BEFORE WE BECOME DOCTORS

People think this journey begins when we put on a white coat. It doesn't. It begins long before that, it begins in classrooms where we are trying to understand our future while still figuring out ourselves. It begins in small decisions, in expectations from home, in the quiet hope that choosing this path will mean something. Some of us came here because we wanted to help. Some of us came here because we were told we were capable. Some of us came here without fully knowing why - only that turning back did not feel like an option. What none of us understood was how much this journey would ask from us. Not just our time. Not just our effort. But our emotions, our relationships, our confidence, and sometimes even our sense of who we are.

This book is not about the day we become doctors. It is about everything that happens before that. It is about the long middle - the years where we are still students, still unsure, still learning how to carry responsibility while our own lives are still unfolding. This is the part people rarely write about. This is who we are before we become doctors.