I think the point I am trying to make is that if you weren't a cookie-cutter applicant you wouldn't have to be the best of cookie-cutter applicant to get into med school. I got into a great program with hardly any volunteering and absolutely no research. My buddy got into a top program, no volunteering, no research. Neither of us graduated HS committed to becoming doctors. So, it's weird to us when we see folks here posting "I got X, Y, Z, president of 8 clubs, shadowing since I was 5, ect." Like, there are so many folks on here beating themselves to death trying to be quantitatively the most competitive candidate when you can actually just be qualitatively different and have a lot more fun doing it.
Like the Astronaut from Harvard. Do you think that guy joined the SEALS because he wanted to go to Med School? A lot of these ECs mentioned here are dudes from the military but you don't even have to do that. You can be a language teacher in a foreign country. You can work a trade here. Some of the folks I rubbed elbows with in my travels are big-wall climbers or dog-sledding guides. One of the folks I met at my EMT course is a mountaineering guide. Think of that, there are people who spend years essentially living out of a backpack and leading expeditions up Denali. Do you think that might be good source material for a personal statement or interviews?
I guess the big picture is that you have the option to be non-traditional and there are a lot of benefits to being non-trad. And, if you took a second to think about some of the things you might want to see or do before you committed yourself to the next 40 years of your life, you might end up on a very interesting path that would reinforce your ability to obtain a med school seat, improve your ability to handle med school, and probably improve your abilities as a physician.