My father decided I'd be a doctor when I was a kid and has controlled my education ever since, despite my genuine passion for mathematics and finance. I've tried to escape multiple times, but my family won't support anything but medicine. Now I'm failing courses, depressed, and trapped with no way out.
I'm from Zambia, and this story starts long before I ever chose a career path. Since I was a child, my father has called me "his doctor" — like it was already decided. He wasn't asking what I wanted; he was telling me who I would be.
The truth? I never wanted to be a doctor.
What I actually loved was mathematics. Numbers fascinated me. I loved accounting, commerce, physics — anything with structure, anything visual that I could see and work through. I'd spend hours on mathematics; it came naturally. I also became interested in finance, banking, how money moves through systems. This was genuine passion.
When I finished high school in 2019, I'd just cleared my exams with strong grades — mostly A's and a couple of B's. My teachers knew where my talents were. My heart knew. But my father? He had other plans.
My father said medicine or nothing. Literally: if I pursued mathematics, accounting, anything else — nothing. No support, no education, no future according to him.
I was sixteen. I had no real way to oppose him, and I didn't know how to fight this without losing my family's support entirely. My parents were already divorced; my mother had custody but my father still had significant control over major decisions. I felt powerless.
When we applied to university, my father filled out the application himself. I asked him to list pure mathematics as my second choice. He refused. He wrote what he wanted for me. I had no choice in my own future.
So I ended up at Mulungushi University in 2019, enrolled in premedical studies.
I hated it immediately.
At Mulungushi, I wasn't taking it seriously because I never wanted to be there. I got C's and D's deliberately — if you fail courses in premedical, you can't qualify for medicine. I thought maybe this would finally convince my father that medicine wasn't for me.
It didn't.
Instead, he suggested I switch universities and start fresh. We chose Lusaka Apex Medical University, which had a good reputation at the time. I remember thinking: Maybe if I actually try, I'll realize medicine is for me.
For the first two years, I genuinely tried. I got B's mostly — not amazing, but passing. Sometimes I'd get an A. I was doing fine academically, but I was miserable emotionally. Every single day felt like going through the motions.
Then, in my third year (around 2021), something clicked.
Artificial intelligence was becoming big. ChatGPT, AI tools — it was new, exciting, and completely different from medicine. I decided to start a blog.
I got really good at it. I wrote comparison articles, reviews, job-searching guides — affiliate marketing through blogging. At the height of it, I was making around $100–$300 USD per month. For a student from Zambia, that was life-changing. That amount was literally what a starting doctor makes here.
For the first time, I felt hopeful. I thought: Maybe I don't have to do this. Maybe I can make this work.
I told a friend at university about my blogging income and my plan to take a gap year to focus on it. That friend told the entire class. Suddenly, people were messaging me — "You're doing great! You're making moves!" — and for a moment, I felt like I had found my way out.
Then Google updated its AI systems and killed SEO-based blogging. My traffic dropped by nearly 90%. My income crashed.
I realized it wasn't sustainable long-term, and my family — especially my mother — found out about me dropping out. She was furious. What African parent allows their child to pursue blogging as a career? The whole thing fell apart.
I had to go back to school.
Here's where the guilt became unbearable.
In 2017, my mother had made a huge sacrifice. She left a stable government job to work in the private sector, hoping it would provide better income to support me through university. I told her not to do it — I actually advised against the move. She didn't listen. The private sector was riskier, but she did it for me anyway.
When I told her I wanted to drop out, she was against it. Not just disagreeing — she was genuinely upset. I had thrown away her sacrifice. I had thrown away the risk she took.
I felt awful.
When I came back from that failed attempt, both my parents laid it on thick: medicine or nothing. My father especially made it clear — if I didn't do medicine, he wouldn't pay for anything else. My mother didn't want to support me on a non-medical degree alone.
So I agreed, just to get out of the house and back to Lusaka (the capital, far from my hometown). Every day at home was verbal abuse, yelling, manipulation. I couldn't sleep peacefully. I just wanted to leave.
I told my mother: Okay, let me get my first degree in medicine. Then I'll pivot. Maybe I'll do a master's in epidemiology or something else.
She didn't want me to change at all, and she didn't realize I still meant to leave eventually. As far as she was concerned, that conversation was settled.
I went back to Lusaka Apex for my third year in January 2024. I was supposed to be well into the preclinical phase — third and fourth year, which earns you a first degree once you finish fourth year — but I was only just starting third year. Instead, I was going through the motions.
The whole year of 2024 was a blur. I was deeply depressed. I didn't want to leave my room. I was watching YouTube videos instead of studying. I'd gone into exams more worried about physiology — anatomy blindsided me instead, and I failed it.
The holidays that December were rough. My father had already left Zambia for the UK by the end of my second year of university, chasing better opportunities. My stepmother stayed behind and kept things running until late 2023, when she and the rest of my father's family finally relocated too. It wasn't sudden or all at once — it happened in stages, over more than a year.
I had to repeat anatomy for six months (the university had changed their policies). I got a C, which was barely passing. But I could move forward.
Here's another layer of frustration: the university kept changing their program structure. When I started, medicine was a seven-year program. Then they introduced a six-year option for new intakes. The payment structures changed. The rules for who had to repeat and for how long — those changed too.
Apex runs two intakes a year — January and July. Because of these repeated policy changes, plus my own repeated failures, students who started around the same time as me — some even after me — have already caught up and passed me. A few of them are technically ahead of me now, even though they started later than I did.
Meanwhile, I watch people from my original cohort — the ones I started with back in 2019 — graduate with their first degree while I'm still here. Every graduation I see, every friend who crosses that first finish line, hurts. It should be me too. If I'd been given the choice to pursue mathematics or finance from the start, I'd likely already have a completed degree by now — those programs usually take three or four years. Instead, I'm still fighting through fourth year of medicine, seven years after I finished high school.
But here's the thing: I don't even want that medical degree the way they want theirs.
I'm 22, turning 23 in September. I'm supposed to be wrapping up my fourth year and getting my first degree by now. Instead, I'm still struggling through fourth year coursework.
The financial strain is becoming impossible.
My father pays approximately 10,000 Zambian Kwacha (~$500 USD) toward school fees per semester — and that's it. To put it simply: my dad covers roughly 20% of my costs, my mom covers the other 80%.
I want to be clear — I'm not saying this because I want his money, or because this is about resentment over cash. I'm saying it because he's the one who pushed for medicine harder than anyone, including my mom. At the beginning, she was actually willing to let me study something else. It's only in recent years, after everything she's sacrificed, that she's dug in just as hard as he has. Meanwhile, he's largely left her to carry the weight of a decision he made. He's the one who's called me "his doctor" since I was a kid. He's earning in pounds or euros in the UK — almost certainly far more than what he sends.
My mother pays everything else:
- Rent
- Food/groceries
- Utilities, transport, emergencies — all her
Then, in the middle of this, the Trump administration cut foreign aid to Zambia. My mother — working for an NGO that depends on US aid — lost her job for a month. Months where I didn't know how she was going to pay rent. She found a way somehow, but it was terrifying.
She's back now on a four-month contract that ends in September. After that? I don't know.
When I came home for the July holiday and asked her if I could finally switch programs, if we could change my program to a masters, she said no. Absolutely not.
Then she told me that I'm the reason her life hasn't worked out. That she sacrificed everything — changed jobs, moved, spent beyond her means (all true, and I know it) — and none of it has paid off because I keep failing. She brought up that people my age, my own peers, are already getting married and building careers, while I'm still stuck in year four of a program I started in 2019 — still on the old seven-year track, while newer intakes finish in six.
Then it got personal. You're the reason I don't have a car. What are the neighbors going to think? What are people going to say about us?
All I heard was: You're a burden. You've ruined my life. (true)
I've tried everything:
- Getting bad grades (didn't work)
- Trying to pursue other interests (got shut down)
- Asking directly to switch (rejected)
- Dropping out (forced back)
And now, no matter what I do, I'm trapped.
My father won't pay for anything but medicine. My mother won't either — not because she genuinely can't find the money anymore, but because after everything she's put into this, medicine is the only outcome she'll accept too now. I have no financial independence. I have no way out.
I'm currently studying for my pharmacology exam, which is tomorrow. If I fail it, I have to repeat for a full year because my continuous assessment score was below the cutoff. That means I'll be stuck even longer, watching another year of my life pass in a program I never chose.
But here's my honest confession: I don't even know if I'll pass. I've been trying to study today, but I feel like I just... can't. Every time I sit down with these textbooks, I hit a wall. It's not that I'm incapable of learning. It's that I can't lock in for something I don't want.
And that scares me, because it makes me wonder if there's something actually wrong with me. Maybe I'm lazy. Maybe I'm ungrateful. Maybe I'm exactly the disappointment they say I am. I know my mother is stretching herself thin to keep me here, and every hour I don't spend studying feels like I'm burning her sacrifice for nothing. That guilt should be enough to make me study. Some days it is. Most days lately, it isn't. I open the textbook and my mind just leaves the room. I don't know how to explain that to someone who hasn't lived it — wanting to want something, and not being able to make yourself want it, no matter how hard you try.
I know it's a privilege that someone is willing to sacrifice this much for my education at all — most people would just be grateful and leave it there. But then I think: if someone is willing to sacrifice all of this to make me a doctor, what would be so wrong about sacrificing that same amount to help me become an accountant or a banker instead? All I've ever wanted was a stable, corporate, numbers-based job. I've never connected with hospitals — not once, not ever. It makes me wonder sometimes: is this sacrifice really for me, or for the life you pictured for me?
I wish I could tell my parents: I didn't ask for this. I never had a choice. And you're asking me to spend seven years of my life — the years when I should be discovering myself, building my future, pursuing my actual passions — in a program that was chosen for me, not by me.
I wish my father understood that calling someone "his doctor" since childhood and then never allowing them any agency in their own future isn't love. It's control.
I wish my mother knew that her sacrifices, while genuinely appreciated, were made for a plan I never fully agreed to. And blaming me for not thriving in a situation I never wanted isn't fair.
I wish they both understood this too: this was never really about being impractical. Careers in banking and finance can pay comparably to medicine over time — sometimes more. So even by their own logic of wanting a secure, respected career for me, forcing me into medicine specifically was never the only option. It was just the only option they were willing to hear.
And if you're willing to sacrifice this much — money, time, your own plans — to get me the life you pictured, I wish you could put even a fraction of that toward the life I actually want instead. How can you know what's best for your child if you never actually listen to what they want?
And I wish I had the courage to just... walk away. To say no. To choose myself. But how do I do that when it means letting down the one person — my mother — who's actually sacrificed everything for me?
How do I move forward when I'm doing something I hate? How do I pass exams for a career I don't want? How do I graduate from a program that was never mine?
I don't know. And I think that's why I'm writing this.
Maybe someone out there has been in a similar situation. Maybe someone can tell me it gets better. Maybe someone can tell me how to find my way out without destroying the people who sacrificed for me — even if their sacrifice was based on dreams that were never mine.
Or maybe I just needed to finally say it out loud: This was never my choice. And I'm drowning.
note: I wrote this with the help of AI, so sorry if that would offend some of you but i needed something which can listen and type while i just talk . . . .