For many years, I avoided blogging like it was a foreign
movie without subtitles filmed only with a sepia filter. I figured my internal stream of consciousness
was erratic and abstract enough; I wasn’t sure if this was something I should elect
to subject the world to.
I’ve since caved.
Let’s go back a few years (2010-ish). A junior in college, I
finally made the conscientious decision to “try” to apply to a post-baccalaureate
program after college to maybe, one day, (if I sacrificed enough lambs or
burned enough incense) be accepted to perhaps one offshore medical school after
3 or 4 consecutive attempts or monetary coercions.
Fortunately, by the will of God/insert your favorite deity
here or outright clerical error, none of that had to happen and much like that
fortune teller who took my forty dollars in San Francisco (that part,
unfortunately, is true) promised, I ended up accepted to a sporadic bunch of schools
that were all miraculously in the United States after doing my time at a small,
quiet postbacc in Northern California. Said fortune teller also told me, “Child,
you will get into medical school. But
you will be, unfortunately, very unlucky in love for many many years.” She also told me that I will die at age 93 (does that mean the DAY I turn 93? Just sometime before 94? Is it chronic and
progressive? Is it fast and painless??) and that for an additional 300 dollars, she could remove the “black,
dark, cloud” that follows me around daily and hinders me from romantic
progression. I passed. I can deal with the dark and sinister absence
of love. But if she said med schools
would somehow let me in and forgive my black mars of an academic record, well…it
must be so.
PCOM was one of them.
And now, I am one of…them.
Those people in short coats that had the right to share the
wittily sardonic posts of tumblr’s #whatshouldwecallmedschool and post it to
their Facebook status without too many eyerolls. Those people who were allowed to whine about
their additional lack of sleep (nevermind that it was usually self-induced or
due to procrastination) without reprimand.
Those people who finally got to the fill the shoes of that ideology I willingly
chose to spend thousands of dollars on purchasing practice tests, preparation
courses, hyper-inflated costly remedial coursework to make up for a dismal science
GPA, and lest we forget, AACOMAS.
Before this evolves into that pit of vipers known as
StudentDoctorForum, I’ll put it all out there so that for those reading at
home, the ambiguity is over pretty quickly.
I was terrible in undergrad.
Well, sort of. I was a Theater
major, so I couldn’t really be too awful at that. But, I was concomitantly a Biology minor, and
rest assured, I was bad at that. A whopping 2.1 bad at that. I escaped the University of California Irvine
with barely a 2.89 (I try to suppress memories of reading my transcript), so
postbacc wasn’t really an option, it was a necessity, and one that didn’t make
guarantees when you got out. Similarly,
I took my MCAT 3 times. First time,
chickened out, pressed the “Void my test” button when I was done and enjoyed
many whiskey sours post-exam. I also
have a habit of taking this test on/around my birthday. It has zero symbolic significance. The second time around, I got a number that rhymes
a lot with shmwenty-one, which is code for “Nope.”
It’s like, 2012 now or something. I take it ONE MORE TIME before I leave for
Burning Man as an EMT (if you don’t know what that is, Google it. It’s not on the dark-net, don’t freak
out). I check my score in the middle of
the desert right before a night shift.
23.
Which is…..ultra-meh.
Like mediocre’s version of pale yellow.
I pray to God/gods/anyone who will hear me to let this poor hopeless sap
into medical school.
Once again, the universe bails me out. I won’t go into all this ad nauseum. My academic adventures, how I paid for it
(hint: it involves a lot of Trader Joe’s juice box survival kits and sleeping
in my Hyundai) deserves its own post…I could rant forever. The point is to get the statistics, and the
assumptions, out of the way. Too many
times I hear people, usually who were in the position I was about 1.5 years ago
say something akin to “I have no chance.
I have a blah blah blah GPA under 3.8.
I only did 12039120398102398120938 hours of volunteering. I can only juggle four pins on fire at once;
I was advised I should be able to juggle 5 or it’s off to the Caribbean for
me. My MCAT was less than a 40T. It’s
over.”
Most of those reading now are already in a position where
these trivialities (hah….to say it like they were never something you once
lived, breathed, sacrificed everything for) are something that doesn’t concern
us, or necessitates any more preponderance that what we ate for dinner last
Monday. But the thing is, I wish people (whomever
they are: misinformed advisors, medical students who can only speak from a
certain or limited circumstance, our parents, evil evil StudentDoctorForum) didn’t propagate this conspiracy
theory of pre-requisitioned perfection to one day be a good physician, or, in
the more immediate realm of things, being a decently competitive
applicant. I was far from perfect (still
far, all the time, everyday), and worked very, very, very hard to end up being
very, very, very….average. But it was what you put in - not necessarily the
end-result- that is a greater testament to your character, your tenacity, your
ability. Some may disagree with me (cue:
anyone that every created a standardized exam).
And there is much truth in saying that yes, there are many technical
achievements you have to demonstrate before you enter into a field like
this. But as someone who DID experience
the seeming kiss of death of a sub-3.0 GPA, someone who DID go through a
postbacc program in league with people from scary-sounding schools like UC
Davis, or Stanford, as someone who DID, freakishly enough, make it into 3
schools all before Christmas, I get it.
It’s hard.
Which is why I willingly write so openly today. Medical school is tough. For me, anyways. It’s always been hard. Sometimes it can be incredibly fascinating,
and other times…believe it, it can be incredibly boring. Sometimes it’s not the material that’s
hard. Sometimes the difficultly stems from
“Sorry Grandma, I know I haven’t called in 2 months,” or “It’s just not working
out, I’m too busy right now and I know it’s not really fair to keep you waiting.”
Sometimes the difficulty arises from “I need to run. I need to study. I don’t want to turn into the Michelin man as
I study. I don’t want to not study and be skinny and dumb.” Sometimes, no, most times…it’s all of those
things.
So, in 1,300 words or less, this was/is your Introduction to
the Human Anatomy of a Short Coat. Mine
will be different than the person’s next to me, or yours, or my
predecessors. It won’t always make
chronological sense-it’s not supposed to.
It’s my ruminations, the ebb and flow of what goes on in my mind before a
practical when I’m hot and sweaty and scared, or the first date with someone I’ve
been set up with yet again, or when I’m annoyed (everyday), or when I get MRSA and
nearly die of sepsis and the hot resident has to take a look at my pectoral
lesions (too late, that already happened: it was the worst), etc etc etc.
Until more words come, keep it short, be healthy, and other
salutations that come at the end of blogs.
But most importantly, keep trying.
-Veronica
