On the “Middle-Aged Medical School Craze”

A couple of days ago, a friend sent me an interesting article. The article gathered together several middle-aged folks—“old timers” as we might call them—who had retook the college entrance exam (gaokao) and enrolled in school to study traditional Chinese medicine. It was illustrated with photos and text, complete with pictures of these “old timers” living their university lives.

Naturally, I wasn’t featured in it. My personal privacy has been well protected, so no reports in this regard have touched on me to date. In fact, shortly after I reported to the university, some journalists contacted me wanting to do an interview, which I politely declined. I’m sure there are middle-aged and elderly students at the university who are even more low-key than I am.

The friend who sent me this article is a fellow born in the 1970s—an older brother from the early ’70s, while I’m from the late ’70s. I teased him, saying, “Why don’t you take the exam too and join the fun?” In recent years, there have indeed been several middle-aged and elderly people like me who have retook the national unified college entrance exam to study medicine at medical schools, with most choosing traditional Chinese medicine. But compared to the total number of middle-aged people nationwide, it must be less than one in ten million.

Of course, besides the gaokao, another segment of middle-aged friends has chosen the traditional apprenticeship model to study medicine. This group is larger in number, but it doesn’t attract as much attention as the gaokao route and doesn’t generate as much public buzz.

I’m slightly different from them. What I’m studying now is clinical medicine—what people commonly call Western medicine. My TCM education was completed many years ago through the traditional apprenticeship model (in practice, mostly self-study). But after graduating from my clinical medicine program, I do plan to take the gaokao again to study acupuncture and tuina for three years.

I may not graduate completely from medical school until 2032 or 2033, when I’ll be 53 or 54 years old. I’ll have completed a fairly comprehensive medical education and gained a deeper understanding of medicine. By the time I graduate, my son will probably also have completed his PhD, assuming he progresses smoothly through his master’s and doctoral programs.

During a surgery class this semester, when our surgery instructor was teaching the section on anesthesia and pain management, she strongly advocated for combining Western and Chinese medicine for pain relief to reduce patients’ suffering and side effects. At one point she said, “When you actually encounter a disease in clinical practice, you’ll find that all the knowledge you’ve learned combined is still not enough.” She also said, “Textbooks are textbooks, and clinical practice is clinical practice.”

Her words resonated deeply with me—they are truly the heartfelt words of someone who has worked in clinical practice. Personally, I believe that if a Chinese person is genuinely passionate about medicine, they should spend ten years mastering Western medicine and another ten years mastering Chinese medicine, then serve patients using both medical systems to alleviate their suffering.

Of course, that’s too idealistic. After all, not many people have twenty years to devote to professional study. But I might be able to do it. For me, the current study of Western medicine is only the beginning. In the future, I will devote much time and effort to learning and researching Western medicine. In ten years, my Western medicine proficiency should also be quite good.

People of our generation are different from young people. We know too well the value of medicine. So our motivation to study medicine in middle age is strong. We don’t care what the general public thinks of the medical profession—whether its prospects are good or bad has nothing to do with us. Looking at many middle-aged friends studying medicine, their goal isn’t necessarily to become doctors in the future. To be honest, I’m the same way. Our main purpose is to learn medicine to stay healthy and strong, to safeguard the health of ourselves and our families.

As we enter middle and older age, our bodies decline at an increasingly rapid pace. More and more loved ones around us are passing away from illness, and more and more friends and relatives are suffering from diseases. For us, medicine is indispensable—it is as essential to us as food, water, and air.

Middle-aged people studying medicine is like middle-aged people’s clothing choices—it’s all about practicality. We no longer care about the reputation of the school or the degree, especially for middle-aged folks like me who have passed the age of forty. The abundance of online teaching resources today is beyond what we could have imagined when we were young. On Bilibili (B站), you can almost find complete teaching videos from top universities and renowned teachers for any course. This is truly a university without walls.

Of course, there is still a significant difference between studying at a school and self-studying at home. I consider myself to have strong self-discipline, but my efficiency studying at home is still not as high as when I’m on campus. At school, I wake up in the morning, jog a few laps around the track, have a simple breakfast, and then head to the classroom to start the day’s learning. The amount I can learn in a day at school is two to three times what I can learn off campus. Studying at school not only boosts learning efficiency but also helps develop very healthy lifestyle habits, which is great for one’s health.

I don’t know about the health conditions of other middle-aged friends who went to university to study medicine, but my health is currently fine. During physical fitness tests, I could still rank in the top half of the class. That means more than half of the young male students in the class have worse physical fitness than me. My memory is also good—my logical memory ability is even better than before. Many of my peers my age are developing presbyopia, but my vision remains quite good, with my nearsightedness in both eyes being less than 100 degrees.

I haven’t yet experienced the so-called “cliff-like” aging that many people talk about. I want to take advantage of these years when I still can learn, and thoroughly study all the various knowledge I wanted to learn when I was young. We only live this one life, and surely we should indulge ourselves in learning before we can pass away without regrets, right?