wanna work in a healthcare system
24:07where they deny life-saving medical care
24:10to people who can't afford it?
24:11You know, coming from the NHS,
24:12that's just morally reprehensible.
24:15And so I asked him all these questions on camera
24:17and his responses were very, very reasonable.
24:19And actually, if you click,
24:20if you look in the video description,
24:21we have made lots of these videos free
24:24on the course website,
24:25so you don't have to pay for it if you don't care,
24:26but if you care, like whatever.
24:28They're all like, lots of these videos are available for free
24:30where I am grilling him extensively about
24:33what is life in the US actually like?
24:35Do you really have to deny life-saving medical treatment
24:38to people or is that myth?
24:39You know, how much money do they own?
24:40What's work-life balance like?
24:41And he's answering all these questions.
24:42And after he and I had those discussions
24:45over about two hours,
24:46which again is all filmed,
24:47link in the video description,
24:48after we had all those conversations,
24:49I was thinking, damn,
24:50you've kind of answered most of my objections
24:51about working in the US.
24:52Because my main objection was,
24:54I've heard the work-life balance is not great.
24:56I've heard that residents burn out all the time.
24:58I've heard that you have to kill yourself working
24:59for 50 weeks of the year
25:01and then you can have a good holiday
25:02for two weeks of the year.
25:03And I've heard that you have to check
25:04people's insurance status
25:05before you can give them any kind of medical treatment.
25:07Those were kind of my main objections,
25:09just that I'd sort of heard on the grapevine
25:11without really knowing anything about it.
25:12And he answered all of those and then some.
25:15And honestly, the main thing that sold it for me
25:17was that we talked about kind of the adventure.
25:20And I asked him,
25:21what's it like moving to a different country?
25:22And he said, it was really, really good.
25:24He said that, and this really sort of stayed with me.
25:26He said that like, if he stayed in the UK,
25:28he could see how his life was gonna turn out,
25:30is that he would get married,
25:31he would have some kids,
25:32his kids would wanna get into Oxford
25:33and Cambridge for medicine.
25:34And they'd live in the suburbs
25:36of some place near London.
25:37And essentially the life he and his kids would live
25:40would be almost identical to the life
25:42that he lived himself,
25:43because that was the exact struggle,
25:44the exact journey that he went through with his parents.
25:47And so he said that it sort of felt like,
25:49you know, I've seen this movie before,
25:51I know what's gonna happen.
25:52And he just sort of felt
25:54that he wanted more of an adventure.
25:56So when I heard that, I was like, damn,
25:57this sort of matches up exactly
25:58with what I was thinking with this odyssey plan
26:00that I'd done a few weeks prior to that,
26:01completely coincidentally,
26:02where I was thinking that, yeah,
26:04I can kind of see how this movie plays out.
26:06And I don't know, I kind of wanna be in a movie
26:09where it's a bit more unpredictable
26:11and I don't really necessarily know
26:12how it's gonna play out,
26:13rather than just seeing this future map down in front of me.
26:15And then speaking to Shireen as well about the adventure.
26:17Yeah, it's a bit lonely at times when you go,
26:19but, you know, I feel like,
26:20I feel like I'm reasonably okay at making friends.
26:22I feel like I know enough people on the internet
26:23that I'll have, you know,
26:24an existing social network there.
26:26I think the adventure is really the main thing
26:29that sells it for me.
26:30And America rather than any other place for adventure,
26:33because there are all sorts of peripheral benefits
26:35to going to America that I've talked about already.
26:37So that was sort of the proximal spark
26:40that sparked this interest in America.
26:42Before that, it was just sort of a passing fancy.
26:44A few other things.
26:45Things to consider that people have asked.
26:47How will you be able to do YouTube
26:48while working 80 hours a week?
26:50I think this is a myth.
26:51In the UK as well, people are like,
26:52oh my God, you know, working as a junior doctor
26:53is really hard, you have all this work to do.
26:56Yeah, but you still make time to do YouTube videos.
26:58Especially when I now have a team of people,
27:01like there are three people working for me.
27:03Working for me, that still feels weird to say.
27:05There are three other people in the team
27:06who help with the videos.
27:08You know, we've got,
27:09all I have to do is sit here and film this.
27:11And the amount of time it takes me to film it
27:13is the amount of time it takes to film the video.
27:15Christian or Angus are gonna handle the editing side of it
27:17and the uploading and everything else.
27:18So when you have a team behind you,
27:20you can then leverage your time in more interesting ways.
27:23And so even if I am working 80 hours a week,
27:25how many hours are there in a week?
27:27So 80 hours divided by seven.
27:28That's on average 11 hours a day.
27:30I've done plenty of shifts where I've worked 13 hours
27:32and then I filmed a YouTube video that evening.
27:34I don't think it's gonna be that hard.
27:35Secondly, what are the pros and cons lifestyle-wise?
27:38Again, we'll put some of the videos
27:40of Liberty Medics in the video description.
27:41That will be free.
27:42So you can watch them if you really want to.
27:43Life of a resident and life of an attending,
27:46a consultant are quite different apparently.
27:48Apparently as a consultant, you have a lot more autonomy.
27:50You can work part-time.
27:51As a resident, it's not really a part-time type thing.
27:53I'm sure it'll be hard work,
27:54but I think it'll be fun and it'll be interesting.
27:57And so I'm not really thinking about the lifestyle
27:59because the thing is that none of these decisions
28:02are ever permanent.
28:03Like if I go there, you know, if I even get in,
28:06cause that's a huge question mark.
28:09Like if I get in and if I go there
28:09and if I end up not liking it, I can just stop.
28:12I can just move.
28:13Like this is the benefit of sort of having
28:15these multiple streams of passive income
28:16that I don't need medicine to survive.
28:18I don't need medicine to like, whatever.
28:20So if I want to, if I'm not enjoying it,
28:22I can just be like, right, screw it.
28:23Let's leave America.
28:24Let's go back to the UK.
28:25And I can just apply to a training pathway in the UK.
28:26If I really want to, I can go to Australia.
28:28The world is open to you when you're a doctor
28:30and the world is even more open to you
28:31when you have the financial freedom
28:33to not be tied to a place because of money.
28:35So that's a big, a big factor why I'm open
28:38to considering kind of moving elsewhere.
28:39Would you want to start as an intern all over again?
28:41Yeah, don't really care.
28:42Might be kind of cool.
28:43What will you miss most about the NHS?
28:44I don't know.
28:45I don't know really.
28:46Um, the logo is pretty good.
28:48I like the logo.
28:49How will you deal with leaving your family and friends?
28:50Yeah, so that's interesting.
28:51I mean, I haven't really seen much of my family
28:53or friends since lockdown
28:54and I've been pretty okay with it, to be honest.
28:55And kind of from speaking to Osama and Shireen about this,
28:58what they said is that actually it's like,
28:59once you start working,
29:01then you actually see your friends very little.
29:03Like I see my friends from med school maybe twice a year
29:07and I can fly back from America to the UK
29:09more than twice a year to see my friends.
29:11And what Osama was saying is that when he flies back
29:12to the UK to hang out with his friends,
29:14it's like an event because he's like, he's coming back.
29:16And so everyone kind of gets together for that event.
29:18Whereas otherwise it's like really hard
29:19to actually get a group of friends together.
29:20Like if you graduated from university
29:22and your friends are now working
29:23in different parts of the country,
29:24you will know how difficult it is
29:25to actually meet up with people.
29:27So I'm not massively concerned.
29:28Plus, you know, got a PlayStation recently,
29:30started playing Warzone.
29:32I'm sure I'll be able to chat with people
29:34on PS5 live or whatever it's called.
29:36Next question is, aren't you scared of the guns?
29:38Not really.
29:39I don't know much about it,
29:40but I'm pretty sure if you're a doctor,
29:42then you don't really have much to be hugely worried about.
29:44How will you feel when people who need medical care
29:46cannot afford it?
29:47That was a big one.
29:48This was like the main question that I asked Osama about.
29:50We have a 25 minute long video about this,
29:52explaining why it's not that simple.
29:54And certainly before having that conversation with him,
29:56the view I had, which was completely uninformed,
29:59was that if you can't afford medical care in the US,
30:01then you get denied medical care.
30:02And therefore the system is bad.
30:04Therefore the NHS is good.
30:05Therefore we have moral superiority over the Americans
30:07because our healthcare system is moral and just and stuff.
30:11And that was my view of it,
30:12like not knowing anything about it.
30:14If you're interested in the answer to this,
30:15I'd recommend you watch that video.
30:16It's free.
30:17Again, you don't have to pay for it.
30:17You can literally just watch it for free.
30:18It's 25 minutes of him and me and Osama
30:20having a back and forth about this.
30:22And me really trying hard to argue that,
30:24about why America is bad.
30:26And I think he sort of defended the position
30:28reasonably well.
30:29I certainly don't know enough about it
30:30to be able to defend that position myself,
30:32but you can watch that video if you're interested.
30:34Do you feel any guilt leaving the NHS?
30:35No, absolutely not.
30:37This was another thing that I've spoken
30:38to a lot of senior doctors about,
30:39is that a lot of the NHS,
30:41there's a phrase that the NHS runs on goodwill.
30:45And that really came to the forefront
30:46when this whole like coronavirus stuff happened,
30:48the lack of personal protective equipment
30:50and things like that.
30:51The NHS is fantastic,
30:52but I don't personally,
30:54I wouldn't feel any guilt per se for leaving it.
30:57I've gotten this question
30:57from a few kind of younger medical students.
31:00I don't mean to be patronizing at all,
31:01but like if you're a first year medical student
31:03and you're looking at my stuff thinking,
31:05oh my God, he's moving to America,
31:06what's wrong with him?
31:07Save the NHS.
31:09It's a very sort of sacrificial idealism
31:13that almost no one has by the time they've graduated
31:15or at least by the time they've been a doctor
31:16for a few years.
31:17When you're very young and you're a medical student
31:18and you still have this sort of rose tinted view
31:21of what life as a doctor is like,
31:22you might think,
31:23oh, I'm gonna give my life to the NHS,
31:24but it's not really like that.
31:25And it's certainly not like that for me.
31:27I don't really feel any guilt leaving the NHS.
31:30The NHS is also like a huge thing.
31:30It's like leaving the NHS,
31:31it's effectively like leaving the country.
31:33The NHS is the country's biggest employer.
31:35Like leaving the NHS,
31:36it's like not even a concept.
31:38Like I feel no guilt about not working next year.
31:41That's basically leaving the NHS
31:43because how will the NHS survive without me?
31:45But the NHS will survive without me.
31:46Like it's a huge, huge, huge organization.
31:48Like an individual does make absolutely zero difference.
31:52And so why would I feel guilt about it?
31:54That's kind of my thoughts on this.
31:56I'd be more than open to changing my mind
31:57and actively feeling more guilty about it.
31:59If people wanna give me a compelling case to,
32:02feel free to leave that in the comments if that's the case.
32:04So yeah, that was kind of the end of my rambly life plan.
32:07The plan is to take the USMLE in the next few months
32:10to actively prepare for it,
32:11which I've started to do,
32:13to really ramp up the preparation for it
32:14once I finish my job in August.
32:16And then for a few months,
32:17do solid preparation for the exam
32:18with a view to doing emergency medicine residency in America
32:21as the current state of the plan,
32:23bearing in mind, it's always subject to change.
32:25I'm kind of liking the idea
32:26of maybe working in Australia for a few months
32:28after having this chat with a doctor yesterday.
32:29Liking the idea of maybe becoming a doctor
32:31on a cruise ship for a year or so
32:33and just seeing what happens.
32:33And yeah, I've got all these sort of interesting
32:35sort of things that I could do,
32:37but at the moment, the medium term goal
32:40is to do emergency medicine residency in the US.
32:42And I will certainly update you guys if that plan changes.
32:45So if you've reached this far,
32:46thank you so much for watching.
32:47Have a good time.
32:48And I'd love to hear from you in the comments
32:49if you actually got this far.
32:50Let's put like a little, like a sun emoji or something.
32:53You know, just so I can see how many people
32:54have watched this far.
32:55And I'll try and hang out in the comments
32:56to answer any questions that people have.
32:57I'm more than open to sort of being swayed on this front
33:00in terms of actually, you know,
33:02if someone is actually educated about this
33:03and knows about how the system works,
33:05if you'll strongly advise me against it,
33:06then, you know, I'd be more than happy to listen.
33:08But at the moment, those are my reasons.
33:09That's the mental model in my head
33:11about why America might be a good option for me.
33:14And yeah, we'll see how it goes.
33:15So thanks for watching.
33:16I'll see you in the next video.
33:17Bye-bye.