Non-medical volunteering questions

[Argonaut8]

There are two types of volunteering that I currently do and love, and I'm just curious if they'll also end up being good for my application.

-Volunteering for my political party. I guess it's true that most pre-meds are apolitical, because I couldn't really find any threads about this. I volunteer at my party's local headquarters (for my county) answering phones, stuffing envelopes, phone banking, canvassing, setting up meetings, etc. I'm passionate about the cause and would love to continue doing it and get into more leadership-type roles, but if it's useless on my app because politics are too sticky a subject, I'm sure I could find something else I love that would be good on my app.

-Donating breast milk to the International Breast Milk Project (www.breastmilkproject.org). I donate my milk and they make it into a human milk fortifier for critically ill American preemies and African infants orphaned by poverty and HIV/AIDS. I don't imagine that if I regularly donated blood that I would put that on my app and in a way it's similar, but on the other hand, I pump every single day to donate so it's really an ongoing, regular thing that I'll probably end up doing for a year or more. I certainly wouldn't stop doing this if it was useless on my app, but I was just curious what you guys thought?

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[nontrdgsbuiucmd]

My personal opinion here, but given your limited volunteer time, I'd look into some different areas.

Reason being: if you are a Republican, and I am a Democrat, I hate you. (somewhat jokingly, but seriously, read the WSJ or New York Times editorial pages. Many people are truly vitriolic about politics, polarization tends to increase with age). It seems tough to talk about this in an interview without getting into a political discussion. And if your political views do not coincide with the interviewer, you're not one of "us". You're one of "them".

#2 - If you are a woman, and I am older, stuffy, admissions director, and you tell me about lactating and expressing milk, I'm all of a sudden VERY squeamish.

Both of those emotions are not ones I'd want the admissions folk to have.

There are lots of things one does as an applicant that are not primarily done because one enjoys them (seriously, after cleaning the first 100 beds, I really stopped getting so much out of it) but rather because that's what's expected, normal, maybe somewhat boring. I think it would be great to be the leader of (name some obscure organization here) or to have traveled to (name some distant country). But for the most part, the correct "blank" to fill out for volunteer work has kind of an expectation on the part of the med schools.

 

[cdmccart]

I agree with nontrdgsbuiucmd. I don't know if it's possible to list your volunteer work with your political party without stating which party it is you volunteer for. I guess you could list it and just hope they don't ask about it in the interview. And if they DO bring it up in the interview you either have to be willing to a) say you're not comfortable discussing your party affiliation or b) discuss your party and risk being discriminated against.

As far as the breast milk, I'd also agree that discussing pumping breast milk could get awkward in an interview. If there's a way you could get involved in other aspects of the organization, then I'd recommend that. I think you should continue donating your breast milk, but I think getting involved in other ways would allow you to list it on your app and make it a more comfortable topic to discuss.