Why medicine? Why Semmelweis? Why now?

I still remember the car ride home after dropping my dad off at the airport at the end of his visit one fateful day in early January 2020. The day of the "life-changing decision", as I like to dramatically refer to it. Suddenly I broke down in tears, knowing that this was happening – I had made up my mind then and there after a lifetime of waiting and believing it to be out of reach.

How do you go about it? Where do you even start? How do you get accepted to medical school with four kids, with zero science background and insufficient finances to support the costs of such an endeavor? How would we make it work as a family?

All I knew back then was that I had to try no matter what. It was then or never. I didn't want to spend the rest of my life regretting not giving it a shot. It was an enormously difficult decision, but one that my husband and mother-in-law wholeheartedly supported. They knew what it meant to me. And it meant the world.

At the time, I had been living in Hungary for over eight years. I recently graduated from London university's long-distance program with a Business Degree and was in the middle of a Master's in Linguistics application. I had spent the previous years working as an English instructor and studying in the midst of raising my family, looking after my elderly grandparents-in-law (one of whom had passed away a few months prior), and helping my husband run his IT business. Mind you, none of us is from Hungary, except for our kids, of course. And that adds its own flavour to a lot of our stories.

I come from an international family of teachers who travelled a lot for their job in my childhood, so I ended up calling many places home. I always felt like I belonged everywhere and nowhere at once, switching countries, cultures and whole education systems every couple of years. I loved people, languages and diversity. Always the one to offer help and never the one knowing how to ask for any. And around the age of 13, my heart was firmly set on becoming a doctor. I couldn't imagine doing anything else. (As many people who were led into medicine by their hearts will tell you - working for "Doctors without borders" somewhere remote and dangerous was the golden standard of romantic dreaming).

Years went into researching entry requirements worldwide. Being a good student but moving a lot and having unconventional and varied educational experiences meant that my options were limited at the time. And there was a big catch – my family simply couldn't afford the costs of most medical schools. Not having a permanent home base meant not qualifying for any student loans either. The only option that seemed workable at the time was not supported by my family, and that was the final "no" at the age of 16 when I graduated high school in China.

It felt like the end of the world. And that feeling of profound personal loss followed me for years to come, no matter what I was doing.

Not knowing any other options, I continued down a path that was available at the time. First, I volunteered as an English teacher at a school for migrant children in Shanghai, followed by an internship at an English-teaching company where my parents worked. Eventually, I ended up studying Law and Foreign languages in Moscow while working with a local branch of the same language company as in China.

It was at that time that I met my future husband. We got engaged and married not too long into our long-distance relationship. And moving to Hungary, where he was based, was a natural decision a few years down the line.

I have been here ever since. Budapest is the place we call home. It is where all of our kids were born and where many important memories reside. Where our family was built and where the dearest of friendships were formed. Where Semmelweis was always nearby, yet out of reach. And where I was given a second chance at my dreams.

I am forever grateful for the life-changing journey, the numerous magical coincidences, adventures, and the incredible support of family and friends that lead me from that car ride in January 2020 to the impatiently awaited "We are pleased to inform you…" in March 2021, and the unbelievable first year of medical school that followed. And those are stories for a different day.