Contributing Writer
University of Alabama School of Medicine
Emily N. Hayward is originally from Rochester Hills, Michigan, about 30 minutes north of Detroit. From a young age, she developed a strong interest in pediatric oncology. This led her to move to Memphis, TN, to complete her undergraduate studies at Rhodes College, just down the street from St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. While in college, she researched, volunteered, and/or interned in the clinics at St. Jude on a daily basis. Today, she is a third year MD/PhD student in the Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP) at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Her anticipated graduation year with the dual degree is 2024.
After our first year of coursework, our LC mentors asked us to write a confidential letter to our “2016 self,” or ourselves at the time just before we began medical school. Right away, I recalled that at that time, I was a nervous wreck.
While it is clear that the issue of depression and anxiety extends well beyond the medical school admissions process, it is important to ask whether it is the beginning of a long and slippery slope to a life of anxiety and depression.
Autumn has been my favorite season since moving to Oregon four years ago from the dry, unchanging desert landscape of Las Vegas, Nevada. The freeway towards my class dips into a valley surrounded by broad-leafed trees with ferns growing near the base of their trunks.
Being a premedical student is largely about the numbers — your MCAT score, your rank in your graduating college class, whether that subpar performance in organic chemistry will lethally impact your medical school application. If you’re anything like me, your time as a premed was spent encapsulated in a crippling and disorienting world of anxiety. I remember scanning Internet posts to confirm just how underwhelming my application to medical school was in comparison to those of other “more qualified” students. I read of students who had managed to four-oh all their prerequisite classes while achieving a perfect score on the MCAT and maintaining an enviable balance of humility and self-confidence, and I was understandably daunted.
In medicine, there is a saying that the training is onerous but the rewards are many. More often than not, these rewards come coated in a myriad of shapes, including lucrative incentives, personal gratification, warm contentment and sated joy. For some physicians, a last wound-closure of the day, a smile on their patients’ faces, or warm, heartfelt regards from the people they care for carry immense significance. Yet, for many others, lucrative incentives seal their fate, becoming a bane to the integrity of the medical profession as a whole.
My initial interest in medicine came from an unlikely source, a stranger I will presumably never meet again. I was volunteering with one of the nurses at a local Healthcare for the Homeless clinic during my first year of college. From my seat in the corner, I noticed with some apprehension a young man whose body was covered with tattoos. Two tattoos in particular caught my attention. The first was on his neck: a five-point crown …
It was just supposed to be a temporary job. At least that was what I envisioned when I started my position as a standardized patient at Albany Medical College. Four months earlier, I graduated a semester early from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Drama. When I applied to be an standardized patient (SP), I was searching for a way to take my acting career to the next level. …
“If you start feeling lightheaded or faint,” the surgeon told me in the operating room, “just don’t fall into the patient. You can fall anywhere else. Just not into the patient.” This was the first time I had ever shadowed a surgeon, and a dark cloud of fear started to cloak my feelings of excitement. I had never thought myself to be a queasy person, but suddenly I kept imagining myself plunging face-forward off of …
The body of students being admitted to medical school has changed drastically in recent years as institutions are trying harder to find students who are well-rounded. As a result, the coming years will witness the birth of a whole new breed of doctors. The question I will address is what this change will mean for the practice of medicine. One major change seen in students admitted to medical school is their undergraduate course of study. …
Upon graduating high school, many students have some sort of idea of their career as well as life aspirations. He or she will enter college and begin looking at coursework, thrilled at the opportunity to expand his or her knowledge in classes that were previously unimaginable. Orientation will come and then, the rock, an unreckonable force will finally hit. The time will come and the student will consult with either his or her pre-med or …
Contributing Writer and Former Undergraduate Guest Writer
Chicago College of Osteopathic Medicine
My name is C.J. Skok and I am a MS-1 at the Chicago College of Osteopathic Medicine - Midwestern University. I attended Indiana University and earned a Bachelor of Science in Neuroscience and Psychology (Honors), with a minor in German.
