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Crushes, Challenges and Irritating Habits - Q&A With My Roommate Molly

2020-06-12 (said on 2020-05-27 — implied: date said in the video; uploaded 16 days later) · Q&A video · Ali, Molly Hunt · recording, 30:29 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Mindset, motivation and happiness (also: Relationships and personal life, Medicine and his doctor years, Money and investing, Tools, apps and tech) · mode: Answering questions · tags: His medical past, Family

In a Q&A filmed on 27 May 2020, Ali and his housemate Molly Hunt, a fellow junior doctor, answer viewers: why they chose medicine, why Ali hates having a full-time job, Molly's childhood bone cancer and the charity Over the Wall, self-doubt, living together and why Ali eats takeaways.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Ali introduces the Q&A and his housemate Molly

00:00:54 — Are you two dating?

  • ★★ Answering viewers who keep asking, Ali says he and Molly Hunt are not dating and that Molly is in a happy relationship. — 00:01:24 · Molly Hunt

00:01:36 — Why did you want to become a doctor?

  • ★★ Ali says he became a doctor partly because he did not know what else to do with his life, and because for a brown person becoming a doctor is the default. — 00:01:47
  • ★★ At about 16 Ali chose between medicine and computer science: he thought a doctor who can code more interesting than a computer scientist, and six years at university better than three. — 00:01:47

00:02:36 — Least favourite aspect of being junior doctors: the full-time job, the rota and leave

  • ★★★ Ali's least favourite part of being a junior doctor is that it is a full-time job: to take a holiday he has to ask permission from his rota coordinator. — 00:02:36
  • ★★ Ali also dislikes that, unlike at medical school, going into work as a doctor is no longer optional; he says this is about having a full-time job rather than about being a doctor. — 00:03:06
  • ★★ Molly Hunt's least favourite aspect of being a junior doctor is the logistics of the rota and annual leave, such as the low-level anxiety of having to beg for leave for a friend's wedding a year away. — 00:03:42 · Molly Hunt
  • ★★ Ali says he had no real challenges growing up and has lived a very privileged life with basically no adversity. — 00:03:42

00:04:09 — The greatest challenge growing up: Molly's bone cancer, operations, disability and Over the Wall

  • ★★★ Molly Hunt: At 10 Molly Hunt was diagnosed with bone cancer in her hip; she had about three months of intense chemotherapy and then a hip and femur replacement. — 00:04:46 · Molly Hunt
  • ★★ Molly Hunt: After her first operation various things went wrong for Molly Hunt: her hip replacement had to be replaced and more of the hip was replaced, with many operations and long spells in hospital. — 00:05:26 · Molly Hunt
  • ★★ Molly Hunt missed most of year five at school, half of year six for another operation and half of year seven. — 00:05:59 · Molly Hunt
  • ★★ Molly Hunt says her illness showed her a possible career and exposed her to medicine, which is probably why she is a doctor now. (hedged) — 00:06:49 · Molly Hunt
  • ★★ Molly Hunt says her illness made her really appreciate the good things and people around her, but also makes her fear the future more, because things have gone wrong before. — 00:07:32 · Molly Hunt
  • ★★ Molly Hunt has foot drop, a partial paralysis of her foot, so she walks less well than others and uses crutches or a walking stick, and a wheelchair for longer distances. — 00:08:14 · Molly Hunt
  • ★★ Molly Hunt looks back on an amazing childhood, not a sad one, which she credits to the family and friends who supported her through her illness. — 00:08:43 · Molly Hunt
  • ★★ Molly Hunt: As a teenager Molly Hunt struggled with feeling different and unable to do what others did; her disability became what she fixated on and gave her very low self-esteem. — 00:09:20 · Molly Hunt
  • ★★ Molly Hunt describes Over the Wall as a charity that runs free activity camps for children with illnesses or disabilities and for their families. — 00:09:49 · Molly Hunt
  • ★★★ Molly Hunt says the Over the Wall camps started rebuilding her confidence; since then, when something is hard for her, she looks for a way around it and tries not to let her disability stop her. — 00:10:27 · Molly Hunt
  • ★★ Ali asks viewers to volunteer for Over the Wall, which he says is always looking for volunteers. — 00:11:13
  • ★★ Molly Hunt says she has always had self-doubt and thinks she always will. — 00:11:13 · Molly Hunt

00:11:30 — Did you ever have self-doubt? Outcomes, rotations and mistakes

  • ★★★ Ali says he tries not to think hard about outcomes: in a race, competing and doing his best is what matters to him, so he has no self-doubt, and thinking about winning seems pointless. — 00:12:13
  • ★★ Molly Hunt: Junior doctors change specialty every four months in their first years; Molly Hunt says each change feels like going back to the beginning, and she used to think she was the problem. — 00:13:02 · Molly Hunt
  • ★★ Molly Hunt says she needs to build up evidence to herself that a struggle is not her fault, while Ali, in her view, inherently looks for an explanation other than being at fault. — 00:14:07 · Molly Hunt
  • ★★ Ali says that when he makes a mistake he takes the blame, notes what he should have done differently and what to do next time, and feels no self-doubt over it. — 00:14:35
  • ★★ Molly Hunt says she takes every mistake very personally, as reflecting on her rather than as something to learn from, and is gradually getting better at the growth mindset Ali has tried to teach her for about eight years. — 00:15:14 · Molly Hunt

00:15:33 — How they became flatmates, family reactions, fights and seeing each other daily

  • ★★ In spring 2018 Ali and Molly Hunt learned they would work in the same hospital in their first year as doctors and in a nearby one in their second; Ali was then thinking of buying a flat or house. (hedged) — 00:15:43 · Molly Hunt
  • ★★ Ali's plan in 2018 was to buy a place with a joint mortgage with his brother, with Molly Hunt paying rent towards the mortgage. — 00:16:15 · Taimur Abdaal, Molly Hunt
  • ★★ Molly Hunt: Before agreeing to live with Ali, Molly Hunt worried about living with only one person: whether she would get lonely or bored. — 00:16:15 · Molly Hunt
  • ★ Ali's mum did not mind him living with Molly Hunt, but his grandma objected, fearing people would think they were a couple and no one would want to marry him. — 00:17:03 · Ali Abdaal's mother, Molly Hunt
  • ★★ Ali says he and Molly Hunt have properly fought only two or three times in eight years, all in the last year, over YouTube and Molly not being comfortable with parts of her life appearing on Instagram. — 00:17:48 · Molly Hunt
  • ★★ Ali says a nice thing about living with someone he already knows well is that he can come home from work, sit at the computer and make videos, and Molly Hunt does not mind. — 00:18:44 · Molly Hunt

00:19:21 — Cooking at home versus takeaway and eating out

  • ★★ Ali says over half his meals in 2020 so far have been takeaways and he has eaten a home-cooked meal at home fewer than 10 times; otherwise he eats at work, skipping breakfast for a coffee. (hedged) — 00:19:31
  • ★★★ Ali justifies the cost of takeaways by the value of his time: the half hour saved on cooking and washing up is worth far more spent making a YouTube video. — 00:20:57
  • ★★ Molly Hunt treats food and eating out at restaurants as her hobby, and justifies the spending by not buying clothes or going shopping. — 00:21:23 · Molly Hunt

00:21:55 — Childhood crushes

  • ★ Ali's first crushes were a girl called Tanya at primary school in Africa and another Tanya at primary school in Pakistan; his first proper crush was Lily at primary school in the UK. — 00:23:32

00:24:01 — Most irritating habits and favourite thing about living together

  • ★★ Molly Hunt's favourite thing about living with Ali is that both are very chilled and let each other get on with their own lives. — 00:25:08 · Molly Hunt
  • ★★ Ali agrees: he finds it really nice to live with someone who is there by default and needs zero effort to keep the relationship going. — 00:25:08 · Molly Hunt

00:26:05 — What gear Molly uses and how Ali talked her into an iPhone 11

  • ★★ Molly Hunt's eight-year-old laptop is very slow, so she no longer uses it: her iPhone is her camera, laptop, sat nav and everything. — 00:26:32 · Molly Hunt
  • ★★ Molly Hunt says the iPhone 11 that Ali talked her into buying, in place of her small iPhone SE, changed her life. — 00:27:01 · Molly Hunt

00:28:07 — Favourite Disney songs and wrap-up

00:29:25 — The rest of the questions on Nebula

In the description and comments

  • ★★ Ali says the primary school in Africa where he had his first crush was in Lesotho. — creator comment
  • ★★ Ali says neither he nor Molly Hunt has a medical specialty yet. — creator comment · Molly Hunt
  • ★★ Ali says acknowledging one's privilege is not the same as feeling guilty about it. — creator comment
  • ★ Ali accepts a viewer's challenge to take the 16 Personalities test and make a video of it. — creator comment

Humor (significant)

  • After reading out a long list of viewers asking whether they are a couple, Ali addresses it "once and for all". — 00:00:54

    “Are we dating? Yes. Right.”

  • Ali lists his reasons for medicine: no other ideas, the brown default, six years at university beating three. — 00:01:47

    “So all those factors were my motivation for being a doctor, which is fully admirable.”

  • His grandma feared that living with Molly would make people think he had a girlfriend and no one would marry him. — 00:17:03

    “and so far i think that's why no one wants to marry me because they think i've got a girlfriend”

  • Ali names his first childhood crush: Jasmine in the original Aladdin cartoon, when she is chained up by Jafar. — 00:21:46

    “why just leave that there”

  • Molly explains her childhood crush on Simba from The Lion King. — 00:22:20

    “then he becomes medium Simba and he does a hair flick?”

  • Both say their favourite thing about living together is having to put in zero effort. — 00:25:53

    “you're gonna be lucky to get a birthday card”

  • Ali points viewers to a playlist of his Q&As with others and on his own. — 00:28:56

    “and loads with just myself because I didn't have any friends before I became famous on YouTube.”

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: Molly Hunt

Also: Ali Abdaal's mother · Cambridge · money buys back time · Nebula · Taimur Abdaal · University of Cambridge

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