“I don’t even want to go to sixth form,” I protested.
“Fine,” said my mum, calling my bluff. “What are you going to do instead?”
I was shocked. Two weeks before starting sixth form, I didn’t have an answer. I hadn’t anticipated that she would actually entertain my complaints.
Nevertheless, I begrudgingly started a jumble of A-levels. At 16, I was more interested in staying out all night at illegal raves in south London than writing up science experiments for school the next day.
As for university? Absolutely not. Formal education had always felt painfully slow for me so I decided to intern instead. I’d get ahead with a plan to be employed before my peers had even graduated.
I worked seven days a week. I was doing unpaid internships at Wonderland, Dazed, and Vogue magazines during the week (only possible because I lived at home with my parents in London) and working in retail at weekends. Within a year, I’d landed a fixed-term job at Condé Nast International, working across Russian Tatler and Allure.
It was the best professional education money can’t buy. Fearsome fashion director, Anya Ziourova, taught me to never take no as an answer. My desk sat outside the glass office of the late, great Anna Harvey, the woman responsible for Princess Diana’s little black dress. I had made it to the heart of the industry. But it wasn’t long before I needed a new challenge.
When my contract ended, I freelanced with stylists and had a brief stint at Marie Claire. I also went to Los Angeles to visit my aunt – and decided to stay. I’d always loved to cook, so I enrolled at the renowned culinary institution, Le Cordon Bleu LA, earning an associate degree in patisserie. I worked in bakeries and restaurants, then as an event co-ordinator for a catering company.
Suzi, centre, has an associate degree in patisserie from the culinary institution, Le Cordon Bleu LAI was missing the pace of working on set, though, so I reached out to as many food photographers as I could find and started food styling – sometimes performing delicate microsurgery on tealeaves, or perfecting the exact scatter of flour on pastry for a visual. It made me miss working in fashion.
Before long, I was back styling fashion and celebrities. But late one night, on the patio at the Chateau Marmont, sipping red wine after styling a GQ cover shoot with Nick Jonas, I felt a familiar drop. The sense of challenge was gone. I thought about medical school, but in the US that meant four years of undergraduate study, then another four years of medicine. It felt terribly long and impossibly expensive.
Back in London, aged 25, I spent the next 18 months at ELLE magazine as the personal assistant to the editor-in-chief and editorial co-ordinator. But when the first round of mass redundancies came, I was one of the first to go. I scrambled into a job as a photography agent which I instantly loved, then less than three months later, Covid shut the world down. Too new for furlough, I was unemployed overnight.
Suzi styled Nick Jonas, left, for a GQ cover shoot at the Chateau Marmont in LALuckily, unfulfilled and desperate for a new skill, I had been also been training as a nail artist every Saturday, earning my diploma just before my redundancy. For the two years of in-out lockdowns, I freelanced doing nails for shoots and music videos, selling custom sets online, and applied for hundreds of jobs. Though the industries I’d worked in were shrinking, others were emerging just as fast.
But then I started to think about about medical school again. This time, I discovered a “widening participation” route: a nine-month access course, equivalent to three A-levels, with fees wiped if you completed the degree. I’d need to sit the Ucat, a clinical aptitude test, and score very highly. Standing in my sister’s garden, socially distanced and thinking out loud, I wondered if I was too old to start over. I’d been out of education for over a decade.
She said, “Well, you’re going to be 35 anyway. You might as well be 35 and a doctor.”
I couldn’t argue with that logic. So I set myself a goal: start medical school by 30.
I began the course a couple of weeks after my 29th birthday. I attended college two-and-a-half days a week, worked as an office manager at an accountancy firm for the other half, worked Saturdays at my friend’s nail salon, and volunteered one evening a week in an elderly rehabilitation unit as work experience. I lived with one of my best friends, and between hosting dinners and fashion-week after-parties, it was the best year of my life. I passed with distinction and started medical school at 30.
Academically, the transition was seamless. Financially, it’s been brutal. As a mature undergraduate, I receive the maximum maintenance loan of around £11,500. I’m also awarded around £4,000-a-year across several scholarships and grants, which I am constantly looking out for. While my friends hit milestones, go on luxury holidays and get promotions, I live in a tiny room (more like a cell) in hospital accommodation somewhere in Kent.
Suzi hopes becoming a doctor will be her final pivotI gave up my Soho House membership, cancelled subscriptions, became a Depop shopper and held onto my iPhone 7 until its final breath. The timing hasn’t helped. My pivot collided with the aftermath of Brexit, Covid, and the war in Ukraine, cumulatively responsible for the cost of living crisis in one of the most expensive cities on earth. My pre-pandemic professional life feels almost like another lifetime.
Of course, I miss the freebies. The parties. Colleagues my own age (one tends to feel a bit of imposter syndrome surrounded by 18-year-olds at 30). Do I reminisce about the fine jewellery shoots for Vogue Russia, with 20 security guards and millions of pounds of diamonds strung up on invisible fishing wire? Yes. And the shoots in extraordinary locations like Hollywood Hills houses, stately homes, beaches, deserts around the world? Of course. But the reality was always more hard work than glamour: midnight call sheets, 6am pick-ups, NDAs, embargoes.
The challenge to my identity is the hardest part, but I do feel like my brain is finally fed.
Now, in my fourth year of medical school, people are endlessly intrigued by my past. Many tell me they think I’m brave; others seem genuinely surprised that someone my age could have lived so many professional lives already. I rarely encounter anyone who doesn’t recognise the value of the skills and experiences I’ve acquired.
Communication and organisation are core skills in medicine, and mine were honed long before I ever stepped foot on a ward. Creativity, alongside practical attributes like visuo-spatial skills from styling, sewing, precision from intricate nail art, and knife skills, cumulatively form the perfect foundation for the surgeon I intend to become.
There was no blueprint, I didn’t set out to do anything particularly radical. The pursuit of knowledge and the acquisition of skills has always driven me, and together they’ve amounted to quite a substantive life – or at least, CV. For anyone considering a career pivot, I say: go for it! Be brave. Take calculated risks. The world is changing, why shouldn’t you?
At 33, all of my skills have converged in what I hope will be my final major pivot. In 18 months, I’ll officially be a doctor, and the sacrifices I made to get there will hopefully all have been worth it. Though I still resist the shift in my identity sometimes, I know I’m not just a medical student. I am every version of the woman I was before – and whoever I’m yet to become.
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