This 70-year-old retiree just graduated med school. He has this advice for others

Hong Kong CNN —

Everyone thought he was the professor. But the gray-haired older man was a freshman medical student, just like the rest of the class.

“My family and friends were surprised at first. Several of my friends thought I was crazy wanting to study medicine at this age,” Toh Hong Keng, a retired Malaysian executive, said over a coffee in Hong Kong, where he has been living for decades.

This July, at 70, Toh became one of the world’s oldest students to graduate from medical school.

“It wasn’t always easy,” said the freshly minted medical graduate of the Southwestern University PHINMA in Cebu, Philippines. “At 65 to 70 years old, my memory, eyesight, hearing and body are not as good as when I was younger.”

Toh spent most of his life working in tech sales. But, for him, retirement didn’t bring long lunches and games of golf. Instead, each day for five years, he immersed himself in anatomy textbooks, aided by flashcards, reading glasses and large mugs of coffee.

Even for someone with multiple degrees, the material wasn’t easy. He was held back a year after failing a pediatrics exam in his third year. And in his final year, he was required to complete a one-year placement at private and public hospitals, with some shifts lasting a grueling 30 hours.

“Actually, why do I have to do this? Maybe I should give up,” Toh recalled saying to himself many times during those years.

Posing on a stretcher, Toh and his cohort completed medical school together.

His family constantly checked on him, helping to dispel many waves of doubt. And his classmates, many decades younger than him, would remind him that giving up would be a waste.

But Toh said one word became his mantra, keeping him going.

“Sayang” — a phrase in the