Sophmore in High School looking to pursue a medical career

[Mattjns93]

Hello everyone, the last few days I've been thinking about what I'm going to do after high school and I'd like to get some opinions. Since I was in elementary school or maybe even earlier I've always been interested in the medical field. I initially started as being interested in being an orthodontists then I went to a dentist. While those areas still interest me, I'm also considering working in a hospital.

A worry I'm having is if my grades are up to par. I'm not exactly sure what my grades should be. When it comes to my school work though, I always put my best effort into it. Procrastination is the last thing I ever do. I usually study and do homework for the majority of the night. Anyways, here are some of my grades so far:
Honors Chemistry- 93 first semester, 96 second semester, and 91 on final exam
Honors Biology- Average 96
Algebra II- 92
My unweighted GPA was a 3.7 and my weighted GPA was a 3.84. Is it going to make or break my medical career if I'm not in the top 5-6% of my class?

This summer I'm going to John's Hopkins University for a leadership medical program and I also plan on doing as much volunteer work as I can in the hospitals and other health care facilities.

Currently my biggest worry is if the medical career is for me. I absolutely love biology and the whole body fascinates me. I love to learn about the brain, the heart, anything really involving the human body. Also, my family has a long history of heart disease and we have went through many hard times (such as my dad almost having a heart attack, my grandfather having strokes and open heart surgery) and this has really influenced me to help others so that they do not go through what we have went through. I want to be able to help people like my dad and my grandfather, I never would want to see anyone suffer. This is really the main career that interests me and it always has been. The part that gets me though is the amount of different careers within the medical field. I don't even know where to begin.

Is there anything I can do that can give me a taste of the medical career to make sure it's for me? This is a long journey and I want to make sure it is the right journey for me. Also, how would you guys recommend I narrow down the different careers to find the one that would best suit me?

Thanks,
Matt

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[broken tibula]

http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=540759

Sticky threads are your friends. Also, the scroll bar.

http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=598027
http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=589332
http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=591179
http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=591151
http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=597518
http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=596878

The long and short of it is to try to volunteer or shadow in a hospital. I'm a little confused as to what you mean by narrowing down careers--do you mean fields of specialty? Medicine vs pharmacology vs dentistry vs podiatry, etc., etc.?

 

[Crazyday]

Hello everyone, the last few days I've been thinking about what I'm going to do after high school and I'd like to get some opinions. Since I was in elementary school or maybe even earlier I've always been interested in the medical field. I initially started as being interested in being an orthodontists then I went to a dentist. While those areas still interest me, I'm also considering working in a hospital.

A worry I'm having is if my grades are up to par. I'm not exactly sure what my grades should be. When it comes to my school work though, I always put my best effort into it. Procrastination is the last thing I ever do. I usually study and do homework for the majority of the night. Anyways, here are some of my grades so far:
Honors Chemistry- 93 first semester, 96 second semester, and 91 on final exam
Honors Biology- Average 96
Algebra II- 92
My unweighted GPA was a 3.7 and my weighted GPA was a 3.84. Is it going to make or break my medical career if I'm not in the top 5-6% of my class?

This summer I'm going to John's Hopkins University for a leadership medical program and I also plan on doing as much volunteer work as I can in the hospitals and other health care facilities.

Currently my biggest worry is if the medical career is for me. I absolutely love biology and the whole body fascinates me. I love to learn about the brain, the heart, anything really involving the human body. Also, my family has a long history of heart disease and we have went through many hard times (such as my dad almost having a heart attack, my grandfather having strokes and open heart surgery) and this has really influenced me to help others so that they do not go through what we have went through. I want to be able to help people like my dad and my grandfather, I never would want to see anyone suffer. This is really the main career that interests me and it always has been. The part that gets me though is the amount of different careers within the medical field. I don't even know where to begin.

Is there anything I can do that can give me a taste of the medical career to make sure it's for me? This is a long journey and I want to make sure it is the right journey for me. Also, how would you guys recommend I narrow down the different careers to find the one that would best suit me?

Thanks,
Matt

Welcome to the forums.

Regarding your grades, they are fine. High school does not matter at all in pursing a medical career, it helps you get into a decent undergrad but where you do your undergrad has very little influence on your ability to get into medical school. High school has no weight on that whatsoever. Barring that, you're doing excellent right now.

Shadowing physicians is really the only thing that can get you a decent exposure to the medical field, but even that is pretty iffy.

Going into medicine to help people is good, but it really isn't that glamorous. It is very naive to think you want to do it to help people, because a lot of your patients will be ungrateful, not follow your orders and go right down the same road, that sort of stuff. And you can't help everyone; there's a lot of people you won't be able to help. And you'll see a lot of suffering in the hospital.

Pursuing an MD to become a physician is the probably the most rigorous path in the medical field, and also the most financially rewarding and self-fulfilling later on in terms of autonomy and knowledge. (4 years college, 4 years med school, 3-7 years residency)

Being a doctor is a lot of responsibility. You will be working very hard, worrying about lawsuits, and there's a lot of stress.

Right now you'll have to go to college just like everyone else. From there explore different subjects and fields that interest you. If medicine is still on the top of your list, and you think you want to put yourself through it, then take the MCAT and apply to medical school.

Once you're in your 3rd and 4th years of medical school you'll get a firsthand exposure of each medical specialty on rotations and figure out where you want to go from there residency wise.

At this point in time, the best you can do is keep making the grades, do good on your ACT/SAT and get into a good college, one that you'll like and enjoy your 4 years at.


note: Dentistry and fields that aren't "MD" or "DO" I don't have any knowledge of. So I can't help you there, they are a different path though.

 

[xnfs93hy]

Hello everyone, the last few days I've been thinking about what I'm going to do after high school and I'd like to get some opinions. Since I was in elementary school or maybe even earlier I've always been interested in the medical field. I initially started as being interested in being an orthodontists then I went to a dentist. While those areas still interest me, I'm also considering working in a hospital.

A worry I'm having is if my grades are up to par. I'm not exactly sure what my grades should be. When it comes to my school work though, I always put my best effort into it. Procrastination is the last thing I ever do. I usually study and do homework for the majority of the night. Anyways, here are some of my grades so far:
Honors Chemistry- 93 first semester, 96 second semester, and 91 on final exam
Honors Biology- Average 96
Algebra II- 92
My unweighted GPA was a 3.7 and my weighted GPA was a 3.84. Is it going to make or break my medical career if I'm not in the top 5-6% of my class?

This summer I'm going to John's Hopkins University for a leadership medical program and I also plan on doing as much volunteer work as I can in the hospitals and other health care facilities.

Currently my biggest worry is if the medical career is for me. I absolutely love biology and the whole body fascinates me. I love to learn about the brain, the heart, anything really involving the human body. Also, my family has a long history of heart disease and we have went through many hard times (such as my dad almost having a heart attack, my grandfather having strokes and open heart surgery) and this has really influenced me to help others so that they do not go through what we have went through. I want to be able to help people like my dad and my grandfather, I never would want to see anyone suffer. This is really the main career that interests me and it always has been. The part that gets me though is the amount of different careers within the medical field. I don't even know where to begin.

Is there anything I can do that can give me a taste of the medical career to make sure it's for me? This is a long journey and I want to make sure it is the right journey for me. Also, how would you guys recommend I narrow down the different careers to find the one that would best suit me?

Thanks,
Matt

You have got to be kidding me...

NO!

None of the stuff you do in high school matters toward med/pharm/optometry, etc. school!

The only thing you can really do is volunteer. I also heard about that JHU thing, that should help you out too. You will not be able to find a PAYING job in a hospital if you are under 18. You CAN shadow doctors though.

Just keep up the good work, get into college, then chill out. That's it.

 

[Mattjns93]

Oh jeez. I never even saw those threads. I just found this forum about an hour ago so sorry for any repeated questions.

broken tibula, in regards to my narrowing down careers, I mean the fields of specialty like you listed.

I think I may be making this a bit more confusing for myself than I'm needing too. Thanks for all your replies.

 

[broken tibula]

Ah. See all threads in this forum with the word "specialty" in them. The general sentiment is that you don't need to--and can't--know until you're in medical school.

 

[strv04]

Is there anything I can do that can give me a taste of the medical career to make sure it's for me?

If you want a taste of a medical career where you actually get to do something and make medical decisions rather then just shadowing some doc i would recommend joining your local volunteer rescue squad and becoming an emt. You can do this during college or at home during the summer.

 

[lhtran07]

I've previously posted this in the pre-dents section, but thought it might help out here too.

The best insight you can get into whether or not med is for you is to talk to/shadow attendings, residents, and med students at a teaching hospital. They're more in touch with the "current events" within the medical field and the road that medicine is heading toward within the next 10 yrs.

I did that this summer (Medical Explorations program) and it allowed me to really see the in's and out's of the medical field......and from there I decided that pursuing an MD was not for me. DDS here I come!

Being a physician...it's more about managing a patient's care. You see the patient for maybe 3 minutes and then you're off charting and ordering more labs, workups, procedures. You don't do daily procedures unless you specialize and the only specialty that I was even interested in was interventional radiology. I like to be more hands-on with treatment...and dentistry is very hands-on and there's a lot of direct patient care involved. There's less "behind-the-scenes" care. Lifestyle is a big factor also.

One of the attendings I shadowed was talking about the growing trend of hospitals hiring more hospitalists, the decreasing reimbursements from insurance companies, and the decrease in GP's with more and more nurse practitioners coming in....all that just didn't sit well with me either.

On top of that, my boyfriend is a 4th year med student so seeing what all he's had to go through with boards, rotations, residency interviews....it all pushed me to go in the other direction.

But that's just my take on it...I shadowed both MD's and DDS's and absolutely love dentistry as opposed to medicine. And for some people its the other way around...so you really just have to explore and see which fits you more.

 

[Mattjns93]

This may be a stupid question but does everything in the medical field revolve around chemistry 100%? If so I'm screwed. After taking an honors chemistry class this year I can easily say it was one of the less enjoyable sciences I've learned. Not to say I hated it but I enjoyed biology much more. Though I'm sure having a teacher that I dreaded seeing every day may have had something to do with it. Taking chemistry just felt like taking another branch of Algebra in my opinion. I swear, there wasn't one equation/problem we did in that class that didn't feel like algebra.

 

[MilkmanAl]

Medicine involves tons of chemistry, but it's mostly practical application stuff, as far as I can tell. All of the calculations are greatly simplified. You don't need to particularly enjoy chemistry to function. I absolutely despised most of the chem I took in college, and I like med school just fine. Don't sweat it. It'd be a miracle if you thoroughly enjoyed every class ( in any subject) at all times.

 

[Pepipanda]

Yeah, Chem made me glad that I liked math and was good at it.

About your question, as far as I can tell, biology will be a major component. I mean, just think about what biology is. It's the study of living things, so, while chemistry will be important, especially when you talk about molecular biology, my guess is that biology will be a bigger focus, with chemistry and physics helping you to understand it all. But, seeing as I'm another high school sophomore, I could be off.

Also, I've found that how enjoyable a class is weighs heavily on the teacher. I don't really like history as a subject, but I look forward to the class because I have a great teacher.

 

[Mattjns93]

Well as long as I'm not going to be doing the problems we did in chemistry class I will be fine. It's like algebra, I hate the class but when I find a real life use of it I don't mind it at all. Overall I found my chemistry class to be easy but I did not enjoy it one bit.

 

[niranjan162]

Hello everyone, the last few days I've been thinking about what I'm going to do after high school and I'd like to get some opinions. Since I was in elementary school or maybe even earlier I've always been interested in the medical field. I initially started as being interested in being an orthodontists then I went to a dentist. While those areas still interest me, I'm also considering working in a hospital.

A worry I'm having is if my grades are up to par. I'm not exactly sure what my grades should be. When it comes to my school work though, I always put my best effort into it. Procrastination is the last thing I ever do. I usually study and do homework for the majority of the night. Anyways, here are some of my grades so far:
Honors Chemistry- 93 first semester, 96 second semester, and 91 on final exam
Honors Biology- Average 96
Algebra II- 92
My unweighted GPA was a 3.7 and my weighted GPA was a 3.84. Is it going to make or break my medical career if I'm not in the top 5-6% of my class?

This summer I'm going to John's Hopkins University for a leadership medical program and I also plan on doing as much volunteer work as I can in the hospitals and other health care facilities.

Currently my biggest worry is if the medical career is for me. I absolutely love biology and the whole body fascinates me. I love to learn about the brain, the heart, anything really involving the human body. Also, my family has a long history of heart disease and we have went through many hard times (such as my dad almost having a heart attack, my grandfather having strokes and open heart surgery) and this has really influenced me to help others so that they do not go through what we have went through. I want to be able to help people like my dad and my grandfather, I never would want to see anyone suffer. This is really the main career that interests me and it always has been. The part that gets me though is the amount of different careers within the medical field. I don't even know where to begin.

Is there anything I can do that can give me a taste of the medical career to make sure it's for me? This is a long journey and I want to make sure it is the right journey for me. Also, how would you guys recommend I narrow down the different careers to find the one that would best suit me?

Thanks,
Matt

What exactly about medicine interested u while u were in elementary school? You didnt know anything about it and probably still dont know. This forum is a good place to learn but most importantly is you have to shadow.

1. Try to do as much shadowing as possible because it will give you the most realistic perception of medicine you can.

2. Your a sophomore in high school. Nothing you do in high school matters. So enjoy being a dumb kid, because you are one, we all are in highchool so just enjoy it cuz growing up sux.

3. Read everything you can about healthcare in this country and other countries. By this i mean politics affecting healthcare, etc. etc. If your gonna do this for the rest of your life you should know the climate your entering and you can be sure it will come up during interviews (which you shouldnt worry about until they are scheduled).

You have got to be kidding me...

NO!

None of the stuff you do in high school matters toward med/pharm/optometry, etc. school!

The only thing you can really do is volunteer. I also heard about that JHU thing, that should help you out too. You will not be able to find a PAYING job in a hospital if you are under 18. You CAN shadow doctors though.

Just keep up the good work, get into college, then chill out. That's it.

careful jeffy alotta your questions come off sounding like the OP.

 

[Mattjns93]

Well the first thing that got me interested in medicine was my fascination with how the body works, why the body works, and I've always been intrigued by the advances in the medical world and what we are capable of doing to our body through advancements in the sciences and medical fields.

 

[xnfs93hy]

Sorry, OP.

 

[Maygyver]

Well the first thing that got me interested in medicine was my fascination with how the body works, why the body works, and I've always been intrigued by the advances in the medical world and what we are capable of doing to our body through advancements in the sciences and medical fields.

Hey, with your stats I am sure you will get into a good undergrad program. I would make the suggestion to look for some sort of pre-health scholars program or honors program. I am in a Biological scholars program and it is very helpful as you are surrounded by others with similar goals.

 

[Mattjns93]

Well I'm definitely going to be doing some volunteer work and shadowing this summer. I'm also going to look into becoming an EMT this fall when I get my driver's license. Any other comments are much appreciated. You guys are very helpful, thank you.