Hello everyone..
Throwaway account here, I'm an applicant applying this cycle. I just wanted to simply remind everyone that it is always a good idea to google yourself and to make sure that nothing unprofessional shows up during the admissions cycle.
Yesterday, I had one heck of an afternoon. I rarely, if ever, use social media, and have no inappropriate content whatsoever online. Well, yesterday, my boss at my job called me in to ask if I had googled myself recently. I told her, well yeah, I occasionally do so just to make sure nothing bad shows up, it had been a little while though, I didn't think much of it. Well, sure enough, she googled my name, and the 6th result down, someone who I had NEVER met before, and is clearly some type of SPAMMER/SLANDERER, had a tweet with a quote using MY NAME (an uncommon name at that) saying something completely inappropriate and highly expletive!!
I was shocked, I DON'T EVEN USE TWITTER! I didn't do anything in this situation, literally nothing. And yet, if you googled my first and last name, a quote showed up that made me out to be a huge SEXIST! If any adcoms googled me, I'd be screwed, even though this is pretty obviously NOT ME...I basically freaked out, spent all afternoon trying to figure out how to get it taken down from Google, and finally, as of this morning, it doesn't show up anymore on google. WHEW, it was quite a process to get it removed though.
I'm using this as a PSA to you all: Google yourself, just to be safe. I was innocent;I don't use social media, am a very tame, young professional, just like most of you. Yet, this still happened. I couldn't believe it. Of course, being my neurotic self, I was thinking how my med school chances were over, because some other terrible person happened to draw my lucky name out of the hat. I am still paranoid that adcoms might have seen it, explaining why I only have 1 interview
I can only hope the schools I applied to didn't see this. Like I mentioned, I do already have interview for next week, so I am assuming I will be alright, but wow am I going to make sure to check up on this more often. I hope you all do the same, especially during the app cycle.
Best of luck to you all!
Throwaway account here, I'm an applicant applying this cycle. I just wanted to simply remind everyone that it is always a good idea to google yourself and to make sure that nothing unprofessional shows up during the admissions cycle.
Yesterday, I had one heck of an afternoon. I rarely, if ever, use social media, and have no inappropriate content whatsoever online. Well, yesterday, my boss at my job called me in to ask if I had googled myself recently. I told her, well yeah, I occasionally do so just to make sure nothing bad shows up, it had been a little while though, I didn't think much of it. Well, sure enough, she googled my name, and the 6th result down, someone who I had NEVER met before, and is clearly some type of SPAMMER/SLANDERER, had a tweet with a quote using MY NAME (an uncommon name at that) saying something completely inappropriate and highly expletive!!
I was shocked, I DON'T EVEN USE TWITTER! I didn't do anything in this situation, literally nothing. And yet, if you googled my first and last name, a quote showed up that made me out to be a huge SEXIST! If any adcoms googled me, I'd be screwed, even though this is pretty obviously NOT ME...I basically freaked out, spent all afternoon trying to figure out how to get it taken down from Google, and finally, as of this morning, it doesn't show up anymore on google. WHEW, it was quite a process to get it removed though.
I'm using this as a PSA to you all: Google yourself, just to be safe. I was innocent;I don't use social media, am a very tame, young professional, just like most of you. Yet, this still happened. I couldn't believe it. Of course, being my neurotic self, I was thinking how my med school chances were over, because some other terrible person happened to draw my lucky name out of the hat. I am still paranoid that adcoms might have seen it, explaining why I only have 1 interview
I can only hope the schools I applied to didn't see this. Like I mentioned, I do already have interview for next week, so I am assuming I will be alright, but wow am I going to make sure to check up on this more often. I hope you all do the same, especially during the app cycle.
Best of luck to you all!
