 Let's see. Mic check, one, two, one, two. Mart, let's get started. What is up guys? Karma Medic here, and welcome back to another dose. This video is gonna be like a life update Q&A type thing. I've actually got to leave the house in about half an hour to get on a flight for the holidays. I'm going to Greece for Christmas, to see friends and Alexia and everyone like that. So I haven't gone much time, but I just felt this urge to kind of record this video and update you guys on what's going on. So here we go. So yeah, as I film this, it's a couple of days before Christmas, which means the new year is about to come. And man, I'm honestly really happy about that. I feel like this year has been just a further plunge into the COVID hellhole of, I don't know, just like studying a lot of time spent at home, not being able to do the things that we wanted to do or it could usually do. And I'm just ready for that to hopefully be gone if this Omicron doesn't come and ruin things in the future. I know the videos on the channel aren't always very timely to what I'm actually doing in real life, because a lot of them I film and then they take a while to edit and get uploaded and everything like that. I've just finished my situational judgment test exam about a week ago now and I've been hibernating in this room for that week. So I don't catch COVID before I get on this flight and luckily I'm negative. But honestly, that exam, it's been a huge weight off my shoulders, you know? There was so much pressure and so much riding on that one exam, but I would kind of determine the next two years of my life. And so, you know, there was obviously a lot of stress leaning up to it and a lot of anxiety and pressure put on myself. But I kind of did the same thing that I do for every single exam, you know? I prepared as hard as I could have. I did as much work as possible. So that when it came exam day and I sat down in front of that computer, the Pearson View Center, I said to myself, you know, no matter what happens now, like you did your best and I know that for a fact, like I can go to sleep, I can put it on my mama. I did my best, you know? I studied as hard as I could and you know, whatever happens, like it's out of my control. If something does go wrong, it won't be because I didn't study hard enough. And now we've got finals in kind of early January, January 12th, I think it's my written final. And then we've got Oskies later on in January. And I'm not gonna start studying for them until after this break because I'm just so burned out of studying. I mean, guys, you've seen me study over the last three years and those three years are part of a wider nine years of higher education. And I just, I've got nothing left in me for studying, honestly, nothing left. I just need to do these exams, pass them and start working. I have no will, no energy to sit down and study. It's become really, really difficult these days. I will obviously study before the exams but I kind of just need this break now between the SJT and these exams to relax my mind, reset, and then come back hard again. Goal setting isn't really something that I've done throughout my life but it's something that I've done over the last couple of years. And I think the goals that I'd set for this year was something like meet a couple of new people, like make a couple of new friends, travel to a couple of new countries, which didn't happen, and then things like be more reflective, which is a huge one. I've actually become more reflective. This is great. I feel like this camera needs to be moved a little bit down. There we go. You know, it's funny. The story of the story, this is kind of interesting. So the company, the company BetterHelp reached out to me to sponsor one of my videos. And they are a company that offers online health counseling and mental health services, et cetera. And I was going to make a video about burnout in medical school. So I was like, oh, okay, cool. This might be a good fit. So I got back to them and I said, you know, I might be interested. Let me test out your service and actually use it to see if it's any good and I want to promote it to my audience. And they said, okay, no problem. So they gave me a free trial for their service. And that's how I ended up doing my first ever therapy session. And I showed up to that therapy session thinking, what in the world are we going to talk about? You know, my life is good. I've got a girlfriend. I've got friends. I'm in medical school. I've got this YouTube channel. Like, I'm happy. I go out. I play sports. I exercise. Like, life is good, you know? And so I went in thinking, what the hell are we going to talk about? And one of the first things she asked me was like, so what do you want to process today? And I was like, yeah, I have no idea. Everything's completely fine. And honestly, just with a couple more questions, she suddenly had opened me up and had me talking about all these things that I'd never even thought about before. You know, over the last three years of making videos and content, I've been so hyper focused on working on this project every single spare second of time that I had that I never kind of checked in with myself to be like, hey dude, are you okay? Like, are you having fun doing this? Are you enjoying this process? How do you feel about you being busy all the time and working so hard and sacrificing other aspects of your life? And so kind of slowly, slowly over the next eight weeks of therapy sessions, I felt like I had opened myself up and my brain up and learned to think about my emotions and my feelings and my experiences in a way that I just never had before. And I think it's turned me into a much more reflective person, a much more, I think like a conscious person. Sounds strange to say conscious person, but I honestly feel like I've been on autopilot for a long time, kind of just going, going, going, running on the hamster wheel, chugging along, go, go, go, go, go. Then I never really stopped to think about what it is that I'm doing and the decisions that I'm taking. So anyways, I'm really happy about that. I've been wanting to be more reflective, whatever that means for a couple of years now. And this is the first year where I feel like I actually did it. Maybe let's talk about this YouTube channel for a bit. This YouTube channel is amazing, obviously. Blah, blah, blah, I love it to death. It's become more and more difficult, I feel like, to create content and reach new audiences and grow the subscribers, grow the viewership, grow all the analytics. Everything just kind of is plateauing. And I think a big reason for that is lockdown periods have finished where people were staying inside, watching a lot more content. And that's certainly a time where my channel saw a really big boom in all the different numbers. And then second to that, I feel like I've saturated this market, market that is medical students or aspiring medical students watching this type of content on YouTube. I feel like if you've gone to that category, I've reached you. My video has shown up on your page at some point or another and you've either decided to click it or not, and that's that. And so it's becoming harder and harder and harder to make videos that are consistently growing the channel, increasing the viewership, increasing the subscribers, et cetera. Now the good thing for me is that this channel has always been and will always be a hobby for me. It's something that I do for fun. It's something that I truly enjoy. And so if I ever get to that point where I'm not enjoying it, where this is not fun for me anymore, I have the option to stop. It's not like this is my full-time job, my one skill set, you know, I've got medicine behind me to back me up into the future. So the annoying thing with the channel kind of taking this plateauing stage or phase or whatever we want to call it, is that it makes it really hard to experiment here on YouTube. It makes it very hard to try different videos, new videos that you might find interesting and exciting but might not appeal to other audiences. Because once one of your videos performs badly, then the next one kind of performs badly and it sort of tanks the whole channel and you have to, it's kind of like digging yourself in a hole that you then have to dig yourself back out of. So yeah, as I was saying, I mean, big picture, I'm still really enjoying making videos. If I was to reach 10,000 people a week, then, you know, that would be incredible and amazing in itself, let alone the about 100,000 people that these videos reach. So, you know, I'm still gonna be making videos. I'm still enjoying them. I just thought I'd be open and authentic with you guys about everything that's going on there. Having said that, I'm still experimenting and making the videos that I really enjoy, the ones that I hope people will find useful who are looking for those videos like the one that I did on how to publish in university. I knew from the very beginning that video wasn't gonna get many views. It wasn't gonna be widely shared, et cetera, et cetera, but I kind of didn't care because I wanted to make that video and I wanted the people who needed that information to benefit from it. So again, because this isn't my job, I don't have to make videos that are going to perform well or do well within the algorithm or whatever. I can make the videos that I actually enjoy that I think people will find useful. So that's what I'm doing. I definitely feel like I've rambled a lot. I asked you guys on Instagram if you had any questions for me for this little life update Q&A. And as always, you guys did not disappoint and you sent a whole bunch of questions through. So let's go through a couple of those right now. This is a good one from Gerard Rajakar. Thoughts on finishing uni soon. I'm about to finish law school and low-key freaking out. Gerard, you and me both, man. I mean, the thing is like, I've worked towards this my whole life towards graduating and becoming a doctor. And now that we're here and the final responsibility of the patient is going to rely on me and I'm going to have to make medical decisions and treatment decisions myself or at least propose them to my seniors or start initial treatment when there's an emergency until they can get senior review or until help can arrive, is a really scary thought. It's all fun and games when you're a medical student and you're shadowing someone else. And if anything goes wrong, you can kind of take a step back and be like, oh, I need help. Someone come help me. That's all fun and games. But then when it's you, when you are that help and you are called to do the thing that needs to be done, it's a whole different ball game. Now, the good thing is I've never really slacked in medical school. I've always gone to placement. I've always done the experience. So I've done the things, right? I've done the things I need to do. So I'm not worried from that point. And on top of that, we've still got a couple of months now and I'll be doing my elective and my career development program in emergency medicine and surgery. So I'm gonna get a lot of hands-on experience, a lot of time doing the things that I'm going to be doing as a doctor in a couple of months, but with under the guise and umbrella of being a medical student. So it'll be a good sort of transition period for me. And I know in my head, and I keep telling myself, like, you know, thousands of students have been in your position before. Like a lot of people who graduate from medical school are going to have these feelings of being scared, of being worried, of taking that step and gaining all that responsibility. And I try to keep reminding myself of that because, you know, imposter syndrome is very real. You get this feeling that like, well, how am I going to do it? Yes, I know everyone else has done it, but like, why me? Am I good enough? Have I studied hard enough? Am I smart enough? Can I control myself and my thoughts under pressure and emergency situations? And you know, those thoughts are very real and they do creep in from time to time. So I try to take a step back and like to have this bird's eye view and tell myself like, you know, don't worry, dude, it's gonna be okay. Like everyone else has been through this. I've got two very close friends who lived down the road from me. They've both been through this like very recently in the last year or two. So I've really, I've seen them go through it. And you know, if they can do it, I can do it. And if everyone else can do it, I can do it too. Just keep trying and reminding myself of that. This is a good question from Adid Vamudit. I hope I'm pronouncing that right. Does it feel weird when non-medical friends are earning in jobs whereas you're in school? This is referencing to earning money. So does it feel weird the other friends are earning money whilst you're still in school studying? Yes, is the short answer to that question. I never really thought about it and I didn't consider it to be a big deal for the longest time, kind of up until about a year ago when I started getting close to graduation. And I realized every single person around me was already working, if not just now for at least a couple of years. And I was kind of the last one left still in school studying away from my medical degree. And the reason that I'm answering this question and then I'm bringing this up in this video is because this is something that I never even considered when I was applying to medical school in the first place. You know, when I was in high school and I was making this decision to go to medical school, I thought it was really informed because of the experiences that I had gained and the things that I had done to understand what the medical field was like. But I was lacking a lot in terms of research and in terms of understanding what medicine and the profession of medicine looks like kind of from every other aspect outside of just being in the hospital. So one of those, for example, is the impact on your social life and your extracurricular life outside of your career. And another one was this, you know, you're in school for a very, very, very long time before you actually start working. And certainly for someone like me who did an undergraduate degree first, that's a couple of extra years as well. So you kind of get to this point where everyone around you is working, earning money, moving on with their life, doing sort of the next steps or whatever, like moving in with their partners or I don't know, putting down a mortgage on a house or going abroad and working somewhere for a couple of years and then coming back, whatever it is. And like, yeah, it does feel kind of weird looking at them doing that. But at the same time, I know what I've gotten myself into now and you know, I'm happy with the decision that I've made. I still wouldn't want to leave medicine or medical school and go work a finance job or an engineering job or whatever. I still want to do medicine and I want to be a doctor. And so within that scope, it's like, well, okay, I guess this is what I have to do. I just need to do this. I need to do this extra studying in order to become a doctor. So it's just, it's kind of like a non-negotiable. I don't have a choice, right? It's not like I could have finished a couple of years early and gone to start working. Well, like, no, I need to finish the degree first, then I'll start working. So I kind of try and push out of my mind and leave it out as much as I can because there's just nothing that I can do about it. On top of that, having this YouTube channel and other income revenue streams that surround it has definitely helped, I think, alleviate that those thoughts and that pressure and that concern. All right, a couple more questions before I have to fly. This is a good one. How do you manage your finances as a student? Should there be savings or investment? I really want to focus on the savings and investment part of this question. I recently came across a clip on probably TikTok, to be completely honest. And it said something like, if you invest $100 into like the S&P 500, some index fund every single month from the age of 25, $100 every month from the age of 25, by the time you're 65, you will have $1 million in that account, which is mad. If you waited from the age of 25 to 35 and you started investing that same $100 every single month from the ages of 35 to 65, by the time you reach 65, you would have $300,000. All right, so just 10 years earlier of investing $100 per month equates to $700,000 over the next, what was it, 40 years, right, 30, 40 years. Now, the crazy thing about that is that $100 a month for someone working a part-time job in university may not be that much. And it doesn't have to be $100 a month. Let's call it $50 a month. Let's call it $20 a month, whatever you are able to invest. Take that money and invest it consistently and recurrently over time every single month. And then with the magic and advantage of compound interest, that money grows a lot over a long period of time. And I'm answering this question to emphasize the point that anyone watching now who's younger and has a little bit of money from their part-time job or from their birthdays or from, I don't know, whatever other income sources you might have at a younger age, think about investing some of that money. It obviously doesn't have to be all of it. It doesn't need to be the biggest chunk of it, but think about putting some aside and investing it. The earlier you start, the crazier these compound gains become over time. And so this is something that my dad has been instilling into me from a really young age. And from my very first part-time job that I had at the University of Toronto, he would always be telling me he'd call me up on Skype and be like, Nasser, invest that money. Have you invested that money yet? And at the time I was like, oh, I just want to spend it on having fun. But looking back now, I'm like, wow, that was such a good decision. Thank you, dad. And so yeah, if you're watching this, if you're listening and you have a little bit of extra income on the side that's just sitting in a bank account or sitting in a shoe box at home, please go invest that into an S&P 500 or some other index fund. One of the ones that just historically has performed well each year. There's a whole bunch of them. You can Google them and find out. Ali Abdel has a great video on this whole thing. Link somewhere up over here. So yeah, long story short, please consider investing from a young age. Even if it's a small amount, it will compound over time. A little bit dripping into your fund every month or every couple of weeks is so much better than just having to put in a large lump sum 10 years down the line. Just start now a little bit every month or every two months or whatever. This is a nice one. What will your life look like five years later by an account called Chan Dresch? My life in five years from now will hopefully be the following. I will hopefully have been working as a doctor for a couple of years, four years by then. And I want to be sort of comfortable and happy in my medical decision-making, in my confidence within a hospital and within assessing and managing acutely unwell patients, et cetera. I want my medical skills to be something that is as simple and easy to me now as like typing on a keyboard or like going to the gym and having a good workout. Like I want it to be a good, I want to have a good foundation, base level of knowledge and experience and skills in the medical field. And I want a small cat, not a dog. I like dogs, but they're way too much to take care of. I want a cat because they take care of themselves. That'd be nice too. And then I want this YouTube channel to be absolutely booming. No, I'm kidding. It doesn't have to be booming but we have to have made it to a million subscribers by then. All right, if I haven't made it to a million subscribers in the next five years, then I've failed. I don't mean that's pretty much it. I want my friends and family to be healthy. I want my family to be healthy. I want my friends to live near me so that I can see them as often as possible. That's the number one limiting factor of hanging out and having a social life here in London is how close somebody lives to you. So I want us all to live in the same area kind of like we do now. Anyways, small little picture of my hopeful future. This might be an interesting one. How's life different with a bigger YouTube channel compared to before? I'll split this into two sort of subcategories. So the first will be personal slash private and the second will be like public facing. So from a personal viewpoint, right? Having a YouTube channel just means that I am doing a lot of work. I, it's basically like having a part-time job plus whilst being in medical school, right? It's basically just like having another job, right? It's a lot of work. It takes a ton of energy and motivation and dedication to be able to put out a video every single week. But it's something that I really enjoy and something that I have fun doing. And so that's why I'm still doing it and that's why I haven't burnt out on it just yet. So that for me, I don't think is too interesting because if I didn't have a YouTube channel, I'd be doing something else. I'd be filling my time with either playing sports, some other side hustle or hobby. I'd be going out with friends. I'd be exercising. I'd be doing something. So my time allocation I think would be fairly similar. I wouldn't just be sitting in bed watching Netflix or playing video games all day. I would be doing something else. Now from a public-facing point of view, having a YouTube channel definitely has changed a couple of things for me. The first of which is that whenever I'm out and about pretty much anywhere on the tube, on campus, in the hospital, at the airport, I mean, even in Greece where I'm flying to now, it genuinely feels like at any given time, at any moment, someone can walk up to me and just say, hi, are you comrometic? Oh my God, how are you doing, blah, blah, blah. Now in theory, there's nothing wrong with that and truth be told, every single person who has come up to me on the street so far, touch wood, every single person who has walked up to me and said hello has been really kind, really friendly. We've had a lovely chat, taken a photo together. It's been great. Then we've gone our separate ways and whatever. Now that's all fine and dandy. The not so fine and dandy part is that I don't know anything about the person who's in front of me, right? I don't know if they serendipitously or whatever the word is bumped into me and just want to say hi or like my videos, enjoy the work that I do, whatever. Or if it's someone who's been following me around for a couple of days stalking me and has ill intentions and kind of trying to delineate or figure out which one is happening at that time is pretty much impossible to do. And just this sort of sensation or this feeling that when I'm walking around on the streets here in London, when I'm in a shopping mall, when I'm on the underground, when I'm out at dinner, when I'm in the Uber, at any point someone can come up to me and know all this information about me is very, very strange. And this has always been the case since the very first time it happened, I think like two years ago, till now. I mean, now everywhere I walk, everywhere I go, I'm constantly looking at people and I'm trying to assess, do these people recognize me? And I don't wanna say it's stressful because it's not. It's not something that I'm constantly occupied thinking about that's worrying me, causing my heart rate to increase or anything like that. And so that's not the case. But it's kind of just sitting there in the back of my mind all the time. And like when I'm out at a bar, when I'm sitting down for dinner and I look around the room and someone makes eye contact with me and it's just that little bit of extra eye contact that you don't usually get with a stranger. And I just know, this person recognized me. And if they wanna come say hi, that's completely fine. If they don't, that's completely fine. That doesn't stress me out. The stress is that they know who I am. And now they are, the ball is in their court. Like what are they going to do? And then that's when I start thinking about it. And that's when it takes up a larger portion of my headspace. And you know, I've always said, if I could do this whole YouTube thing and reach a lot of people and add value to their lives in some way, shape or form without this sort of public facing appearance side of things, I would take that any day because I really like my life. I enjoy my private life. I don't want to mix my private and this public life. And you know, it's something that's getting a little bit harder and harder every time that we grow. So I mean, I think once I start working as a doctor, I'm gonna see how things go and kind of reevaluate from there how I want to move forward with this whole thing. All right, this might be nice. From Sifis Zabella, in three words, describe how you're planning your 2022 to be. I plan for my 2022 to be varied. I want to do a lot of different things and keep each week exciting. No monotony. I don't want to do the same thing over and over again. I want it to be novel. Hopefully, hopefully, hopefully, hopefully, I'll be able to do some traveling. I want to go skiing to a new country. I want to travel and visit a couple of new countries and experience new cultures and new things and new people and new life. If we're able to and whatever, whatever. So what have we got? We've got varied, novel and happy. 2022 should be happy. I want to feel content first and foremost in myself and then after that with my friends and family and my girlfriend. That would be ideal, varied, novel, happy. All right, and on that note and that nice little email notification, gonna end this video over here. Thank you so much for watching. I hope you enjoyed it. If you want a more personal vibe interaction with me, feel free to join the Patreon. You can get on the Discord server and all the behind the scenes content and stuff that's over there. Don't forget to like and comment and subscribe on this video and I'll catch you in the next one. Peace.