Adri-Anna Aloia, International Medical Graduate: How Becoming a Professional Bartender and Wrestling Coach Shaped her Career Path

Photo submitted by Adri-Anna Aloia (left) with the caption, "White Coat Ceremony in 2016. A symbolic ceremony to mark the start of one’s medical training, a reminder to our Hippocratic Oath and really a new step."

While Adri-Anna Aloia always intended to go to med school, she didn't expect to become a professional bartender (or a wrestling coach) along the way.

Near the end of her Bachelor of Science at the University of Toronto, Adri-Anna realized that she wanted to take time to work, earn money, and begin to build her future. At this point, she was undecided about her career and filled out an application to study medicine internationally as a potential pathway. Around this  same time, Adri-Anna found part-time work doing ticket sales and coat check at a club in Toronto.

Adri-Anna enjoyed the work, especially the social aspects, and recalls, “The night life was great and I didn’t miss much of my own partying on a Friday or Saturday night. The new faces, when they were excited to party and full of good energy, were always a pleasure to interact with and welcome to the club through greeting or small conversation.” 

Her supervisor noticed Adri-Anna's ability to entertain the crowd around the door and suggested that she might do well as a bartender. While she had never worked as a bartender, she gladly accepted. Adri-Anna took the new job seriously, and took a course in bartending - which created opportunities to serve at banquet halls and private parties, to teach bartending skills to others, and to compete in Bols Bartending Preliminary Competition of that year.

While working as a bartender and training to be a competitive boxer, Adri-Anna received a call from her former high school wrestling coach. Adri-Anna explains, “They were a decent size team with no coach almost half-way through the year. I saw where they lacked in technique and what I could give to develop them and their wrestling goals. I had the knowledge, the time and the endurance to challenge them as well.”

She goes on to explain, “I know that they did not like my coaching style very much from the start as I was strict, loud and maybe a bit extreme with the burpees (I apologize as they are brutal), but their captain stuck with it and they followed. They showed they had heart and determination. They listened, showed up and grew as athletes. That year we were able to send eight students to OFSAA from our school and I’d say they surprised a lot of individuals in our wrestling community. They made me proud and developed me within that academic year just as much.”

In the midst of coaching a wrestling team to success and tending-bar in Toronto and Brampton, Adri-Anna was accepted to an international medical program in Ireland. Adri-Anna describes the difficulty of this choice, "At this point, I was comfortable in my working environment and was working on developing myself and my gift basket & events services side business, which made sense with all the bartending, events and weddings. So, it really was a choice to drop what I was working towards in that year - to earn and have an independent lifestyle vs to go back to school for a long time and essentially also become a dependent individual again. Most of our IMG students require a line of credit to cover fees and living expenses abroad." 

As part of her program, Adri-Anna is currently finishing her last medical year in Bahrain, located in the Middle East, with the intention to apply to North American positions in the upcoming year.

Career Paths Travelled: Your current program has taken you to Ireland and Bahrain. Tell us about your experience in med school so far.

Adri-Anna Aloia: “As an International Medical Graduate (IMG), it’s hard. The traveling and connecting with various people and cultures of the world is an incredible plus to the education. It teaches you a lot about how different groups respond and interact with each other, their social rules and customs. Being able to adapt and still contribute positively to your work and work surroundings is a unique skill and is always applicable and beneficial. While this skill can be taught in any travel experience (as a non-visitor/ vacation traveler), being a medical student has its own tone.
     While medicine can be beautiful when everyone’s improving and having positive outcomes, and may present an attractive perceived lifestyle as a physician, it is not associated with brightness all the time. Medicine can be grim. Sometimes your connection with an individual comes in the form of attention and care in the midst of death at work and sometimes it’s through words of reassurance for someone who may not understand some jargon. Further from that, in being so far from family for so long and having to continuously work on being a stellar candidate for residency back home, you learn quick that there is no time.
     You appreciate time a lot more. I’ve become a lot calmer and patient from it. I have loved every sunset variance, soul food delight, languages in different poetic form in writing and movement as well as every experience of laughter associated with a specific time and place. The good times and good people who become a part of your support system erase every stressed, tearful experience associated with medical school and the journey as an IMG. Failures, perceived inadequacy, being anxious, feeling lonely, feeling exhausted, all fade with a good support system.
       Med school is not a solo journey, although you stand alone on your own mat, you very much need a team of support through it.”

Wow. Adri-Anna’s perspective on patient care and working internationally is eloquently put, and I hope this article is read by others who are considering a similar career path. While she says it is difficult to create long-term career plans, due to the extensive application processes required, her general goals, in addition to clinical responsibilities, include: working in research, and/or in education, and being closer to home.

Career Paths Travelled: What advice would you give to someone planning a career shift?

Adri-Anna Aloia: “Take it. It comes with its own benefits and lessons. I am a firm believer in everything happening for a reason. By that same thought, there must be a reason you’re entertaining the idea of a career shift: dissatisfaction in your current workplace, living expenses, factors concerning your family, safety, nostalgia and dreams - whatever it is, you know it best and it will always be there if you do not take the opportunity to change something. This could be your something: the road to a better work/life balance, the opportunity to rewire your thought process and perception of your surrounding world and people in it, the opening to some form of control in your life or freedom, the path towards a better you. So before pushing the opportunity away, ask yourself...is this going to keep me up at night for a long time and many days if I don’t accept? Don’t leave regret and don’t let fear confine you.” 

Not letting fear confine you (and not letting a rigid idea of a career path confine you) is helpful advice, and Adri-Anna Aloia has lived this example. The abilities she developed and enhanced along her journey, including coaching and communication skills, have proved to be useful for daily life - and for being an empathetic leader in the medical world.

Photo submitted by Adri-Anna Aloia (centre, laying down) with the caption, "First Regionals competition with the team in 2014. Ranked in overall boys, overall girls and individual wrestlers ranked within their weight class. Shook a lot of teams."