#i think i'm going to ... study for the mcat for a while

[prince-liest]

sorry if this is a weird question or something you dont rlly want to talk about on a fandom blog, but i noticed youre in medschool! im a college undergrad freshman whos trying to get into medschool, and i was wondering if you had any tips on getting into medschools while still being an active member of fandom spaces?

No worries, I actually get asks about med school not-uncommonly! I'm happy to chat about whatever!

Honestly, I think that depends on what 'active' means for you and what issues you think you would run into? I feel like it's a little cheap to say "plan your time well and take care of yourself" as my go-to answer for this question, but that really is what it boils down to when it comes to being pre-med or in medical school and still having time to do literally anything else in your life, fandom included. Most of the people I know in medical school that don't have time for other stuff are the folks that study in groups with Twitter open in another tab that I get like a dozen snaps from over the course of the eight hours they're in the study rooms, and not-coincidentally they're also the people that go, "It took me eight hours to study this one lecture and I barely got any sleep!"

Creativity and learning ability (and anything else that requires mental power) rely on you having free time, and also you being well-rested, well-fed, and well-exercised. There are always going to be busy times when you can't do as much of your preferred hobby as you'd like (as you have probably experienced even now in undergrad with finals week at the end of your first semester!) which honestly fucking sucks, but that doesn't mean that those times are permanent.

Aside from that: depending on what kind of fandom stuff you get up to, don't be afraid to put that shit on your CV and applications! I literally put fanfiction writing (especially zines) on my CV this past year when applying to residencies, and have had many people ask about it in interviews and think it was just the coolest thing ever that I do this stuff. Medical school applications basically require you to check certain boxes (grades, MCAT, at least 50 physician shadowing hours, some kind of job or volunteering), but because those are things that are basically required at this point, putting fun shit in your extracurriculars stands out. I was never the person who could hack spending my free time volunteering for things I didn't care about, but my extracurricular section was still full of things that stood out and people found interesting.

My AO3 doesn't really date that much fanfiction to when I was in undergrad (2014-2018), but that's mostly because I was busy doing elaborate Homestuck fantroll RPs instead, hahaha. I don't know how many hundreds of thousands of words I must have written of it during that time!

This was a little all over the place, but I hope it was at least a little reassuring!

#ask #personal #saltwatersweets #medical school

[11queensupreme11]

hey! i've been following you through tsunami from the last six months and made my way here after the introduction of arsenic blues and i've learned to treat your words as gospel bc ur a literal genius!!!

anyways you've mentioned that (correct me if i'm wrong) you are going the psycharity route through a psychology major. funny enough i've been considering psychiatry for a while as i know that i want to be in the medical field and this route aligns best with my interests.

anyways i was wondering about the route you're taking and any insider tips and tricks (of sorts) that you have. i'm totally dreading med school and the MCAT and essentially the entire academic process. (i would totally consider being a therapist and going more that route but i do want to learn a lot of the emergency aid as a backup and for like practical purposes and also i need that salary in this economy...)

anyways, so what classes do you feel is the best in helping you (or the most interesting lol)? what about the major bc im worried that biochem or something else will give me a lot of unnecessary classes that only may or may not help me on the mcat? how do you manage your time and study in general?

anything helps! (this is going to be so embarrassing if i get some of the facts wrong lol)

i haven't taken the mcat yet or prepped for it, but this man i knew HEAVILY recommended using the kaplan mcat prep books because that helped him the most

this is the link but dont buy it until you're ready to start studying

as for classes, i can't really tell you which classes you take because it all depends in your school. i do suggest to check your college website to see if it has a page with a list of recommended classes needed for med school. if there's no page, then please PLEASE go talk to a guidance counselor/advisor so they could tell you what premed courses to take

i think it'd be easier to major in biology cuz a lot of classes required for the major also fall under the requirements for med school! i just really really really like psychology more, so i decided to major in that. you can do that too, but just be aware you'd be taking classes for your GE requirements, major requirements, AND premed requirements. you most likely won't be able to graduate within the timeframe you want.

when you're picking your classes for the semester tho.... pls don't stack together all your stem courses like i'm doing lol. i'm taking a bio with lecture and lab, an anthro class with lecture and lab, a calculus class, and some psych classes. unless you're absolutely certain that you can handle the stress, i suggest you take a few stem classes and a few non-stem classes to even it out.

(beware that if you do shit in the semester, you'll be put in academic probation 💀)

another thing you should note, there are two types of med school: an md (doctor of medicine) and DO (doctor of osteopathic medicine). do is the "easier" (it's actually not, just easier compared to md) path and not as competitive. psychiatry is both MD and DO friendly which is good, but the issue is that some residency programs are elitist and look down on DOs 🙄

AND MOST IMPORTANTLY, FIND CLINICAL EXPERIENCE!!! i can't help you with that because i haven't done any yet 💀

actually i was wrong, this is the most important: GET SCHOLARSHIPS!!!! AND GRANTS!!!! MEDICAL SCHOOL IS PRICY!!!!

#👸🏻| asks

[remcycl333]

Hello. So I am having a nervous breakdown rn and I don't know how I should go about manifesting this since I am on a time crunch. So long story short: I didn't get accepted to my desired med school and I found out about it last November, however I lied to my parents telling them that I got a second interview and that the admissions committee will let me know about my acceptance via phone this month. Now everyone has high hopes and I feel an intense amount of pressure and I've been having sleepless nights and anxiety over this situation for a while now. I also feel very guilty about lying and tbh my mental health was not the best last year and I couldn't focus on studying. I found out about the law recently and even though it has worked on some things I have a hard time figuring out how to consciously manifest an acceptance. Should I use revision or should I just manifest a letter in the mail. I don't want to think about the how because that gives me anxiety but should I control how it manifests? Classes have already started and I told them that classes start in October. Now I am panicking because I don't know what to do. I didn't get accepted because I didn't meet the requirements for med school, I didn't volunteer, didn't get a high score on the mcat. Is it possible to manifest having met the requirements and getting accepted? Should I also revise my test score? Or should I just leave those and manifest getting accepted even without meeting the requirements. I'm spiraling horribly rn and I can't talk to anyone about this I just feel very defeated and unmotivated. I know that you get a lot of asks on can I manifest... and if this is a redundant question please feel free to ignore this ask. In case you do decide to answer this ask, what affirmations do you recommend and please do motivate me. Thanks. Sorry that this ended up being a long post.

hey love!! you dont have to revise your scores if you don't want, you can just pay attention to the fact that you've already been accepted into your desired school!! since you're really stressed out about it i'd recommend the distraction technique! but just focus on the feeling of relief you will have once you get accepted and try to calm yourself down!! i know stressing about it makes you feel better in some weird way, but try your hardest to let the stress go and focus on how you would feel rn if you had already been accepted 🤍

#asks

[sometimes-men-need-help-too]

Hey it's me again! Since you said we could ask questions about college... How did you decide what to take up? I'm still a couple of years away from having to make that decision, so people have been telling me not to worry about it yet. But I do want to start considering my options so I can have a clearer vision of where I'm going. Any tips? - a sister in Christ

You mean what to study/major in (whatever you want to call it)?

Well, I've known what I wanted to do since I was 9 so I didn't really have to think about it

think about what you're good at/are interested in and see what you can do for it. Are you wanting to help people? There are a ton of opportunities for that. Do you excel at math? Maybe consider being a math teacher

think about what you don't want. Does a fast paced environment not sound right for you?

talk to the people around you. The guidance counselors (or whatever they're called where you are) at your school are a good start. Or if you have an older relative or something like that.

think about it realistically. Do you have the academic capabilities for X field? Maybe you're thinking about being a doctor so you do premed in college--do you have the capabilities to perform well enough to pass the MCAT(the exam to get into med school), do well in med school and beyond that?

Does that help? It's okay if you need to take your time to figure it all out. It's okay if you change your mind about it between now and then (or even after that. People change their minds while in college)

#answered asks

[tinygumdrops]

i will definitely keep that in mind! i feel like it’s not even competitiveness but the sheer amount of stuff i need to do that’s stressing me out, but im taking it one day at a time and doing well

can i ask what clerkship is?? i dont know much specifics in the whole med school /residency/fellowship track LOL

Hi! :D So sorry for the late response. Things got a bit hectic irl ;-; But I'm really glad to hear you're doing well!

I hope it's safe to assume you're from the West---I think majority of the folks on here are. The US system is the one I'm most familiar with, so I'll try to explain using that as the basis. So once you graduate from premed, you take the MCAT and go to medical school, right? Well, med school typically lasts for four years. Unless your program is MD/PhD or MD/MBA, where they sometimes stretch into six to eight years.

Those four years are divided into pre-clinical (first two years of didactic a.k.a. MS1 and MS2) and clinical years (last two years, MS3 and MS4). After the first two years, you can take the first out of the three licensure exams, USMLE Step 1. MS3 and MS4 are your "clerkship" years. That's when you spend most of your time in hospitals and rotate under different specialties. After MS3 though there's another hurdle to overcome, and that's the second licensure exam, USMLE Step 2 CK, which tests your clinical knowledge. There used to be a USMLE Step 2 CS which was supposed to test your clinical skills but it's been discontinued since COVID.

Anyway, after you're done with that you continue MS4 with rotations in hospitals again. Around this time you'll also be applying for residency training in the specialty you want to be in. You submit your Step scores, med school grades, CV, letters of recommendation, etc. to an electronic portal which forwards them to all the residency programs you're considering, and if the program committee ~☆deems you worthy☆~, they'll extend you an invitation. Once interview season is over, you'll be able to rank the programs you like from your first choice to last, and the programs will do the same by ranking their favorite candidate to least. The electronic portal will compare the list you made with the programs', and this will determine if you guys "matched". During residency training you can take Step 3, but a few folks take it as soon as they finish med school just to get it out of the way.

Length of residency training varies per specialty and program. For comparison, Internal Medicine usually takes 3 years while Neurosurgery takes 7. Fellowship is when you do subspecialty training, and again the number of training years vary. There's also sub fellowship, where you'll be studying for the subspecialty of your chosen subspecialty (it's complicated ik the human body is a shitshow). Fellowship isn't necessary though, it really depends if you see yourself more of a specialist or a generalist. And after all that time and money and tears, you'll become an attending, which I guess is another brand of suffering on its own but at least the pay's better (???) ;-;

Anyway, that's how the US training goes. The names, years, and the cost of training definitely varies from country to country, but I find that med school -> residency -> fellowship/attending pipeline is essentially the same everywhere. Hope this gave you an idea! :D

#ask #anonymous #aside from MD there's also DO schools #they're also doctors but they take different exams from MDs but i'm afraid i don't know much about DO programs #you might try looking into it if you're interested

[cathode-crew]

I'm so mad at how little recognition or thanks I got for everything the past 3 years.

I cared about learning the most and helping others, all to just be used and ignored and overwhelmed and burnout. I feel like I carried so many people in a race, only to collapse from exhaustion right before the end and the people riding me took 3 steps and "marvelously did a race all by themselves!"

I think an instructor ghosted me. They agreed to write me a letter of recommendation and then never got back to me. Now I'll turn in an application with no clinic experience or letters, like automatically giving my application 0 chance of even being considered. It makes me look lazy or like a bad student, but I got pretty much all 4.0s. My teachers liked how hard I worked, but I guess they find me awkward and too quiet to bother remembering my name or willing to help me out :'(

Gee. Thanks a lot, school. You really treated me great and helped me for the better (sarcasm). I actually worked hard, and it got me nowhere. Meanwhile my lazy classmates that cheated and used chat gpt are going places :')

I don't even want to bother anymore. I don't want to hear anymore crap about "trying hard" or "do what you can to make the world better or to give to society." I am trying hard and am able to work, but I can't do it on my own. I need others to accept me and support me and not block me out from going forward. Someone not writing me a letter is legitimately stopping me from working. The school not paying me for a job I did is stopping me. Other students using me and relying on me is exhausting and stopping me. A dentist hiring me only to ghost me after I already worked a full day is stopping me. It's insane. I'm getting spit in the face, while simultaneously being told "it's your own fault for getting spat on - try harder to avoid it."

:/

I hate reading all the schools and instructors say "We want motivated students that have a true passion for learning. Those kinds of people go far 😊"

And I work so hard on my projects because I care and I love what I learn to the point where skimming or bs-ing it feels like an offense. Meanwhile my group members and all other classmates don't care and tell me "ugh! I don't care, this is stupid! It doesn't even matter, this isn't on the MCAT. I just need a 3.0 at least, so my GPA doesn't drop too low. Anyway, I can't do this right now, I'm soooo stressed. Can you do it for me? I can't do it later either because I'm flying somewhere later and won't be back till a week later. I might miss our presentation date by the way. Yeah, I want to be a doctor."

The get a good grade because of me. They get time to shadow since they have free time by skipping classes and never studying or doing school work. They get letters because even though they don't go to class, they have an extrovert personality and suck up to the instructor.

#☔

[psychokangaroo]

How many MDs do you think are suicidal? It’s depressing and scary that the people we need to be healthy the most are suffering so much. I think this is the main reason I never continued my mcat studying bc i felt that my mental illness would get worse in medical school. & that I’m afraid i’ll kms at some point during residency :\ Are you currently taking anything to help? A little demon in the back of my head tells me “Anon ur taking zoloft & wellbutrin & adderall, you’ll be FINE!” but then a part of me feels I shouldnt risk it and stay away from the unnecessary stress… idk anymore

So at some point I'm going to add a bit more commentary about suicide medicine to this but the short version is that I'm doing fine, actually. I was just in a weird mood after a swing shift in thr ER so I was reminiscing some stuff at night. The stuff I mentioned happened 3-4 years ago, while I was still processing the unintentional emotional abuse from my parents, who are trying their best as immigrants, and dealing with PTSD and a somewhat toxic grad school environment. The stuff that happened actually were part of why I became a psychiatrist. I went through 2 weeks of a partial hospitalization program another 3-4 weeks of intensive outpatient afterwards. At some point I was on 2 antidepressants and an adhd med with some antidepressant propertoes and an as needed for sleep and panic attack along with weekly therapy, but I'm okay now on just one SSRI, occasional ginseng, and no therapy. Med school and a career in medicine us a high stress environment, but people do make it through sometimes mostly with their sanity intact. One thing I'd recommend is really think about why yoi want to go to medicine, how much you like the alternative career paths, and how much you are willing to put up for it.

(More stuff on the environment and physician suicide later because I'm drinking to celebrate finishing emergency medicine and readying my sanity to deal with tye neurology department at my hospital again)

[project-sour-grapes]

Dragging Ass; Website Up

Did nothing the last 2 days. Realized my business is really a facilitator of other goals in clinical healthcare and research (mostly research). Without an end goal, I do not want to work on my business. The lack of structure and social interaction (that which is intrinsically tied to achieving goals at work as a group) makes me depressed. And not, "Gee, I feel down," depressed. But, "I feel nauseous and I am dissociating from my surroundings and I am staying up 4 hours past my bedtime mindlessly watching videos on my phone," depressed. Structure and concrete end goals seem to be necessary for me.

Looking at the lab environment I'm joining now as well as looking back on my first lab research experience in 2019, I am realizing that that environment is too restrictive for me. Imagining a career in academia does not inspire me. Something about working with 4-5 core people in a lab--while it is fun and teaches a person new things they'd never encounter otherwise--is too... small. The accomplishments are big and the ability to create something from nothing on almost poverty wages is superhero work. But it won't motivate me long-term.

When I think of being a doctor however, that sits right with me. I like working with patients more than I expected, and the idea of constantly learning newer, increasingly niche things about science and the body is invigorating. That will carry me in a way that other career paths may not. There seemed to be a socially enforced ceiling on knowledge in EMS. A few people were always learning and sharing knowledge, but a few times when I tried to dive deeper into topics, I could tell others were trying to change the subject or I was literally told "I don't care." It really is a different environment from both research and the MD/DO crowd. It wasn't all bad. Just enough to be a drag and not worth the energy to be the odd one out.

My goal with my business is to facilitate getting into research as an MD. Business on its own is okay, but it doesn't drive me in a way that will last until I'm 50. Research on its own is also cool, but it lacks breadth, it seems more restrictive than being an MD, and I don't want to become a professional grant writer.

The official plan is that I'm going to get this business going, study for the MCAT, take all the med school prereqs plus more, and publish research papers. The end goal is regenerative, stem cell, and neurological medicine around the realm of movement disorders and helping people feel at home in their bodies. That encompasses 100s of diseases both mental, functional neurological, and physical and could land me in one of several specialties, but that is the plan. We have a direction at least. And I'm trying stuff. And failing. And learning. Versus sitting around and perfecting my wishful thinking.

More importantly, I put the website up today. Had to learn to do things I (embarrassingly) had never done before, even though I used to work in cybersecurity. But I slogged through it. I was about to put it off until tomorrow, because it wasn't straightforward to set the site up, but I pushed through it. Pushing through despite confusion was way better than delaying or giving up. It is going to be a real ego hit to learn things that I "should have known" in both the science and tech spaces as I build this business. But it's better to be a fool for a minute than a fool forever.

[milktea-md]

some tips for med school applicants

from a soon-to-be grad 🥺

talking to a mentee on the phone recently made me realize the season is starting pretty soon so i thought this would be timely!! also i'm graduating med school this fall so want to write this down before i completely forget what the experience was like / while it's still relevant lol.

this is very informal - i have no qualifications except a) having been through the process myself successfully 4 years ago, b) mentoring, and c) volunteering on my med school's interview committee. take everything w a grain of salt.

I always tell my mentees that there are 3 major things adcoms look for in an application:

will you survive med school? everyone knows it's academically tough. have you proven through your gpa/mcat/general work ethic that you've built a good foundation and you know how to study so you won't fail out? it's harsh, but that's what they're thinking.

do you know what medicine is? sure, there are always a couple people who quit or don't go to residency because they realize this isn't what they wanted, but the goal of the med school is to train doctors. it's better for them if the majority of people they accept are genuinely interested in medicine, and stick with it.

are you a decent human being? i don't think medicine requires extremes of compassion or kindness or empathy - saying that about your own profession is kind of suspect, imo. but adcoms are doing their best (not always succeeding, unfortunately, but doing their best) to find people who aren't sociopaths, who will actually take good care of patients and won't piss off their colleagues.

so, naturally, these 3 things correlate with different parts of the med school application:

will you survive med school? -> this one's pure and simple - meeting the college prereqs + your GPA & MCAT. most schools will cut you some slack and take the higher of the two - someone with a low MCAT but good GPA may just have had a bad day, and someone with a low GPA but good MCAT obviously still learned enough to get by on the test. the further out you are from college, of course, the less your GPA matters (that's also why your MCAT has to be more recent).

do you know what medicine is? -> clinical experience. the only real way to get a glimpse of what a job entails is experiencing it! that's why shadowing is a thing. obviously, you'll have an even clearer idea if you get hands-on experience - not just watching, but actually doing stuff for patients, like being an EMT, scribe, clinical assistant, peer counselor, medical interpreter, hospital volunteer, etc. med schools want to know that you've gotten as close to the doctor job as possible, and you still want to do it. your personal statement allows you to verbally express this in your application, but having experience is what's most important - adcoms won't be impressed if all you know about the profession is through Grey's Anatomy.

are you a decent human being? -> this is obviously the hardest to evaluate. in order of priority, the factors that help schools determine this are a) letters of recommendation, b) activities, and c) essays. why LORs first? because you're less likely to be tooting your own horn there. of course these aren't truly objective, but getting people around you to state their opinion of you is a little more convincing than just you talking about how hardworking and compassionate you are. by activities, i mean - have you participated in activities that show you care about other people? this can overlap with clinical activities, but can also be volunteering at the food bank, raising money for a charity, etc. (they're slightly lower than LORs because adcoms know that resume padding happens.) and, finally, essays. your compassion for humanity should hopefully come through in your personal statement, but...see my thoughts on the actual impact of your personal statement later in this post.

notice i haven't talked about the med school interview yet - mainly because it's february and way too early for people applying in 2022 to think about interviews, but also because interviews are sort of a different beast.

imo, the rest of what makes up your application - research publications, leadership roles, medical missions to Guatemala - is icing on the cake. not having them won't tank your application the way lacking clinical experience or writing about your creepy childhood fascination with a dead squirrel will (true story). the 3 things i talked about aren't sufficient by themselves - but they are essential. everything else, you can pick and choose; imo, the best way to do that is to chase opportunities that are interesting to you and let the cards fall naturally. that way the special sauce in your application - the part that makes you a unique applicant, someone a med school will want to join their class - is truly you, not a resume blueprint.

wait, you mean research isn't essential?! i got into med school with no publications. zero. imo, med schools like seeing research on apps for three reasons: 1) the most important - if you care about being a good doctor, for the rest of your life after med school, you will have to keep up with the latest developments in medical treatment. that means understanding how research works and how to read journal articles. but you certainly don't have to publish to be able to do this! 2) commitment to a research (or, as my school calls them, "deep dive") project can showcase passion, dedication, good work ethic, and (sometimes) academic intelligence. keep in mind, this doesn't have to be bench research - I know med students who have conducted research in archaeology or philosophy, or even written books. 3) med schools love to have students who might make the next big cancer breakthrough - so if that's your jam, it's certainly a boost. but it's not everyone's jam and it doesn't have to be. we need committed small town doctors as much as we need professors who run huge clinical trials. (the caveat to this is that different schools have different priorities - a research powerhouse like johns hopkins is undoubtedly going to appreciate seeing some research on an application. but getting into a medical school will not necessarily be a problem.)

okay, i feel like this turned into a rant about how the sausage gets made in adcom meetings, instead of being practical/helpful for applicants who are stressed about the upcoming cycle. so here's some actual, actionable advice you might want to keep in mind as AMCAS looms:

submit your primary application before july. there's technically no deadline but schools review apps on a rolling basis so the earlier you submit the better your chances. if you submit after july you're lowering your chances by a lot!! i had a friend who submitted in october and while i have no proof of this i think it contributed to their not getting into any schools that cycle :(

give yourself time. i would plan for at least 1 month to write your statement, and 1 month for the rest of the application (the CV part of the application requires like 3 more mini essays) - more if you can swing it. better to finish early than to have june be one long panic attack.

your personal statement doesn't have to be perfect. to adcoms, your personal statement is one of the least important parts of your application. it needs to show you've put in enough thought about this big life decision (main point 2, above), and it needs to not have anything bad/weird (main point 3, above). that's it. in extreme circumstances, a great personal story in a personal statement can help overcome other "issues" in your app (like a lower GPA), but that's about your real experiences - it's not something you can make up by spending 100 hours writing your statement. have at least one person - preferably someone who knows what they're doing, like a faculty or med student mentor - check it over to make sure the topic is on target, and another person read it for typos/grammar errors. if other people want to help, great, but remember, too many opinions may just end up confusing you.

that said, stuck on your personal statement? read examples. the "why medicine" question is a horrible one - it's so broad! for some of us, there was a defining moment, but for a lot of us, it was a gradual process. where do i even start telling the story? that's why reading example personal statements is helpful. i would read multiple - if you only read one you risk having that get stuck in your head and reproducing it, consciously or subconsciously, when you write your own. google "med school personal statement examples" online, or your uni's advising office may have compilations from previous alumni that you can tap into. there are also worksheets online that can help you brainstorm for your own essay, with questions ranging from "list the top 3 experiences that guided you to medicine" or "who are your personal heroes?" use these to help you come up with content, and use the example essays to help get an idea of the form.

apply to a broad range of schools. i know someone who applied to 40 - which is a little extreme, if you ask me, but hey, it worked. if you can afford the fees (there are also financial aid programs), i recommend 15-20 schools to be safe, more if you and your mentors think it's necessary. unlike college, it's hard to predict which schools are going to be "reach" schools and which are "safety" schools, because you can get an interview from the med school ranked #16 by us news and not the one ranked #35 (true story). so consider broadly - public and private schools, schools across the country. whether to apply to DO or caribbean schools depends more on what you're looking for in training, and i'm not experienced with them so won't talk about it here. bottom line: cross the school off your list only if you would rather have to reapply next cycle than go to that school.

i hope this was helpful! happy to answer any asks if you have a specific question :) best of luck to everyone applying this cycle!

#medblr #premed #medical school #med school #studyblr #med school apps #medicine #medical tumblr #premed tumblr

[prince-liest]

Heyyy, I kind of want to ask you something but I don't know if it's the kind of question you accept? Um, guess I'll throw it in and assume it's been deleted after a couple days which 👌 aight. Any advice on how to get into Med school when you're in dropout prevention HS with easy courses since I can't choose, zero volunteer hours, and two Fs in College which will probably put me on Academic Probation when I start, fff and I'm expected to transfer to a prestigious Uni like how tf even.

I am happy to answer that kind of question! Hopefully my answers are helpful to you. I will say, all my advice is based on the assumption that you're in the US and applying to a US medical school, because I don't know how those things work in other countries.

Long answer ahead:

I'm a little bit confused about how you are currently attending a high school but have two failed courses in college, so I hope I'm alright in assuming that you are a high school student that took a couple of college courses, and is not yet a full-time undergraduate student.

As far as medical school applications are concerned, high school is very, very early. On average, people entering medical school have taken two gap years between then and undergrad and are entering medical school at age 24. The important things are what you do when you are already in undergraduate, not what grades you got 4-8 years ago in high school.

That said, you do need to do well in college! All those things you're struggling with in high school - volunteering, passing classes - those are things you want to knock out of the park when you're in undergrad. Having a couple of bad grades, especially at the very start, is fine - you just need to show them improvement, and you can always spin it into an adversity essay. Applying to medical school is a performative circus show where you need to have good grades and relevant volunteer hours and physician shadowing hours (including DO if you're applying DO) and solid letters of recommendation (including DO again, some schools straight up require this) and ideally also research (though I personally did not have any - but I also didn't get accepted MD, so!)

Now, you don't need to dive straight into the deep end and desperately scramble to do everything at once, but you do need to think: is that something you can handle? Can you pull As and Bs while volunteering a little bit every week, can you start looking into shadowing opportunities, can you do something that schools consider having that ever-touted "leadership" (like running for an officer position in a school club or leading a study group)?

Some tips:

Volunteering doesn't need to be intense. Doing an hour a week for a couple of years shows commitment and adcoms like that. Do a medical mission over the summer if you have the money and opportunity.

Be friendly with your professors and take advantage of summer research opportunities in undergrad.

Honest to god I think applying to med school straight out of undergrad is a mistake. They want more mature students, and taking at least one gap year lets you focus on studying for the MCAT as well as gives you time to volunteer/shadow/get a job for a bit.

Shadowing is more important than you think because it will tell you a lot about whether or not being a doctor is something you actually want to do, as well as what type of specialty most interests you.

Additionally (and please forgive me if this sounds condescending as hell, but I also implore you to take it seriously): Reflect for yourself on why you want to go into medicine and what contributed to the circumstances you are currently in. Why did you get those two Fs? Is that reason something that you think will continue to make it incredibly difficult for you to pass classes in the future? Do you enjoy STEM classes? Medical school involves learning a lot of information in a very short period of time, and is often compared to trying to drink water out of a fire hose. Is that something you think you could do? And if so, would you enjoy the material enough to justify it and avoid burning out? A lot of my classmates have depression/anxiety/OCD and are managing just fine, for the record, you just need to make sure you have yourself handled for a difficult endeavor.

It's much better to answer these things for yourself now to make sure you're on the right path, before you've spent time, money, and emotional energy on what is frankly a very difficult and exclusive process! I say, as someone who considers the process of medical school applications incredibly emotionally draining.

TL;DR: High school doesn't really matter, college matters a lot, make sure you actually want to and are able to do this.

I love medical school! I can't imagine doing it if I didn't actively enjoy the majority of what I'm learning, haa.

Alright, back to memorizing diabetes drugs for me. ^_^" I hope this helped, and if you have any questions that are more specific (I know a lot of this advice has been quite general), feel free to hit me up!

#personal #med school #can you tell I think med school app process is a fucking horrorshow lmao #at least in the US #asks

[thweaty]

Ok Ash, Ima need some AITA advice. My bf is trying to go to law school and I'm trying to go to med school and he was complaining about the LSAT while I was bitching about the MCAT. I told him that my exam is way harder and he was like NAH! So I took the LSAT and scored in the 90th percentile after studying for a month (It's just one big ass CARS section tbh) and my bf scored in the 70th LMAO. He's mad at me, but I think he's just pressed I did better. I never rubbed it in his face or anything :/

STOP did u pay to take the dang lsat? 😭😭 but also go off sis 💀

[uncloseted]

Hi! I've seen that you attended graduate school, how'd that go for you? I graduated about a year and a half ago from college and while I have a part-time, it feels like I'm facing silent pressure from my parents. Ideally, I'd like to go to grad school but sometimes I think my GPA isn't enough. Any idea how to overcome this?

I did!  I graduated last year.  I can only be semi-helpful on this topic, though, because I backdoored my way into grad school.  The university I went to had a program where you could begin your master’s concurrently with the final year of your undergraduate degree, and so the admissions process I went through was very convoluted but not particularly competitive, even though the school and program themselves are very competitive. 

The first thing I would do is see what the average GPAs of the programs you would want to apply to actually are.  Typically that’s available on the university’s website.  There’s no need to worry if there isn’t actually a problem.  If you do find that your GPA is a bit lower than the average, there are a few different options you have to offset your GPA.

The first thing I would suggest is making personal connections with professors.  Because many master’s programs are focused on research, having a personal connection with a professor can lead them to taking you on as a research assistant, which in turn can improve your candidacy for their graduate program.  You can also complete additional coursework that will raise your GPA (for example, a certificate program in something related to your field of study), pursue relevant work experience (internships, research assistantships, volunteer opportunities), and/or publish in your subject to help strengthen your case.  From there, your application is really what matters.  Your statement of purpose will give you an opportunity to explain why you’re passionate about your subject, why you’re a good fit for their program, and offer an explanation for your GPA if there were mitigating circumstances that impacted your grades.  If your GPA was bad your first few years of school but have significantly improve since, this is also a good place to mention it.  Recommendations will also become really important (which is why it’s good to have those personal relationships with professors).  Lastly, if your GPA is low, your test scores become really, really important.  Do everything you can to prepare for the GRE (or MCAT, LSAT, etc), and make sure that those scores are a good reflection of your ability. Some schools care much more about the scores than anything else.

[ad-sanandum]

Begin Again

I have always had the habit of journaling but somehow, I lost touch with it after secondary school. As a nerdy and awkward teenager, I would carry my journal around with me and write down thoughts as they flowed. I would literally write about everything that had happened at school, and my thoughts on the situation. However, as I grew older, I would only pen down my thoughts every once in a while, especially during significant life events, or when I simply felt the urge to.

I do want to get back into the regular habit of keeping a diary. I'm always filled with a deep sense of bittersweet nostalgia when I read my previous entries - they're like a portal that transports me back into the past. When I read the words that I had penned down, it's like I'm relieving those moments all over again, with all the emotions and feelings attached.

~~~

I will be starting Med school at Duke-NUS come July. It still feels surreal to me. I remember when I first got the news of the acceptance, I kept feeling like somehow they were going to call me and say that it was a mistake, that the spot had been offered to me by mistake and that it had meant to be given to someone else. That somehow there had been a mix-up involved, some administrative error, and that I hadn't managed to get it. In a way, I was afraid of letting myself become too happy as deep down, I thought that it was impossible that they wanted me.

Over time, I guess those feelings faded. If it was truly offered to me by mistake, they should've called me by now, right? I started telling more and more people of the good news. It slowly started to become a real possibility in my head. But it still feels so, so surreal. I still can't believe I'm going to be a doctor. Dr Nichole Tan, MD.

~~~

I started feeling a lot of emotions tonight. I think the act of telling others about my whole MCAT and pre-Med journey is in a way, me relieving the whole experience internally. And it was the toughest, but most rewarding journey so far (apart from my walk with God). The pre-Med journey is a very personal journey. Everyone comes from different places and has different reasons for wanting to me a Doctor. And we all had to overcome our own Goliath. I had never in my life, studied so much and so hard for something that had absolutely no guarantee. There was no guarantee that waking up at 430am before work to study was going to pay off. There was no guarantee that spending close to a thousand dollars on the exam was going to pay off. There was no guarantee that sacrificing my health, work, and relationships for 3 months was going to pay off. If I could describe my pre-Med journey in a single word, it would be faith. There was no certainty that everything would pay off, but I had faith that it would. But anyway, telling people about the whole process somehow made me want to reflect on this tonight.

I had been so, so blessed beyond measure. I was reading old messages from friends during the period of time when I was in the thick of studying for the MCAT. And it just became so clear how God has provided, taken care of, and loved me. I had known this all along, but seeing it with my own eyes made me even more certain of this fact. What were the odds that my colleague just so happened to have 2 weeks of annual leave that I so badly needed, right before the MCAT, and that she was willing to let me have it? What were the odds that I had been blessed with so much love and support from my friends? From buying me food, to asking about me, and to praying for me every step of the way - all these good things surely came from Someone above who loved me first.

~~~

So, I guess the point of making this blog is to document my feelings and thoughts over the next 4 years of Med school, in the hopes that these entries form some sort of repository, or time machine, so that I can relieve these moments in the future.

I don't know where I'll be in 4 years. What kind of person I'll become, what will I have, what will I have not. Who will be with me, who will I have lost. But I write these things in the hopes that someday, I will look back on them and see how far I have come :)

[starphasings]

for the new fic meme: M, N, S, T, U (I'm sorry I can never just ask one lol)

AHH NO PLS DON’T APOLOGIZE IT ALWAYS MAKES MY DAY 💖

M: Got any premises on the back burner that you'd care to share?

i’ve been tinkering with a josh/troy soulmate AU for a while! i’ve never written one before (and honestly i never really cared much for them until like, fairly recently) so i’m a little worried it’ll be ~too~ cliche, but the great thing about writing for rarepairs is that almost anything you do...you’ll be the first one. it’s very liberating, in a sense.

i’ve also been toying with writing a threequel to the marco/luke (which is all your fault btw i thought i was DONE but nope)

switching fandoms entirely, but i also have a bakery AU for my soccer team that i’ve wanted to write for aaaages, and a sports AU (lol) for the boyband fandom i used to be in. i’m just......full of cliches in my fandom middle age.

N: Is there a fic you wish someone else would write (or finish) for you?

all of them

i’ve been working on this stupidly emotionally constipated josh/troy since july? i sort of have it planned out, but the way i write isn’t very conducive to turning it into what i want it to be - i have problems stringing scenes together - and i’m afraid i won’t be able to give it the impact i want it to have. :|a

switching fandoms again, but i have this stupidly pretentious gundam: iron blooded orphans piece that i started working on after episode 43. seriously, it’s got everything: bird metaphors, water imagery, shitty dream sequences in lieu of emotional development. i wanted to get it done before the series jossed it completely but it’s been months since the show ended and i’m nowhere near finished T___T

i also wish someone else would finish writing the second part of the pretty woman AU i’m working on for a different fandom because i’ve been working on it for almost a year and i’m maybe 2/3rds done

S: Any fandom tropes you can't resist?

i am the world’s biggest sucker for pretty woman AUs (or hookerfic in general, it’s actually kind of ridiculous).

i also adore loveless AUs - cat ears and emotional codependency, what is there not to love? - but i’ve noticed they’ve been largely replaced in the fandom meta by pacific rim AUs now, which makes me incredibly sad. like i love pacific rim but.........loveless, man. when i was studying for my mcats i gave myself the day before the test date off to just do nothing and not think about any sort of exam material and i ended up spending the entire day rereading loveless, that’s how much i love it.

T: Any fandom tropes you can't stand?

i’m not really into sci-fi or fantasy in general, so mostly stuff related to that - like i wouldn’t say i can’t stand them, but it’s not really something i’d go look for.

um, other than that...i get kind of contrarian in larger fandoms so usually whatever gets super popular (lol).

U: A pairing you might like to write for, but haven't tried yet.

the bakery AU i mentioned up top! um, other than that i can’t really think of anything. lately i have been feeling like a go-getter in terms of writing!

#fic memes #baseball rpf for ts #thank you!!!!! #tulowhiskey

[psychokangaroo]

Hi! I don't post like at all but I'm not a troll I swear! I'm a sophomore in undergrad and I'm super interested in getting an MD/PhD after I graduate-- probably neuropsych stuff? Although I like math so maybe not? Basically I'm wondering what propelled you to choose that path over an MD. Also, because I can't be too different from every other person on this website, what kind of qualifications do you need for an MD/PhD? Is it true I'll need to take Gap years?

Hi! Thanks for writing! Looks like you have lots of questions about MD/PhD, so I’ll try to answer them all. 

First of all, you don’t *need* to take gap years to be a strong applicant for an MD/PhD program. I didn’t, nor did nearly half of my class. MD/PhD application, like MD applications, in the end comes down to just making sure you have checked most/all of the boxes: competitive GPA, competitive MCAT score, longitudinal research experience, some sort of contribution to scientific knowledge (ie, publications/posters/oral presentations), some sort of meaningful clinical experience, and the usual gamut of leadership and altruism. A good way to think about an MD/PhD application is a strong MD application, but with a strong focus on research and lower focus on clinical experience. I was about a sophomore when I seriously considered switching over to an MD/PhD path rather than an MD, and here I am ^_^. (so if you do not have the ability to take a gap year, now is a really good time to start focusing your application towards and MD/PhD, aka, get into a long-term lab, apply for fellowships/grants, lots of summer research).

As for why I chose an MD/PhD path, the simple answer is that I love science. I’ve been doing science fairs and science competitions since I was in middle school. Aside from the first 2 years of med school, I’ve been a lab tech/assistant since high school. As much as I loved the idea of practicing medicine and patient care back in college, I realized that I can’t imagine doing a career that doesn’t involve some sort of research focus, whether it was clinical or basic research. Even if I didn’t apply to an MD/PhD program, I would have ended up in a research focused MD program. 

Moreover, MD/PhDs are in a really unique place to do translational research, taking ideas from the bench and doing preclinical studies that help create new methods for treatment that are clinically applicable. (My interest is in cancer treatment and imaging). I like the idea of being able to directly develop new methods/treatments that can be easily translated to clinic. I also spent a few years in a basic chemistry lab, and I was not happy with how completely removed my research was. (Research for the sake of discovery is important, of course, but I felt like I was not making the difference i want to make by synthesizing this molecule to sense this biologic molecule that may or may not play an important role in treatment a few decades down the line. I am not a patient person :P )

Of course, it also helps that 1. MD/PhDs generally have a better chance of matching than MDs alone controlling for other factors; 2. MD/PhDs have a much easier chance successfully applying from major funding, such as K grants and R grants; and 3. MD/PhDs can get through med and grad school debt free. 

One last thing, regarding finding an area of interest to go into for research, I would advice against choosing an area of interest just because you enjoy the techniques used to answer those questions. I personally thought i was going to be doing synthesis forever because I really enjoyed it, but it took me 3 rotations to realize that the questions that synthesis labs are trying to answer are not the questions I want to spend 4 years answering. Furthermore, a bunch of MD/PhDs further in their careers have all discused about how common it is for MD/PhDs to completely change their research path from what they did in undergrad, or even what they did in graduate school and post-doctorate fellowships. Of course, it sounds like you have a lot of different research interests. A good way to explore what you want to do is to spend some time in different labs to get a feel for whether the questions they answer are the questions that interest you. That may take a little while longer and may require a gap year, but I think finding the fields that you love is worth it 

(and just for reference, computational neuroscience is definitely a thing! At least one of my classmates in the program is doing this. Also psych genomics uses a lot of programming, math, and statistics to answer probably one of the biggest questions in psych - the genetics behind the inheritance of mental health illnesses)

Anyways, sorry for the long post. I hope I have answered all your questions. Good luck in college and in your application! If you have any other questions, just let me know.