It is high time that we start taking failures as a part of life, not as pain or suffering. To normalize failure is all we need to understand in this busy competitive world.
Zachery Dereniowski, a motivational speaker who is also a medical student. The 27-year-old entrepreneur has been supporting and helping pre-medical students and those battling with mental health issues. Moving forward, he looks forward to continuing to do the same. His is story is unique, usually, the one which pre-medical students do not hear.
Zachery has been a motivational speaker, from the time he stood up from his failures and decided to never look back. He too failed at a point in his life, like all of us do but took that failure as a learning and grew up from that. Onc he failed to score well in the first year of college, and was Required to Withdraw from the Biochemistry program and was also told, “Zachary, you have a 0.59 GPA. Maybe college isn’t right for you.” From then and there he stood up and did extremely well, scoring a 4.0 GPA on his last 9 consecutive semesters of his degree. He completed his studies and prepared for the MCAT and scored over 510 in his first attempt.
Zachery completed a Bachelor of Human Kinetics from the University of Windsor and Post-Baccalaureate in Pre-Medical Studies from Lawrence Technological University. At present, he is pursuing the Post-Graduate Doctor of Medicine Program at the University of Sydney in Australia.
Zachery looks forward to helping and educating students worldwide to get into medical school. Not only does he want to empower medical students, but also to all of those battling from mental health issues. He says he wants to provide a voice to each one of them and tell them they are not alone. He wants to explore the world and use the experience to support and encourage people suffering from extreme pain. His grandmother said, “Zachary, maybe college isn’t right for you.” His formula of life has been Vulnerability = Relatability = Empowerment.
Zachery is one of TikTok’s top mental health advocates. He creates content to motivate people, posts daily, and conduct live hostings with doctors from around the world on Instagram. He reached over 400K followers on TikTok in less than 6 weeks. He has been working as the first and only mentor for MCAT at Examkrackers. This has provided him greater reach and opportunity to travel across the United States to speak with thousands of students at pre-medical conferences.
When asked him his interests, plans and purpose, he told, he considers himself a scary movie buff, enjoys the outdoors, playing basketball, and Kobe Bryant being his greatest inspiration. He loves taking spontaneous trips, New Zealand is his all-time favourite destination. He plans to study orthopaedics, paediatrics, or psychiatry and sees himself in his second year of residency in either Australia or North America, 5 years down the line.
Also, he stated, “I hope to continue to remain transparent and empower others to use their voice to do the same. To speak up for support from family/loved ones and seek professional support when concerned. I am by no means a doctor yet, and my goal is not to diagnose anyone ever. I hope people recognize that they matter, that they are not alone and they are worthy of recovering from whatever they are going through.”