Am I barking up the wrong tree?

[Wackie]

---

Members do not see this ad.

I'm looking at grades like this for the semester:
Art appreciation B
Algebra A or B
World Cult. A or B
Bio I C 🙁

And I have legitimate reasons for subpar performance. What pisses me off is that I always have legitimate reasons. I use summer and winter breaks to pick myself up off the ground before the semester starts.
It never fails, something horrible happens during the beginning of the semester.
I already have bad grades because I wound up homeless due to my father. And bad grades from dealing with my mother's death.
I quit school for a bit and started back up in a fall semester. I did okay that school year and got a 3.5 gpa while working full time.
The next fall, the problems started again. I got an abscessed tooth which reabscessed because of a bad dentist. This equaled a month's worth of terrible pain. That same semester, my newborn nephew almost died. I got a 3.3 for that semester.
Spring semester, my husband was in a motorcycle accident. We had bills we had to front despite the fact that the accident wasn't his fault. This caused a lot of financial strain which we're still dealing with. Despite this, I got a 4.0 for the semester.
Over the summer, I learn my tooth hasn't healed properly and I've been going to an endodontist twice a month to try some other hopeless deal to fix it (I'm about to tell her yank it...I don't have time for this anymore).
This fall semester, I learn my other nephew (not the newly born one) is getting abused by his stepfather. I started at a new school. I started a new job. My husband and I are on the brink of divorce. For two out of four tests in my biology class, I've been pretty sick while taking them.

And I think...you can explain a few bad grades with circumstances outside of school. But my life is ridiculous. I should be a hermit. I'm close to a nervous breakdown after this semester. I can't concentrate to save my life. But I can't quit school because I've already done that once. And it's not like it helps anyway. I'm cursed, I think. It's like life is trying to jerk away my dreams or like it's trying to break me.
I mean, gawd damn...enough drama already! Why can't I just go to school and go to work without disasters!

I just know that some adcom would look at me and think, "All of that crap happened to you? Yeah right." But it has and my grades are suffering. I'm okay with not being a doctor if I can't do it. But I'm not okay with all the **** happening to me and causing me to lose this dream.
What do I do?

 

[DrMidlife]

Hm. OK, so I'm female, 40, with a psycho family that is always in one crisis or another for the last, um, 100 years. And at 38 I decided to go premed. For me it could not have happened any earlier than this. I could not have been any variety of giving professional mature health provider at any time earlier than this. I was too distracted, at what I call the emotional-molecular level, by family and boyfriend issues. And the punchline is that it's all too weird to put down on a med school PS as any kind of "here's what I learned; here's what made me strong" even though imho surviving my history is 99% of what will make me a good caring doctor.

Family gets right up on your face and you can't see around it. I talked elsewhere about how husbands/boyfriends are the same way. Two pop-psych terms come to mind: 1) codependency and 2) detachment. The first one is bad, and totally inconsistent for me with my med school goal. The second one is good, and it's changed my life - a gentler way to say it is "detach with love." Are there places where you're entangled with people in unhealthy ways, and if so, can you untangle yourself? How many bowling balls do you carry around all day?

Where you are is where you are. Even if everything normalized this afternoon, there's still a hangover and then there's a wtf period and in my case then there's 10 years of growing up that got delayed. In my estimation, now might not be the best time for you to compete with the brightest stars in the universe, with respect to GPA and MCAT. I think that now might be the best time for you to make a different contribution, one which prepares you to compete with the brightest stars at a later time. I'm saying it's not a bad thing to quit school again if you know you're not in a position to excel. Other experiences - in public health, education, advocacy, etc. - could serve you well until the time comes for you to excel at undergrad.

This got long-winded, but just one more thing. I recommend starting a collection of mature women and men who have their **** together, who aren't related to you, who see the good in you, and who aren't afraid to tell you when/if you're making a mistake. Maybe your family is strong and mature and nurturing and loving, and maybe I'm "barking up the wrong tree" but I think you need a support system of your own making, in order to pursue med school in a sane and rational manner.

This is going to sound really lame, but I wish you inner peace. And some better luck.

 

[MiesVanDerMom]

i have a crazy life too. the thing i realized is that my life will be just as crazy in med school, residency, and as a doctor. so i told myself either I start getting all A's and ace the MCAT despite this crap or I give up on medicine. You have to find a way to do this because adcoms are NOT understanding people. They're really really not.