“So I actually wanted to go to Med school from 13 all the way till my last year of University. I hit University and hated every single one of my courses throughout the 4 years and I was studying, studying, studying, dropped all my sports, didn’t see any of my friends just to get the best grades possible. In fact it did the opposite. I got really really bad grades, I was miserable, just going through the motion. It wasn’t until the last year I took Gross Anatomy and I had the most incredible professor. I remember the classes, the hour and class would pass by and I loved studying for it, exams were easy. So I was like ‘okay there’s something to this, what’s going on?’
Around the same time I had some injuries with my hand so I went to see a couple of Physios and this 1 lady really had an impact on me. She was dry needling my forearms, she was pregnant with her second child, she was 32 and owned a clinic with her husband and only worked part time and I’m like ‘hey, you can still make a decent living, still be in health care, still be awesome and have a different care other than being a doctor.’ You know being that Asian person it’s always, ‘lawyer’ or ‘doctor’, so from that point forward I started entertaining that idea a little bit more. I approached that same professor and I said, ‘ hey I know I’m not in Kinesiology but there’s no more gross anatomy courses offered to me, I’m in Biology, is there anything you can do?’ He said, ‘why don’t you do a directed studies course and I’ll be your supervisor, I’ve never done it, you’ve never done it, let’s go through this together.’ He ended up offering me to work in a lab in LSI and I got to dissect a human arm and from there the rest was kind of history. I was in the lab, 5/6 hour day I’ll pop in my music and I’ll be there just dissecting and it was fascinating for me. Did all the prerequisites and went into physiotherapy.” – Jessica Cheng, Physiotherapist, Real Estate Agent, Weight lifter. (2/5)