booradley5 said:
Welcome, breeak! Good to meet another HES fall 2005
post-baccer.
I started college at 17 and I know what you are talking about in terms
of immaturity. My grades totally suffered on account of the Beast and
Jack Daniels. If I only knew then what I know now...but I guess I
would have not become the "well rounded" individual people claim I am
today. I feel that our prior experience makes us that much more
committed and appreciative of the new opportunity to follow our
dreams. I gotta wonder what is in the minds of people who go straight
through to med school after undergrad without experiencing what life
outside of medicine is like.
Are you retaking all of the prereqs or just the one's you did poorly in?
Yup, I had a good time in college too.
I don't really wish
things had been different. I needed the time to grow up - who I was as
a person needed to grow to match my brain, so to speak. If I'd gone to
med school straight out of college I would have been doing it for the
wrong reasons. I completely agree that the added experience gives us
an advantage, and frankly I wouldn't want to go back and skip the
various things I've had time and $$ for the past several years - it's
been fun to live a little. On a related note, I also think in most
ways it's a bigger commitment to leave an established adult lifestyle
to go back to school, back into debt, etc, than it is to transition
from one school to another, so I don't feel like I'll have a problem
convincing an admissions commitee that I'm going to be dedicated to
the field.
UMass pre-reqs expire 5 years after taking them unless you work in the
sciences, so basically if you don't apply straight out of college,
you're going to be retaking lots of courses. I definitely want to go
to UMass, can't beat the tuition and I have friends who went there and
loved it (excepting Worcester of course). So, I will have to retake
them all, although I'm pondering taking more advanced versions rather
than run of the mill intro courses. I'm a bit undecided on that
because getting A's is the most important part and it HAS been 6 years
since I was in school.
The physics classes at UMass this summer should give me an idea of how
much catching up I have to do. I pulled out my undergrad mechanical
physics book yesterday to take a look through, and OMG, I can't
believe I knew that stuff once. The math is way out of my league at
this point, quick calc review anyone?
I know you mentioned that
you feel shaky on the math, but I'm sure you can pick up the trig
pretty quickly. I used to teach Kaplan courses for the GREs and that
covers some (though not much) trig, so perhaps one of those review
books might help.