Roughly fifteen weeks remain until I take the Medical College Admission Test, better known as the MCAT. Pre-med students talk about the MCAT with their fellow classmates even before they begin their undergraduate careers, exemplifying how much of an emphasis the medical field places on this one standardized test. I have heard many horror stories since I was a freshman in high school about the MCAT and I still don't know what to expect.
When I first began my undergraduate career in the fall of 2010, I felt confident that I would be accepted into a top-tier medical school, whether that be NYU, Columbia, UCSF, etc. I quickly became friends with other pre-med students who all shared the same dream as me - to one day be able to help others as a doctor. Through this one common dream, my friends and I learned to study together and to support each other through many highs and lows.
I wish I could say that our friendships remained so strong that we never had any arguments or problems but unfortunately that is not the case. I personally felt that I was always good at dealing with the stress of academics but this was far from the truth. In my sophomore year, my friends and I all took the infamous organic chemistry. It is infamous for many reasons, the first being that it is considered to be one of the most difficult undergraduate science courses offered in any college curriculum. Second, specifically at NYU, our professor was known to give exams that had horribly low averages, often in the 40s or 50s. I took the advice of a friend who had just finished the course and studied in advance over the summer prior to the start of the course. By the time the first exam came around, I felt like I knew everything there was to know about organic chemistry - resonance, synthesis, mechanisms, etc.
But one by one, my friends succumbed under the stress and pressure of the course as the year progressed. I still feel terrible that at the time I failed to realize how stressed out each one of them were; I continued to be the same arrogant, cocky student I was from freshman year, joking out loud about how easy the exams were in front of the entire class. And slowly, all of my friends, one by one, began to avoid me throughout the school year. At first I figured they were all just busy with their own schedules and studying so I didn't think much of it. And for the entire school year, my friends and I slowly drifted apart.
Finished with organic chemistry forever, my friends and I began to hang out again in junior year like we had freshman year. I made a half-joking comment over dinner one day to one of them about how I found it funny we all never spent much time together sophomore year. "Do you want to know why we didn't hang out with you? It's because you stressed us the fuck out. I've cried on multiple occasions just because of you alone." My friend's words were one of the biggest wake-up calls of my life. The thought never occurred to me that my friends avoided me because my attitude towards my academics directly affected them as well. How could I call myself their friend when I was one of the reasons that brought them to the point of falling apart completely? To this day, I'm still grateful that they chose to remain my friends because I don't know what I would do without them - all throughout college they have always been there to listen to me when I needed someone to talk to, when I wanted a partner to grab lunch or dinner with, or when I just wanted to hang out with someone and talk about the most pointless things in the world. I truly believe that my group of friends have made me become a better person from the apathetic, arrogant, cocky, self-centered boy I was when I first entered college. It is in their unconditional love that I see God.
And it has been upsetting that many of the pre-med students who I became friends with have dropped the program for various reasons, the number one reason being mediocre grades. I can only imagine what it must feel like to give up on your dream of becoming a doctor only because you did not receive a high grade in a course that probably has nothing to do with medicine anyways. But God has a different plan for all of us as much as it still upsets me that many of my friends will not be joining me as a doctor. But I'm still happy that many of them will join me as nurses, physician assistants, etc. I believe that God is calling each one of them to be involved in healthcare in some way and I'm excited for the opportunity to be working with them in the future.
And although I have many doubts and worries with regards to the quickly approaching MCAT and applications I must fill out over the summer, I believe that if I submit my career and my life to God, He will ultimately lead me down the road meant for me, whether that be as a doctor or something completely different. But for now, I am going to return to reading up on neuromuscular junctions!
Why do you want to be a doctor?
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