Should you go to med school?

[NerdGirl]

http://theboard.byu.edu/questions/64876/

Okay. I'm not saying Rating Pending was wrong to change his mind about med school and go to grad school instead. It really sounds like it was the right decision for him. But my experience is a bit different and I want to randomly talk about to to the internets for a minute because deciding to quit academia to go to med school was the best decision I have ever made, and if all I had ever done was listen to the BYU pre-med people (who were completely insane, at least 11 years ago when I took their stupid freshman pre-med seminar), I would have never done this. I also realize that I'm at kind of a hippy med school (which is awesome) and that I am in a different country and that I have only been in med school since July. But anyway.

The cliffs notes version for those who are not as intimately familiar with my life as I am: I went to BYU thinking I wanted to go to med school. I signed up for the freshman pre-med seminar, and it was horrible. They told us how horrible med school was, how it ruins your life and destroys families, how you need a 4.0 to get in, how you need to be able to recite the Hippocratic Oath in Greek, and all of this crazy stuff. I'm only exaggerating a little about that. And then I got really sick that semester and ended up with a 2.1 GPA, which is not a 4.0, and I went and met with Dr. What'shisface at the premed advisement office, and he was basically like, "Why the hell are you even wasting my time? There's no way in hell you're getting into med school!" He probably didn't say hell, though. The whole thing was horrible and I completely gave up on the idea of med school. It just wasn't going to be worth spending the next 4 years competing with miserable type-AAAAA personalities (that was the impression I got - not saying that BYU premeds are all horrible people, but they sure made us think that they would be in that stupid class). So I did physics and astronomy instead, because it was interesting and people were nice to me. Then I didn't know what else to do so I stayed at BYU and did a master's. My master's at BYU was awesome. I got to work in the planetarium, and if any of you know any of the BYU astronomy profs, they are all so incredibly awesome. Really great people. It's like a family. A family that does really interesting research together and stays up all night observing the sky and having interesting conversations about philosophy and the nature of God and the meaning of life.

Then I went to Halifax to do a PhD in astronomy thinking it was going to be awesome and I was going to be an astronomer and it was going to be so fun and meaningful. And it wasn't. It was horrible. My department was small and full of miserable people, most of whom only did computer simulations and didn't even know which thing in the sky was Jupiter and they hated people (one guy went into astronomy because it was the profession that he thought would have the least probability of being useful to humanity) and just wanted to sit in a dark room and code all day long. And I realized that it wasn't astronomy I liked as much as the people I was doing it with. And I also realized that the one of the most enjoyable things I had done in the past was a job I did for two summers as a careworker at a home for developmentally disabled adults who also had complex medical problems, and I realized that I actually didn't like my coworkers there either, but it didn't matter because I loved taking care of people and learning about the human body. And it made me wish I hadn't screwed up my life so that I couldn't get in to med school.

So I decided I was going to finish my PhD then become a librarian (or quit my PhD and become a librarian). I even asked The Board a question about going into library science after quitting a PhD, and Katya gave me a great answer. But I wasn't entirely satisfied. Okay, this is getting longer than the cliff's notes version, but maybe someone will read this and it will useful to them. If nothing else, it shows that you can change your mind and completely change your direction in life, aside from anything about med school specifically. Anyway, I was talking to my parents one morning, and they were like why don't you just go online and do some research about med school and just see what it would take for you to get in? I of course said the usual thing about how my GPA was horrible (about 2.9 after undergrad if you factor in all the classes I failed like med schools do) and how I don't have the pre-reqs. But I went online and looked up the University of Calgary med school. And I found that you needed a minimum of 3.2 in your best two years to apply, which I had, and that you needed to take the MCAT, which I hadn't done but could do, and that they had recommended courses but that none were actually required. This was in early 2009, BTW. And it felt so right. I decided I was going to try, and this sounds dramatic but I assure you it wasn't, it made me actually want to live again. I had felt like I was just kind of existing and I was so directionless.

So I taught myself biology and organic chemistry and general chemistry and I took the MCAT in January 2010 and I got a 35 on it. I was very surprised. Then I applied to the UofC and two schools in Ontario in fall of 2010 (to start in fall of 2011). I heard back from the Ontario schools right away (they had earlier deadlines), and I didn't get interviews at either of them. I was planning to finish my PhD (or quit) in spring 2011, so I started making plans to spend a year taking prereq courses so I could apply at more than 3 schools (there a 17 total med schools in Canada, and I had already decided that I wasn't going to leave the country because it's really hard to get a residency spot in Canada if you go to med school in another country). Then in January I found out I got an interview at the UofC. I was very shocked, and I called my mom and cried, and bought a $1200 plane ticket to fly across the country in February for my interview. I had my interview, I came back to Halifax, I defended my dissertation which was a total gong show and I was still calling my mom and crying and saying I was quitting even after I passed my defense and was working on revisions, but I turned it in on April 29th. The day that UofC was going to send out acceptances was May 13. It was going to be in the afternoon. On the morning of May 13th, I woke up and it was pouring rain and freezing, so I dragged my computer into my bed and checked my email, not expecting an email from the UofC yet. But there was one there and it said I got in. Not even on the waiting list. I just got in right away, my first time applying, the only school I got an interview at, with my lack of prereqs and my horrible GPA and everything. Then a week later I graduated from my PhD. Two things I didn't think were going to happen.

Anyway, now here's the point, maybe. This is where I'm going to disagree with what Pres. Samuelson told RP's class, and yes he has a lot more experience than me, and yes I'm in a different country, but here it is anyway. There has not been a single day since I started med school that I didn't absolutely feel that I was in the absolute right place for possibly the first time in my life. Even when I come home smelling like cadavers, or we've seen a patient who is dying of pancreatic cancer and there's nothing anyone can do to stop it, or I feel like people have been speaking in another language about the clotting cascade all day long, it still feels right. At the same time, though, I feel like I am making far fewer sacrifices in my personal life than I was during my PhD. There is so much emphasis and encouragement here about balancing our lives, about taking time for our families (there are people in my class with 3 kids!), about not letting medicine be all that your life is about. In grad school (not at BYU), I actually had a prof who said that if we didn't seriously contemplate suicide, we weren't working hard enough. There is so much emphasis in medicine about taking care of yourself first. And despite the fact that it feels so right, I wouldn't say that I have no doubts about whether or not I can do this (not planning on quitting or anything, though), and I think that's healthy. I wasn't one of those kids who wanted to be a doctor - I wanted to be an astronaut! Or a rock star. And I'm certainly leaving room for other things in my life, and if for whatever reason I decided I only wanted to work part time as a doctor at some point, that would be fine! You can do that!

I'm not actually sure what kind of doctor Pres. Samuelson is, but there are so many things you can do in medicine that have different kinds of lifestyles. But I think if we only did things we didn't have any second thoughts about, we probably wouldn't end up doing much of anything. I'd be pretty worried, actually, about a doctor who hadn't ever questioned their desire or motivation. Feel free to ask me how I feel about all of this again once I'm a resident, but at the moment (and the residents and doctors I talk to would actually agree), I think this is a great career. I want to be a pediatric hematologist right now, but if you go into family medicine (again this is in Canada, and I know the US is different, but not that different), residency is only 2-3 years after med school, you'll be running your own business and setting your own hours, and family doctors who work full time here make an average of about $200,000/year after taxes. I don't even know what I would do with that much money, and that's in a speciality where you don't spend 100 hours a week in the hospital.

Anyway, that was really long, but I think my point is that you don't have to be (and probably shouldn't be) 100% sure about the decision to go to med school, assuming you've prayed about it and it feels right, that you don't have to give up your outside interests to be a doctor (much less so than in grad school), and that medicine is an amazingly rewarding thing to study if it's what you want to do. I never would have imagined that I would love something this much.

[mic0]

I'm so glad you chimed in here! I especially like when you said, "I think if we only did things we didn't have any second thoughts about we probably wouldn't end up doing much of anything."

That's so true. Yes, becoming a doctor is a huge commitment. You don't want to go into it with the wailing and gnashing of teeth. But doubts are normal, it means you are thinking things through and taking it seriously (most of the time). Anyway, good story. Also, I'm glad to hear you are doing what you like now.

[Katya]

So I decided I was going to finish my PhD then become a librarian (or quit my PhD and become a librarian). I even asked The Board a question about going into library science after quitting a PhD . . .

I remember that. Fun question.

[Eirene]

YES! I have so much agreement with you. I just graduated from BYU in April, and I'm also a first-year med student (although in the US), and the perceptions among BYU students and faculty about what med school and a career in medicine are like are...not true. I don't think any of this is some kind of intentional scare tactic, but there are so many attitudes about how prohibitively difficult it is to get in, and how you will have no life at all during med school and you will just be a studying machine, and when you're a physician everyone will be mean to you and there will be so much pressure and you will only ever have time for work, etc.

Honestly, if I hadn't grown up with physicians for parents, I probably would have been turned of by all those ideas. Fortunately, I could think, "Um, both my parents were around a lot when we were growing up! They both find their careers rewarding! My mom teaches at a medical school and she has had good experiences with happy, hardworking students and a school that treats them well! My dad's a residency director and I KNOW he doesn't treat his residents like that!"

I just remember a lot of dudes (yes, mostly dudes) who did their residencies 40 years ago and then went into competitive surgical specialties telling us in all those pre-med seminar classes that med school was a crucible and your family is going to hate you and you're going to get sick from all the stress. If I hadn't personally known better, I probably would have been scared off too. I think it's so important to remember that every career is what you make of it, and nothing can suck you in against your will. Also that anyone can do hard things if it's for something rewarding enough (like a career spent helping people and easing suffering).

Thanks for sharing, Nerdgirl! In 20 years let's come and speak at each other's grand rounds

[Digit]

Wow Eirene, as Malcolm Gladwell would probably have said, if you were a Canadian hockey player, you were born on January first Good on you!

[Architect]

This thread just made my day. Even though I have no plans (or even thoughts) of doing medical school. I've been slowly realizing that I really have known for a while what path is right for me, and I don't need to sacrifice that for what everyone else tells me is easier or harder or better or worse.

NerdGirl, thanks for the awesome story.

[Sky Bones]

That was a great story, NerdGirl. Thanks for sharing.

Along those same lines, one of my husband's fellow classmates in PT school is in her 40's and spent the last 20 years in finance/marketing. She finally decided she was tired of business, took the prereqs for PT school at a community college, and seems to be doing quite well now. Pretty cool.

[Portia]

Oh, Rating Pending, you could never overstay your welcome. I love your off-the-wall sense of humor, parenthetical asides, general brilliance, and that you're never a jerk. The more writers retire from my era (pre-Recession, in the good ol' days, fake money flowed like gold!), the older I feel. I'm almost to 1990-levels of average age at first marriage!

[NerdGirl]

Thanks for sharing, Nerdgirl! In 20 years let's come and speak at each other's grand rounds

Yes, let's!

[Foreman]

I defended my dissertation which was a total gong show

I just wanted to mention: I spent a summer living with Canadians, and started collecting "Canadianisms" (that is, funny phrases Canadians use, or ways of putting things that I understood but would never phrase that way). "Gong show" is pretty much my favorite one.

That's all. Carry on.

[Whistler]

I also enjoyed your story. I find it encouraging that I'm not the only one who has decided to change what I want to do with my life after grad school (okay, I'm not done yet!).

[Katya]

I also enjoyed your story. I find it encouraging that I'm not the only one who has decided to change what I want to do with my life after grad school (okay, I'm not done yet!).

Care to share your story?

[Whistler]

Imagine a young Whistler, fresh out of flute camp, determined to become a professional flutist. I auditioned my freshman year and it turned out that if I had auditioned the year before I would have been admitted, but given the number of spots that year I was not one of the top four. The next year was even worse, with only one open spot in the flute performance track, which I didn't land, despite practicing religiously. However, I was already involved in research involving the Rorschach inkblot test and my BoM professor, who happened to also be a counselor in the CCC.

Most people have an interest in psychology and I was no exception. I threw myself into tons of research projects and flourished in classes which were mostly based on multiple-choice tests and writing. I took some other classes for fun and wrote my honors thesis on how therapists can't predict difficult cases (wasn't actually my topic of choice, but it used the CCC's database, where I was working). I thought my good grades and research experience made me hot stuff, but I was rejected from all 7 PhD programs I applied to, though I did interview at BYU.

Thus frustrated, I tried to think of what other things I was good at. One thing I was good at was reading classic literature. I balked when my English major friends had never read anything by Proust or Tolstoy. At the encouragement from a physicist-turned-English-professor on my honors thesis committee, I applied to BYU's English MA program. I learned from my previous application experience and had a clear topic for my thesis (which I didn't end up writing on).

Aaaand, that's pretty much where I am now. I'm finishing my thesis and I am absolutely sick of seminars. I want to write things that non-experts will read, and every literary journal seems like exactly the wrong place for that. I really enjoyed the investigative journalism and fun of the 100 hour board, so going into journalism seems like a good place for me. I cover local gaming news and thinking gamer things at my blog, thepretentiousgamer.blogspot.com.

And Katya, if I recall, your Bachelor's was in French? How did you get into library science from that?

[Katya]

And Katya, if I recall, your Bachelor's was in French? How did you get into library science from that?

I've always been interested in foreign languages. I took 6 years of French in middle school and high school, then switched to German for my senior year after I took the French AP test and couldn't take any more French classes. Somewhere in there, I heard about this thing called "linguistics" and I asked one of my high school teachers if there was anything that I could do with a linguistics major besides teach and he said "no."

So I shelved the idea of a linguistics major and declared a major in French literature. (Because there's so much you can do with that, right?) The French program was split mainly into people who were (a) minoring in French (often after serving a French-speaking mission) while majoring in something "real," (b) majoring in French teaching, or (c) majoring in French with the intention of going on to law school or something along those lines. And then there was me. I was very clear that I didn't want to teach, but I didn't have any grad school plans, either.

However, when I was a sophomore, I signed up for French 326 (French phonetics), which was a famously hard class that most people put off talking as long as they possibly could. And instead of thinking it was horrible, I actually really enjoyed it. Another girl in the class was majoring in linguistics and minoring in French and she told me that if I liked this stuff, then I should be a linguistics major. And I thought "hmm."

More than a year later, I ended up needing an extra class to stay a full time student, so I signed up for a junior-level linguistics class, on a whim, even though I hadn't had the prerequisites. I did really well in it, and I started thinking about minoring in linguistics. Another year went by, and I realized that by the time I'd filled all of the requirements for the linguistics minor, I'd only need one more class to do a linguistics major, since my French classes counted towards some of the requirements (and I'd decided to take some Russian classes that filled other requirements). And I was so close to finishing the French major, anyway, that it seemed silly not to finish that, even though I'd realized by that point that I liked linguistics much more than literary criticism (in any language).

So I graduated with a double major in French literature and linguistics (but NOT a double bachelor's degree, because BYU does not award those) and then I had no idea of what I wanted to be when I grew up. (I had had a vague idea that I could work for the government, but I was scared out of joining the Foreign Service after a recruiter told us that it had the highest divorce rate of any branch of the federal government.)

So I was almost ready to graduate and I needed a job and I remembered that a couple of friends of mine had worked for this data entry place in Orem that treated their employees really well. So I asked one of them what the name of the place was and called them up to see if they were going to be hiring in the near future. And one of them said that they would be doing a mandatory training session that started the last week of classes. I got the job and did double duty for that week, working during the day and grading tests for my TA job in the evenings. (I told my Chinese teacher—I was taking Mandarin 101—that I would have to miss the final and accept whatever grade she gave me because I knew she couldn't reschedule the final. She let me take it late, anyway, even though she wasn't supposed to. And my new job bent the training rules and gave me an afternoon off to attend my convocation ceremony.)

The company I was working at was a library vendor. They did library catalog database work and were just moving into the digitization market when I joined. After about six months, I decided that I wanted to get my MLS and be a cataloger. (In part, this was because one of the friends who had worked there before me had gone on to get her MLS, so I learned more about the degree from her.) Unfortunately, the day that I decided I wanted to get my MLS was only about a week before applications were due at my top grad school choice, so I had to wait another year before applying. (Since I'd only just barely thought of the idea, I wasn't too bummed about waiting a year, though.) So I waited another year and applied to the school I wanted to attend. Because of some outside circumstances at the time I was applying, I didn't have time to apply to any other schools, but I got into the school I wanted so I moved out to Illinois to become a librarian.

But that's another story.

[Whistler]

thanks Katya! I'm glad you found what you love, and you are cool and stuff. I had to take a year off too between my Bachelor's and my Master's, and I think it did me good.

[Katya]

thanks Katya! I'm glad you found what you love, and you are cool and stuff. I had to take a year off too between my Bachelor's and my Master's, and I think it did me good.

I honestly think it's a good idea, in general. It seemed like there was a big difference in my grad program between the students who were coming into it right after undergrad and those who had had a few years off in the middle.

[Portia]

I took the pre-med seminar and had all As and A-minuses my freshman year. My two closest friends from high school are in med school at Utah and Houston right now. And I am SO GLAD I didn't pursue my childhood ambition!!

[Immediate family member] has [deadly rare disease] which necessitated many, many visits to [major hospital in present city]. And I just . . . hated it. Loathed it. Felt a visceral, emotional reaction to the smell, the lighting, the sense of doom. It was like "how did I ever, ever think I could be cut out for the reality of this?" A bookish, talkative sort who likes to help people one-on-one and is emotionally sensitive is not really a good fit for the medical world, no matter her standardized test scores or lab experience.

But you know what she could be good at? Tutoring/teaching. I love every minute of making block towers of multiples of 3 with 8-year-olds, do factor trees with 12-year-olds, and even slaving over polynomials of a higher degree with imaginary solutions with 16-year-olds. I never, ever thought I wanted to be a teacher, not even in the school years when every little girl wants to teach. But I just feel so happy at work: the sound of kids running around having fun, the orderliness of the day, the feeling that people are alive and listening to you.

I know that I made the right choice by not going to med school, but I really think that the drive to make it there eventually was the #1 thing that helped me thrive so much in high school and led me where I am today. Funny how life works that way.