Life seems so simple when you are young. People can say things to you like “follow your dreams” and “always do what your heart tells you”. But I ask you this: is it harder to stick to the fantasy and follow your dream or to know you are turning your back on it forever?

I decided I wanted to be a doctor when I was fourteen. It wasn’t simply a notion that floated through my head and then used as a standard answer when adults questioned me as to my plans (living in a house full of lawyers interrogation is fairly common place). For me, it was a burning ambition and from that day on I spent every free moment working out how I was going to succeed. I worked at a doctor’s surgery, volunteered at camps for disabled children and gained work experience at a hospital and pharmaceutical company. It was hard not having any contacts in the medical world but my perseverance seemed to be paying off and although it was exhausting I was loving everything that I did. When I was seventeen I had my first set back and got nowhere near the required grades in my AS levels. My teachers all told me it would be impossible for me to get my grades up and that there was no point applying for Medicine. Determined to prove them wrong and to achieve my dream I worked every evening and every weekend non-stop for a year and I put in my application for Medicine. By the end of the year I had 3 As in my A levels, a place at every Medical School I had applied for, a massive grin on my face and a huge sense of accomplishment. It seemed the perfect fairy tale of rising against the odds.

It all started to go wrong when I got to University and started studying Medicine. During that year that I was working so hard for my A levels I never stopped to think why it was so difficult for me. I never stopped to think that there may be a sign here. I was so intent on the fairytale of my life that I never stopped to think it might not be possible. I worked hard in my first year and everything I did seemed to confirm that I would love being a doctor as much as I had always expected. However when results day came I’d failed four of the ten exams. I was devastated but was determined to pick myself up and turn it round like I had before. I wasn’t so lucky this time and I failed one of the exams again, I’d failed the year and couldn’t proceed. The University however gave me another chance and said that I could take a gap year and take the exam again next year. During that year I decided to give myself more options and applied for Law. I’d always been much better at the Humanities type subjects at school but had been fixated on becoming a doctor. I was starting to see the appeal of doing something I was good at though, I applied to Oxbridge and got in. I still had my Medicine exam to do though, I worked all hours of the day and night as I had done before, but this time I passed with a 1st.

Now I had a choice to make: I could go back and do Medicine, live with the risk of failing again but follow my heart. Or I could study Law, see where it took me, and listen to my head.

Turning my back on my dream was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.

I was often asked: “Is Medicine a dream or a goal?”…it was a dream that turned into a goal, and I missed.

Life isn’t a fairytale. But, it does belong to you and its up to you to seize control of it.