Better at verbal/humanities/language than math/sciences/engineering?

[FloridaSun]

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Hi SDNers,

I notice people on this board (and probably most pre-meds) tend to be stronger in sciences and math than verbal and humanities. Not terribly surprising.

However, I'm a lot stronger in verbal and humanities courses than I am in science courses.

Anyone else out there who's just a lot stronger in at verbal stuff? For those people, I have a couple of questions:

*What made you decide to go into medicine?
*Do you ever get frustrated that most of your pre-med classes aren't teaching you/testing you in areas that you're strongest in?

-FloridaSun

 

[jochi1543]

*What made you decide to go into medicine?

My volunteering experiences. I started volunteering at the community clinic out of boredom, because a friend did and suggested I come check it out, and I was like, hmmmm, I like this! After some soul-searching and testing my interest, I decided it was what I wanted to do.

*Do you ever get frustrated that most of your pre-med classes aren't teaching you/testing you in areas that you're strongest in?

Yeah, but such is life. If you do a search, you'll find many an SDN premed whining about how they had their @$$ handed over to them by an English lit or a Spanish class, while for me it's an easy GPA booster. I majored in a foreign language, and my major GPA is about 3.9. I'm not "bad" at science (outside of a C+/B brought on by freshman stupidity and laziness, my science GPA is pretty close to 3.7), but I actually have to work to get good grades in science classes. In the meantime, I'd do about an hour of homework a week to get As in my language or lit classes.

 

[lei217]

I am definitely stronger in language/verbal stuff than science/math. In fact, I was an English major before I decided to do pre-med. I didn't really see any occupations with an English major and when I took a biology class I loved it and along with a lot of other factors, I decided on medicine. However, I really struggle sometimes in chemistry and definitely in math. I am great with memorization so i tend to do well in biology but I am definitely strongest in the humanities and in language. I still have an English minor and have a 4.0 in that but my chemistry is a lot harder for me. As to your second question, I dont really feel frustrated that my pre-med classes aren't what I am strongest in I guess just because I know that they are necessary and they are challenging, which I like.

 

[vandyland10]

This is definitely true for me. I've never made lower than a B+ in any non-science/math class, but I have to work hard to pull off even a B in some of my science classes. It's very frustrating to be good at classes that I don't like very much (like ethics, English, etc.) and be seemingly mediocre in classes that I actually enjoy, like genetics 😡.

 

[futuredrcrawfor]

Yes I have much higher grades in everything outside science- I only got a B in one non-science class and it was 4000 level German studies course on the Holocaust...

Medicine is my passion- I have wanted to do that forever but I don't like chemistry at all! I am doing my best to make it through

I am a biology major because doing a history major would have been a 5 year thing for all the pre-med prereqs... I dislike studying plants and ecology but love genetics (even though I got a B) and other courses... unfortunately the degree plan here is about 1/2 things relative to humans/animals and 1/2 plants/ecology/evolution etc.

 

[Little Etoile]

Dear god yes. I have a 4.0 non-science, but a (much) lower science GPA.

Verbal and the humanities both come very easily for me. I dare say effortlessly. And I greatly enjoy it. But does it give me that rush like the sciences? Nah. Not even close.

I struggled with this for a looong time. Do you do what you're gifted at and enjoy, or do you do what excites you most even if it's not what you're best at? I generally leaned toward the latter but felt like maybe I was making a mistake. Just because you like watching baseball from the stands doesn't mean you should be out on the field playing the major league, right?

At the end of the day, though, I knew that doing something I liked and that came almost *too* easily to me would probably get old and feel like a death sentence eventually. Plus a career in medicine would afford me the luxury of pursuing those other verbal and humanities interests in my spare time. It's hard to do it the other way around.

To answer the second part of your post, I don't feel angry that they're not testing me on what I'm best at for a couple of reasons. First off, in some ways they are in fact doing that. You can apply the same analytical tactics that you would use in forming an argument in a humanities class as you would in solving, say, a physics problem. Second, I elected to take the course. They can test me however is most appropriate for that subject.

However, I *do* sometimes get spiteful when someone flaunts their aced science exam when my score was only mediocre. My competitive side comes out and I'm grumbling to myself, "Man, if this was a battle of essays in any other class I would so whoop you." >;D Just gotta remember that different people are better at different things.