Newly Converted PreMed student, Tell me what you think of my plans

This forum made possible through the generous support of SDN members, donors, and sponsors. Thank you.

MountainManMike

New Member
7+ Year Member
Joined
Jul 15, 2016
Messages
10
Reaction score
1
Hi all,
My name is Michael and I'm currently a college sophomore in Louisiana. My whole life I was set on being an engineer and traveling the world. Last year I found out I have a bit of a gift with languages and that made me even more determined to be an engineer and work globally. My mom is a doctor and after hearing about all of the school she had to go through and all of the hard work, I wanted nothing to do with medicine and nothing to do with med school. I didn't want to be tied down to a place for that long.
This all changed after I got employed in the ER as a scribe where my mom works. (She had little to do with it other than telling me about the position, I've done everything else to get and keep this job, Sorry but people have been making it seem like the only reason I have the job is because of her and that's not 100% accurate) Anyways, tirade aside, I worked for two weeks before I started realizing I liked going to work. At the ripe age of 19 I have never had a job that I fully enjoyed. After the first month I knew that I would never be able to work anywhere outside of medicine and immediately began talking to doctors about medical school and just what it's like and for the first time it actually sounded fun.

The decision to change came actually after talking to a doctor I was scribing for that shift. The doc asked me what I wanted to do and I told him engineer, since I've pretty much guaranteed myself not being admitted to any medical school after my freshmen year in engineering. He told me that the best thing to do would be to change my major and show multiple years of academic improvement and success and not to let a bad freshmen year with no intention of medicine discourage me.
Side info: I'm ADHD and have had it since I was little, only started taking medication midway through high school. I really dig the ED and the chaos of the environment. I don't think I've ever connected with a place and functioned so well mentally before.


Okay, backstory aside,
I have roughly a 2.49 GPA from my first year of engineering. Mostly due to Calculus and the actual engineering course which is more or less applied calculus.
My plan is to change majors over to either premed or biology, hit the ground running and work my tail off. I'm more driven now than I ever have been before so I know that I'm going to stick with it.
I'm currently an ER scribe and I'm contracted in for the next year, the docs like me and every single shift I learn something new. Doctors apparently love to teach, which is good because I love learning. I'm about to start night classes a few days a week to get my EMT-B certification and start working with local EMS and volunteering with the parish.
Currently learning general anatomy and 1/4 through memorizing all 206 bones in the human body just so I know what I'm looking at whenever it comes into the ER, my favorite doc to scribe for taught me how to read 5 lead EKGs, and if anyone knows how to learn radiology please let me know.

What should I do to get into Med School, what worked for you lot?


tl;dr I wanna be a doctor, I'm a scribe right now and I have a garbage GPA with only one year of college that I didn't take seriously and also didn't do well in math.


Any and all advice, opinions, comments, or otherwise greatly appreciated.

Members don't see this ad.
 
Last edited:
If you start getting good grades, keep up with your clinical experience (also throw in some volunteering), and do very well on the MCAT, you should be able to get in somewhere. Lots of people have a terrible freshman year! You may not go to a top 10 med school, but you can definitely become a doctor. Good luck
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: 1 user
If you start getting good grades, keep up with your clinical experience (also throw in some volunteering), and do very well on the MCAT, you should be able to get in somewhere. Lots of people have terrible a freshman year! You may not go to a top 10 med school, but you can definitely become a doctor. Good luck
I've been talking to several people in my area about volunteering and getting the ball rolling on that before the end of summer hopefully. As for my MCAT, I've always been good at standardized tests but I figure sometime this fall I'll start looking over the material and familiarizing myself with it just to have it in my mind. I'm probably going to be on SDN a lot in the next few years. Hopefully I'll be getting a job as an ER Tech fairly soon, which I'm super excited about.
 
Top