Picking the right weakness for a secondary essay

[genghis99]

Filling out a secondary that asks for weaknesses - one of mine is that I don't really do well with juggling multiple things at the same time - I really organize my life so that things happen in a serial fashion. So if I have an exam, a research presentation, etc, I'll spend one week focusing on one thing and then the next week focusing on the other thing. I know medical school gets busy what with handling a much larger amount of classes along with research and other extracurriculars. Would it just hurt my application to mention this?

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[voxveritatisetlucis]

No as long as you mention steps you have taken to improve yourself.

 

[deleted1037524]

Filling out a secondary that asks for weaknesses - one of mine is that I don't really do well with juggling multiple things at the same time - I really organize my life so that things happen in a serial fashion. So if I have an exam, a research presentation, etc, I'll spend one week focusing on one thing and then the next week focusing on the other thing. I know medical school gets busy what with handling a much larger amount of classes along with research and other extracurriculars. Would it just hurt my application to mention this?

A mentor's suggestion for the challenge and similar prompts was to provide a story where you learn from your weakness -- not to 'spin it as a positive' but to show that you acknowledge your weakness and are actively improving. Stories do this better than explanations.

You could also tie it into medicine. What if you have to juggle several patients at once? (That'll definitely be a challenge for all of us as we grow into physicians). Perhaps a situation forced you to develop multitasking methods in spite of your weakness?

Edit: Being able to partition your schedule into manageable pieces is a valuable skill. You, as someone who doesn't do well with multitasking, (seem to have) already developed this out of necessity. That shows growth, but in the future, you will likely have to work in more granular blocks than one week at a time.