The myth of a self-made man/woman
Hi friends,
Hope you have had a great start to the new year.
I sent my appreciation over the New Year and I am surprised to find out the huge impact it had on my well-being.
I had considered myself somewhat a self-made man in the past: born as a Chinese native, I won a scholarship to study at Singapore, where I worked hard and eventually got a place to study medicine at Cambridge. On the surface, the odds were not in my favour: the scholarship required me to outcompete hundreds of brightest students from 13 cities, and the admission rate was about 1/1000 for international students to get into medicine at Cambridge. There was some hard work involved: during my last year in high school, weekends were all I got for curricular work, as I spent all the time outside a class on my research. There was a lot of uncertainty as to whether this would help with my university application. I was extremely anxious over those days but my experience did stand out and I got a place.
That is enough self-pitying. Through writing those appreciation letters I was reminded again just how important other people are for my achievements. During the time I struggled most, I had a very supportive supervisor who guided me through my research journey. I was hugely supported by my friends and teachers and even the school system changed in my favour - coincidentally, of course. My year was the first year when the students were no longer ranked based on their percentiles for the internal exams, and this gave me enough assurance that I could spend more time on my research. Without their support and these random happenings. I might never have been where I am today. I am not saying that I have come a long way, but I do know that in each step I have been supported by people around me.
Yes, there were odds against me and I had to work harder than others sometimes to get what I want. I appreciate how those experiences shaped my character but let us not forget how fortunate we already are. I am not a self-made man and I never will be. I am writing these because I want you to remind me. If ever I recall those memories and lamented how challenging my life was, I hope you could cut me off and tell me just equally how lucky I was. We are not entitled to anything just because we worked hard for it.
Tim
P.S.
This is more of an interim post, but if you are interested, you should try out LeechBlock NG, a website blocker browser-extension that I discussed in the last post. I use this to allow distracting websites only at a selected time. The magic only happens when you choose not to override the blocking because that is when you realise no harm has been done by not checking the messages.