Freshman Year, First Semester.........

scuba723
Fri, 21 Dec 2007 08:29:03 +0000

Though I am still a senior in high school, numerous friends of mine are finishing up their first semesters as well in college, and have spent the year telling me interesting tips and anecdotes about their experiences. And the one thing they tell me over and over? Freshmen pre-med students manage to make themselves more miserable than anyone else on campus.

Are you seriously under the impression that a single grade in a single introductory course, designed to weed out the hundreds of students who have the slightest inkling that they want to be a doctor, will be the deciding factor in medical school admissions?

If you are that easily discouraged, then maybe you are not cut out to be a doctor. Consider this: If rounding out the first semester of your first year with an average GPA, at a school where every student entering was ‘above-average’ in high school, is enough to make you question your future, how do you plan on handling notoriously difficult courses like Organic Chemistry? Competition for internships to earn work experience? The deaths that you will invariably face while working presumed internships?

A doctor’s job isn’t easy, but that’s why earning that MD isn’t a walk in the park either. But if you are determined that you want your future to be in medicine, make your future in medicine.

What do they call the person who graduates with the lowest rank in Med School?

Doctor.

You’ll be fine – enjoy the holidays, find some extracurricular opportunities, beef up your resume in other ways. And maybe killing yourself with chemistry courses isn’t the path to being a doctor for you. My mother’s boss is world-renowned in public health circles, and it wasn’t until after he had a Master’s in History did he decide to go to Med School. At Yale.