Sophomore drop deadline is tonight: About to give up on pre med.

[seh5408]

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I really could use some advice. I'm a sophomore majoring in history and African Studies at Penn State University, while taking pre med prerequisites.

I'm currently taking first year chem and second year bio. I like bio, it comes easily to me and I am interested in it. But I absolutely hate chemistry. I hate math, and am bad at it as a result. I'm just not really a big attention to details guy, I sit down to do our online chem homework and can't even get through the explanations of the problems, I just bs my way through it.

I'm really thinking of giving up on pre med, and just following my majors. I'm really good at writing and history, and I have a lot of passion for african studies.

But being a doctor is something I've been thinking about for a few years now. And it was the only thing that I completely thought of, every other career idea has been introduced to me from someone else. I'm afraid I will miss the way my brain thinks when I'm thinking my way through a bio problem.

But I hate chem now, and I'm not sure I want to be a doctor in the future. Helping people and pursuing a discipline like medicine are really important to me, but when I think about the fact that I won't really be "working' until I'm thirty, I just shake my head. I love the idea of graduating and just getting a job, and I'm sure I could.

But I also really don't want to have just a regular desk job. Medicine is a passionate job and I need that.

So i'm really torn. I can take these pre med classes and see how I like them, because they would satisfy my science general education requirements.
Or I can drop them and take these two really cool history and african studies classes I want. So I'm just not sure. If anyone could shed some insight, or talk about their own experience, please do.

Thanks

 

[SN12357]

I really could use some advice. I'm a sophomore majoring in history and African Studies at Penn State University, while taking pre med prerequisites.

I'm currently taking first year chem and second year bio. I like bio, it comes easily to me and I am interested in it. But I absolutely hate chemistry. I hate math, and am bad at it as a result. I'm just not really a big attention to details guy, I sit down to do our online chem homework and can't even get through the explanations of the problems, I just bs my way through it.

I'm really thinking of giving up on pre med, and just following my majors. I'm really good at writing and history, and I have a lot of passion for african studies.

But being a doctor is something I've been thinking about for a few years now. And it was the only thing that I completely thought of, every other career idea has been introduced to me from someone else. I'm afraid I will miss the way my brain thinks when I'm thinking my way through a bio problem.

But I hate chem now, and I'm not sure I want to be a doctor in the future. Helping people and pursuing a discipline like medicine are really important to me, but when I think about the fact that I won't really be "working' until I'm thirty, I just shake my head. I love the idea of graduating and just getting a job, and I'm sure I could.

But I also really don't want to have just a regular desk job. Medicine is a passionate job and I need that.

So i'm really torn. I can take these pre med classes and see how I like them, because they would satisfy my science general education requirements.
Or I can drop them and take these two really cool history and african studies classes I want. So I'm just not sure. If anyone could shed some insight, or talk about their own experience, please do.

Thanks

Don't judge whether or not you should be a doctor off of chem, or any other prereq class. Being a doctor has very, very little in common with the basic science prereqs. You should base whether or not you want to be a doctor off of your interest in medicine and exposure, through volunteering or shadowing, to the day to day life of medical professionals.

If you want to be a doctor, you push through and survive chem/phsycis/calculus/the MCAT and all the other mostly arbitrary hoops we jump through.

That being said, the lifestyle and the long training period are legitimate reasons not not want to go to medical school, and only you can make that decision.

There are lots of people who pursue medicine after college (I am one, in the nontrad forum there are many of us) so you shouldn't feel you have to decide RIGHT NOW either. You can work for a few years after college and then apply. More and more people are doing that (check out the average age of matriculation--Michigan just announced that 70% of their entering class took at least one gap year).

 

[Koalafied]

I really could use some advice. I'm a sophomore majoring in history and African Studies at Penn State University, while taking pre med prerequisites.

👍x5

I'm currently taking first year chem and second year bio. I like bio, it comes easily to me and I am interested in it. But I absolutely hate chemistry. I hate math, and am bad at it as a result. I'm just not really a big attention to details guy, I sit down to do our online chem homework and can't even get through the explanations of the problems, I just bs my way through it.

For the sake of your purpose, understanding the fundamental concepts are more important than crunching numbers. Understanding the concepts, initially, make the number crunching easier and sometimes even faster.😀 Get some tutoring.👍 Gen chem should not be your "weed-out" course and neither should organic chem.😉

I'm really thinking of giving up on pre med, and just following my majors. I'm really good at writing and history, and I have a lot of passion for african studies.

Then why are you a pre-med from the get-go?

But being a doctor is something I've been thinking about for a few years now. And it was the only thing that I completely thought of, every other career idea has been introduced to me from someone else. I'm afraid I will miss the way my brain thinks when I'm thinking my way through a bio problem.

You're afraid of thinking critically?😕

But I hate chem now, and I'm not sure I want to be a doctor in the future. Helping people and pursuing a discipline like medicine are really important to me, but when I think about the fact that I won't really be "working' until I'm thirty, I just shake my head. I love the idea of graduating and just getting a job, and I'm sure I could.

Why medicine?

But I also really don't want to have just a regular desk job. Medicine is a passionate job and I need that.

What's a "regular desk" job? 😕

So i'm really torn. I can take these pre med classes and see how I like them, because they would satisfy my science general education requirements.
Or I can drop them and take these two really cool history and african studies classes I want. So I'm just not sure. If anyone could shed some insight, or talk about their own experience, please do.

You seem to have more interest and passion in African Studies than anything else. I guess you can have specialized focus on these demographics when you're a doctor; more sympathy and perhaps empathy.🙂

Thanks

You're welcome.🙂

 

[aesculapian]

And something that I learned as an undergrad was that a career in medicine isn't the only way to help people, if that's the most important thing for you. Social work, education, health policy-- all of these (and so many other options) are paths that involve investing in people, that require passion on a daily basis, that sometimes require working with people when they're at their most vulnerable, just like medicine.

If you want to be a doctor, heart and soul, 1000%, you will find a way to do it. Chem will suck, perhaps, but in the long run it won't matter because you've got your sights set on a larger goal.

I will also note that you shouldn't write off a career just because it was introduced to you by someone else. It doesn't matter where you got the idea, as long as ultimately you're happy with that choice.

 

[jombojuice22]

I absolutely hate chemistry. I hate math, and am bad at it as a result. I'm just not really a big attention to details guy, I sit down to do our online chem homework and can't even get through the explanations of the problems, I just bs my way through it.

I'm really thinking of giving up on pre med, and just following my majors. I'm really good at writing and history, and I have a lot of passion for african studies.

when I think about the fact that I won't really be "working' until I'm thirty, I just shake my head. I love the idea of graduating and just getting a job, and I'm sure I could.

Whatever you do, DO NOT screw up your GPA. Don't be one of the people with a sub-3.0 GPA fighting an uphill battle just to get someone to look at their application. Don't BS your way through your homework - even if you end up not pursuing pre/medicine, you had damn well better suck it up and do well in that chemistry class. You may have to devote a lot of time to this. You may not be able to go out and party as much as you wanted to. Get a tutor, have your friends help explain things to you (but don't just copy their answers).

Keep in mind that around 50% of doctors would not choose medicine again, if they could go back in time and decide to pursue something else. You really don't want to find yourself 30 years old, in lots of debt, wishing you had gone and done something in Africa or become a history teacher. Do what you want to do. If it ends up not being what you expected, you're unhappy, you can't make a living doing what you want to do, etc, medicine will still be there. You can always go into medicine - people can and do change careers at age 40. You won't be as well-off financially as people who go straight to med school from undergrad, but you may have a higher chance of not being miserable and that's far more important.

Once you accumulate 300k in med school debt you are pretty much stuck being a doctor for a big chunk of your life. Don't go into this lightly.


The worst possible thing you could do would be to become a doctor and wish you had done something else. The second worst possible thing you could do would be to continue with pre-med even though you aren't ready to handle the science courses, screw up your GPA, and kill any future chance you may have had at getting accepted to med school. "Wasting" the next 5-6 years pursuing something you are passionate about and THEN deciding to go to med school... Seems like a good way to avoid finding yourself saying "woulda coulda shoulda".


It sounds to me like you should forget about the "pre-med" major and pursue what you're interested in. Take those two really cool classes you want to take. Try to still do shadowing, hospital volunteering, and work in the pre-med classes when you have a chance (assuming you're confident you will be able to crush them and get A's). If you end up deciding to go into medicine you can go back and finish up the pre-reqs with post-bacc work if you need to. Not a big deal. Make sure you get A's in everything you take, so you don't have any GPA problems if you decide you want to go to med school after all sometime down the line.


I think I basically just said the same thing three times. In any case, whatever you do, do it well and throw yourself into it 100%

 

[Cartoons]

Don't sweat it! You've got time. Plenty of people do post-bacc programs and blaze through those classes with the pressure of the 'first crack at college' thing off their shoulders. A history major with a minor from the humanities doesn't leave a whole lotta room for those sciences, so don't be afraid to pace yourself. Heck, take 5 years for undergrad. African studies could sync with medicine nicely; the place is a smorgasbord of health issues, so it isn't like going into medicine will divorce you from it entirely! And those history classes will give you a leg up on the VR section of the MCAT.

Don't BS your way through science classes. They're there to show whether the kind of work you'll be doing in your first two years of med school is up your alley, for the most part. Biology's "memorize all this biz-nass" approach is pretty close to med classes, I hear, so if you like it, more power to ya. Plenty of people are bitter about Chemistry and Physics though, so focus on the problem-solving mentality that comes with those classes. Tackle tutors and give yourself time for those classes. Organic is like learning a new language, so don't look at it the same way as you do General Chemistry.

All that said and done, ever thought about Public Health? As far as I know, it's wide open to non-science degrees (except maybe epidemiology), and I imagine it would let you take advantage of all those sexy cultural and socioeconomic studies you'll be vaulting over in undergrad and applying them in the healthcare field of things. It's rough finding work right out of undergrad with a history degree unless you have some connections, but PH is shorter than the road to medicine by a long shot.

In short, I'd say you sound like you're panicking, and making any big decision in that state of mind is a bad idea. Maybe put the chemistry off to the spring or summer and take those classes you want to jump on. Reconsider when you've had time to step back and think about the long run.

 

[sliceofbread136]

Bio is much more indicative of med school than chem or math.

But none of that matters at all, what is that you go SHADOW and see if you like it.

 

[Resilience]

I'm just not really a big attention to details guy

How do you expect to be a doctor when you can't pay attention to details? Seems to me like you need to change that in order to have any chance of being an effective physician.