I first stumbled across LinkedIn in my second year of undergrad. My older brother helped me set up a profile and told me it was something I “needed” in order to have a successful career. At the time, I didn’t question it. It felt like just another box to check.
By then, the pressure of being “pre-med” had already settled in. Everyone around me seemed ahead. More research, more volunteering, more everything. I was juggling a full course load of dense science courses—cell biology, organic chemistry, genetics—while trying to volunteer, find research positions, and stay involved in extracurriculars. It never felt like enough. There was always something else I should be doing.
LinkedIn made that feeling worse.
I would go on occasionally to post an accomplishment, but more often than not, I found myself scrolling. Watching. Comparing. It turned something already competitive into something constant. There was no off switch. Someone was always doing more.
By fourth year, that pressure peaked. When I didn’t get into medical school, it felt like everything I had been working toward had collapsed. And instead of stepping away, I leaned further into LinkedIn. I scrolled through acceptance posts, announcements, milestones. Some were from people I knew. Some were friends.
I was genuinely happy for them. But that didn’t stop the feeling creeping in.
I wasn’t enough.
I started revisiting profiles, tracing their experiences, trying to figure out what they had that I didn’t. It became a quiet habit. One that made me feel worse every time, but one I couldn’t seem to stop.
Then something unexpected happened.
I got into my Master’s program, here, at U of T.
It should have felt like a turning point, and in many ways it was. But I carried the same mindset with me. Before I even started, I had already built a new checklist:
- Publish papers.
- Present at conferences.
- TA.
- Secure a competitive scholarship.
- Build the perfect CV.
This was my chance to “fix” what I thought I lacked.
And again, LinkedIn fed into that.
I would scroll and compare myself to other graduate students. I needed to do more. Be more involved. Be more competitive. It became a cycle. The more I compared, the more behind I felt. The more behind I felt, the more I pushed myself to do everything at once.
It was exhausting.
About a month into my Master’s, something shifted.
I was sitting at my desk, working on my research protocol, thinking through my project. And for the first time in a long time, I wasn’t thinking about how it would look on my CV. I was just… interested. I cared about the work. I liked being in the hospital environment. I liked the process.
That realization was uncomfortable.
Because it made me question everything I had been chasing.
Around the same time, I was involved in things I genuinely enjoyed. Working on a science-based podcast, contributing to our local magazine, getting to interview people whose work I admired. None of those experiences came from obsessively checking boxes. They came from saying yes to things that actually interested me.
And slowly, I started to understand something I hadn’t before.
I wasn’t behind. I was just measuring myself using someone else’s timeline.
LinkedIn hadn’t created that pressure, but it amplified it. It removed context. It compressed years of work into a single post. It made progress look linear, clean, and fast—when in reality, it rarely is.
I still catch myself slipping into that mindset. I still scroll sometimes and feel that familiar pull to compare. But now, I try to pause and remind myself: I don’t need to do everything. I just need to do things that matter.
I still want to be a physician. That hasn’t changed. And I’m not giving up on that goal. But I’m no longer treating every step along the way as something to optimize or rush through. This Master’s has taught me more than I expected—about research, about myself, and about what it means to actually grow into something, rather than force it.
Maybe I wasn’t ready for medical school when I first applied. And maybe that’s okay.
If there’s anything I’ve taken from this, it’s that timelines are rarely as fixed as we think they are.
Some people get there quickly. Others take longer. That doesn’t make one path better than the other.
LinkedIn can be a great place to celebrate achievements. But it can also quietly convince you that you’re falling behind.
You’re not.
You’re just in the middle of your own process.
And that’s enough.
Edited by: Edward Wang