Is one bad semester going to kill me?

[reyncoats]

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I feel so stupid for even posting about this in the first place but I got my grades back for this semester and it was easily my worst (just finished sophomore year), no thanks to OChem II. My anxiety is killing me right now, not only because everyone else I know did so well in the class, but also because my GPA will definitely show a downward trend after this year. I still have one more year to get everything back up before I apply, but I'm panicking because I've been chasing grades this whole time and now I feel stupid because it didn't yield anything good this semester.

Am I going to be fine? Will med schools look down upon this bad semester?

 

[Franzliszt1]

Hey thanks for sharing,

Take a step back and breathe. You have plenty of time to recover. Don't let a small stumbling block hold you back from pursuing your dream. When you say you have one year left you should consider that 1/3 of matriculants to medical school do not enter directly after college. Many applicants, such as myself, need their senior grades to help balance out some mediocrity in the first two years of undergrad.

If you've been "chasing grades" this whole time as you say, it might not be as bad as you think. Also, their could be a silver lining on this dark cloud. If you decide, like I did, that you need your senior grades to make your grade trend look pretty, you can have your whole summer between Junior and Senior year to study for the MCAT/ get some really good clinical experience.

Good luck going forward!