My Journey of becoming a TCM Physician Chap 18: The Realisation
At this point of writing, practically the whole world is in a lockdown due to the fate changing coronavirus CoVid 19, including Singapore where I am at. The effects of the pandemic is going to be for quite a while and it is not all about the stay home enforcement and the craziness that can develop in each and everyone of us due to social isolation, but also the economic and financial reverberations from this.
Already many have experienced retrenchment, job loss or simply pay cut by now. Which is in fact something familiar to me and my batch of TCM aspirants. It is a period where you start to question why is this happening to me, what on earth did I slave my life out for only to lose it all or deemed redundant in times when I need the job most. I can totally understand that as for me, this feeling is thousand times worse so many years back, when we got our realization.
So with the hype and the excitement of the TCM License Exam, in between of course some of us did start to throw in resumes and step out into the job market to look for opportunities where we can finally put our skills to good use. After all, 5 years of going through hell should amount to something worth it, isn’t it？
Well, I can only say life has its way of building up heroes. And it is most certainly so for us.
Whispers from those that had done a quick ‘survey’ of how the market was for us gave signals that things weren’t looking as pretty as we imagined. For me I didn’t give too much attention as I would rather concentrate on THE exam first before talking about any job as per say.
And right after the exam, all of us started putting in all the effort to start on our first jobs and make ourselves useful, finally.
That was when reality sets in. Harsh and brutal. Maybe even cruel.
Based on my own discovery, whatever was out there was offering less than the start of a 3 year Accountant Bachelor fresh grad. And there most probably was not going to be any increment in the future years to come.
Reason given by the so called employers who were struggling physicians themselves for the meagre remuneration was: we are too young and no experience. Wow.
5 years of learning and practicing under the Masters of this field and we were seen as dust.
After a while, I also started to realise how small and tiny this market was, saturated with really old and closed minded beings.
After all this, is this what we are worth?
After all this, is this my future?
Is this it?
Is this a joke?
These may be the questions that are on your mind right now, if you fall into one of the sacrificial categories I mentioned above due to this pandemic. These were the questions that were on mine too, once, in that dark and hopeless place.
So did I submit to my fate? Did my other TCM aspirants put ourselves into the slavery and mockery of this unwelcoming market?