The Joy of Letting Go of Your Biomedical Career: The Ultimate Quitter’s Guide to Flourish Without the Burnout
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About this ebook
In The Joy of Letting Go of Your Biomedical Career, Dr. Xuemei Zhong tells of her own struggle leaving the angst that came with her job at a top medical school; and how that episode in her life inspired her to found HOE Holistic Wellness LLC. Dr. Zhong discusses how to find fulfillment in work and life and lays out her groundbreaking seven-step decision-making process. Within The Joy of Letting Go of Your Biomedical Career, she helps professionals who want to reconnect to their true purpose by developing a plan to a flourishing career without losing themselves. Throughout its pages, Dr. Zhong explains to those searching for this career path how to:
Dr. Xuemei Zhong
Dr. Xuemei Zhong went through a journey from a medical school professor to becoming a life coach, author, and speaker. The irony of medical professionals being one of the least healthy populations drove Dr. Zhong to look for a better career choice and to help like-minded medical professionals find their dream career - that both aligns with their purpose but also helps them sustain a healthy lifestyle. She finally felt at home when she received training and became a certified health coach and master level transformational coach. She believes that medical professionals who have a dream bigger than their current practice are going to have a big impact on transforming human life into a heavenly experience. Dr. Zhong currently resides in Sharon, Massachusetts.
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The Joy of Letting Go of Your Biomedical Career - Dr. Xuemei Zhong
Part 1
My Journey
Chapter 1
My Parents Were Proud of Me, But I Was Suffering…
My Parents Want the Best for Me
I was mad at my dad. It was late in the night. I was watching a famous Japanese TV series about a group of schoolgirls on a volleyball team. Like other teenage girls in China at that time, I became a big fan of that TV series and dreamed of becoming a volleyball player. That was probably the time when the Chinese volleyball team started rising to the world championship. Almost every schoolgirl started to play volleyball because of this TV series and it became a nationwide sport, even surpassing Ping-Pong. You can imagine how much I wanted to finish that episode when my dad came in and brutally turned off the TV. I felt he was the worst dad in the world and thought I would never forgive him. Of course, he just wanted me to go to sleep early so I could go back to school.
My middle school was a boarding school that was a two-hour bus ride away. We didn’t have cars back then. There was a middle school only minutes away from home. But that was not a good enough one for me. I am an only child and my parents wanted the best for me. There was a shuttle bus taking us back to school every Sunday evening. But when I was sick and needed to get back to school in the middle of the week, my dad would bike for an hour with me sitting on the back rack with all my heavy books, food, and clothes in my backpack. It was a long unpaved country road. Under other circumstances, it would take a couple of buses to get to school. At that time, there were no world-class subways in that area like there are today. But my parents were worried that I would get lost or kidnapped as a little girl while walking to different bus stations. So my dad would bike a long way and drop me off at the bus stop of the last leg of bus trip so I could get off right in front of my school with just one bus to take.
It was always a pleasant ride with the beautiful countryside. I looked forward to getting to school with all the goodies packed by my mom. I never realized how hard my dad had to peddle the bike with my heavy backpack and me. His pants were full of sweat by the time he dropped me off and he’d still have to bike another hour back home. He never complained and was always happy to wave goodbye to me.
To my parents, having good grades at school, going to a good college, and having a good job were all they wanted for me. And I made them proud of me when I graduated from college being the first double-majored student at the university. My story was written in the history book of the university. I made my parents proud again when after graduation, I entered the Chinese Academy of Science, the top biochemistry research institute, after graduation. But that was not enough. In the late 80s and early 90s, what could really make your parents proud was going to America to study. Unlike these days, where many Chinese families can afford sending their kids to US, at that time, most Chinese families could not afford that. The only way to go to the US was to apply for scholarships that required a strong academic background. Therefore, if your child could go to the US to study, it usually meant he or she was really good. That became my dream. I didn’t realize back then, being approved and praised by my parents was the main drive of my life. I studied hard and got top GRE and TOFEL scores and finally got accepted by the Molecular and Biotechnology masters program at University of Massachusetts at Boston. At that time, not many people knew universities in the US. Some relatives thought I was going to MIT. That made my parents super proud. They didn’t really want to correct them. But they could not tell anyway. But if I would’ve gone to Harvard or MIT, that would’ve really made my parents proud. I studied hard and graduated with honors in two years. That was the first time my parents were officially invited to come to the US and attend my graduation ceremony.
My parents were super happy for the trip. My dad took hundreds of pictures detailing everything from preparing for the trip at the airport, all the way to my apartment, and my first car I used to drive around my parents. At that time, there were no digital cameras. Imagine how many rolls of film had to be developed. His excitement and pride were written on his face and he recorded it on those photos forever. But one moment he regretted the most, was when I went onto the stage to accept my student research achievement award from the president. My dad was so proud that his hands trembled and he missed that moment and only took a blurry picture of me walking down the stage. My mission of making my parents proud of me didn’t stop there. After graduation, I got accepted into the Immunology PhD program at Boston University School of Medicine with the prestigious President Scholarship. Before school started, I took my parents to visit the main campus along the Charles River across Harvard and MIT and I bought them a BU t-shirt that says All those who cannot go to BU go to Harvard.
I was happy that they were proud of me. When my dad went back to Shanghai, he wrote an article about the whole experience of attending my graduation ceremony, traveling around the New England area, and sending me to Boston University School of Medicine. That article was published in the local newspaper.
After starting my Ph.D. program, I began to study and work 24/7 and had less and less time to call or write letters to my parents. At that time, they didn’t have computers and couldn’t email from home.
My busy schedule however served as a perfect excuse at that time. I felt less and less sure of what I could talk to them about. All our conversations were about eating well, keeping warm, and sleeping tight. The rest of the conversation was complaining about each other. My parents’ marriage was probably in trouble from the day they married. I didn’t remember a week in my life that they didn’t have some sort of argument. The arguments ranged from as small as how to squeeze the toothpaste tube, wipe the table, or hang the clothes, to as big as how to raise me, to politics and how the world should be. They both loved me in very different ways but they had to fight about it. It was never violent. But it hurt. Going to the US was a perfect way to escape from their drama. I didn’t even want to hear their argument around my marriage. My mother had high hopes. She thought I was a princess and must marry a prince and really didn’t like my boyfriend and his family. We kind of eloped and got married in Hawaii without parents. Even though we went back afterward to China where both our families prepared wedding banquets for us, I really liked getting married without my parents. I still wanted them to be proud of me as if that could save their marriage. So my mission continued. After five years of hard work, I graduated. This time, there was much more to celebrate as I gave birth to my first child a month after my graduation. My parents came to my commencement watching me hooded by my mentor on the stage. A few weeks later, they were holding their first grandchild. Parties, flowers, and congratulations filled the memories captured by photos. But behind all the excitement, the almost daily arguments continued. One of the heated debates was vegetarianism. As both my husband and I became vegetarian, what to feed our baby became the center of all the fights between me and my parents. They thought vegetarianism was superstitious and non-scientific, and that we must be brainwashed by some cult.
My parents were proud of me and my husband when we became medical school professors at Boston University and Harvard University. If they could, they would proudly tell everyone in the world. But they would never tell a soul that we were vegetarians and seeking truth beyond the science that they knew. My mission of making my parents proud and saving their marriage started to fall apart when my father one day wanted to talk to me alone. He asked my permission to divorce my mom and marry someone else. Tired of fighting with my mom and hearing my parents telling on each other, I was surprised that after all the efforts of making my parents proud of me, instead of feeling sad or angry, I actually felt a big relief. But one thing I regret not doing was communicating and preparing my mom for this. Fighting with my own postpartum blues, I was exhausted already and didn’t have the energy for more dramas even if I wanted to. So as my dad wished, I never told my mom about our conversation.
Soon after they went back to Shanghai, the divorce was announced. It was an explosion to my mom, a shame, and a scar that could never heal.
I felt that was the darkest time of my life. My parents were divorced; I was raising my first child; working day and night to get research funding and publication during my postdoctoral fellowship training; then pregnant with a second child; and worst of all, I had to deal with my mom after the divorce. What I didn’t know was the worst was yet to come.
Dad, Wait for Me, I Am Almost Done with My Grant
In 2007, I got a phone call from my cousin in Australia, who literally shouted at me over the phone questioning when was the last time I called my dad. He told me that my dad was diagnosed with late stage stomach cancer and was in the hospital for surgery. He said you’d better pack to go or you won’t see your dad again. That was the last thing I could ever expect. I put down everything and brought along my son and my two-year-old daughter. I bought