- Joined
- May 20, 2018
- Messages
- 38
- Reaction score
- 16
Hi everyone. I'm 21 and a student at berkeley. I went into college as a biology major/premed student, but unfortunately, I did extremely awful in my pre-requisite classes.
I was enrolled in general biology and an intro data science class this summer and did way better in the latter than I ever did in the former!
I was averaging around a B on the first two biology quizzes and then bombed the **** out of the 3rd quiz, which was literally on basic cell organelle function and not on any PhD-level biology qual exam or Fauci-written Internal Medicine book level stuff.
By contrast, I crammed for our Python and statistics data science midterm in 1.5 days and got a 90% raw, +0.8 SD above, when the median was a 76%. I had NEVER touched Python before the class started and only had some background in R.
So it's obvious I had no talent whatsoever in the hard sciences. I'd put in a decent amount of effort into studying and only end up 1-2 bins (histograms) to the right of the average on everything. And I always felt like I was at the bottom of the barrel, because...I was? Everyone else seemed to go to class stoned and ace everything.
Here are my grades for more context; it would round out to a high 3.5 sGPA or a low 3.6 sGPA.
I don't care if anyone thinks this was good because it felt so average. And I also do not care if the average biology major has around a 3.3 or 3.4 GPA, because I know a dude who did biology and graduated in 5 semesters with a 3.98. I know other science majors with a 3.9+. That's who I actually saw every day so the 3.3-3.4 statistic is faceless.
It completely sucked that I had a ton of passion for the field but just sucked so hard at science. People (even on SDN!) said I didn't suck (?) but I'm questioning how they saw this wasn't sucky? Like if you were good at science you'd have all A's and maybe one B+ if you took graduate quantum mechanics for funsies.
However, I was thinking of maybe doing a post-bacc and pursuing medicine later in life when I'm not competing with the best students in CA at UC Berkeley with a vastly underdeveloped/defective left side of my brain (the side that makes you good at science).
So I'm wondering what made all of you want to go pursue medicine after presumably making the decision to leave better-paying jobs.
I was enrolled in general biology and an intro data science class this summer and did way better in the latter than I ever did in the former!
I was averaging around a B on the first two biology quizzes and then bombed the **** out of the 3rd quiz, which was literally on basic cell organelle function and not on any PhD-level biology qual exam or Fauci-written Internal Medicine book level stuff.
By contrast, I crammed for our Python and statistics data science midterm in 1.5 days and got a 90% raw, +0.8 SD above, when the median was a 76%. I had NEVER touched Python before the class started and only had some background in R.
So it's obvious I had no talent whatsoever in the hard sciences. I'd put in a decent amount of effort into studying and only end up 1-2 bins (histograms) to the right of the average on everything. And I always felt like I was at the bottom of the barrel, because...I was? Everyone else seemed to go to class stoned and ace everything.
Here are my grades for more context; it would round out to a high 3.5 sGPA or a low 3.6 sGPA.
I don't care if anyone thinks this was good because it felt so average. And I also do not care if the average biology major has around a 3.3 or 3.4 GPA, because I know a dude who did biology and graduated in 5 semesters with a 3.98. I know other science majors with a 3.9+. That's who I actually saw every day so the 3.3-3.4 statistic is faceless.
It completely sucked that I had a ton of passion for the field but just sucked so hard at science. People (even on SDN!) said I didn't suck (?) but I'm questioning how they saw this wasn't sucky? Like if you were good at science you'd have all A's and maybe one B+ if you took graduate quantum mechanics for funsies.
- General Chem and Lab: A/A
- Organic Chemistry 1 and Lab: B-/A
- Calc I: B+
- Calc II: B+
- Stats: B+
- Biological Anthropology: A
- Psych Research Stats: A+
- Physiology: A
- Organic Chemistry 2: P (took everything P/NP during Spring 2020 because of COVID).
However, I was thinking of maybe doing a post-bacc and pursuing medicine later in life when I'm not competing with the best students in CA at UC Berkeley with a vastly underdeveloped/defective left side of my brain (the side that makes you good at science).
So I'm wondering what made all of you want to go pursue medicine after presumably making the decision to leave better-paying jobs.