- Joined
- Mar 8, 2008
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Hello everyone. I am going to spill my guts in the hopes that I will feel better =) If you take the time to read this and share your thoughts I would greatly appreciate your point of view. So far, I have greatly benefited from reading these posts but have never posted myself.. so thanks again. I am a third year medical student and I have been having incredible difficulty finding my place in the medicial system. A part of me feels like i do not belong in medicine.. I am definitely not the kind of person who is going to jump ship for big pharm or anything like that.. (it's ironic that i did pick up an MBA along the way) ..but what i really enjoy in medicine are the more altruistic aspects, prevention and the softer side of connecting with patients. i probably should have been a therapist or something =) I guess I am one of those 'I'd rather be healer than treat a disease' kinda people and I am not a huge fan of using medication for everything especially lifestyle issues.
I was surprised to find that inpatient psych appealed to me because previously i felt like i would think that psych overly relied on meds.. but in the hospital, there is an acute situation that needs to be controlled or the person is sent on their way with the resources they need if they wish to follow up (in theory at least). and mental health treatment seems to make a lot more sense to me than giving someone a bunch of meds that they could avoid if they would eat differently and move around every so often. at this point.. what are your thoughts? am i making a lot of assumptions that may not be true? do other people feel this way? Now, i have the feeling that if I were going to enter the field, I would really want to be involved in academics in order to increase what I consider to be the good aspects of my job - even being an educator has a positive and appealing quality to it but it would be awesome to get involved with research or other side projects that an academic setting may facilitate, leadership roles really appeal to me as well. long term, i'm really in to a lot of body/mind stuff but i'm okay with keeping that on the back burner during residency.
I am at a school that is barely on the radar but the education is solid. My scores are not stellar - 222 on step 1, average class standing, i do really well on interviews and i am an easy person to work with, pretty passionate, i'm going to work on having good letters, i have been involved with some interesting and altruistic extracurriculars, and i have a pretty good entrepreneurial/creative side. now here come some specific questions in case anyone prefers that kind of thing, but feel free to write anything back even if you feel it's totally random.
would i be a decent candidate for academic psych programs? what would you recommend to be a better candidate? for some reason, i feel drawn to the west coast - i think it's because out there people seem more in to the 'softer side' of medicine and there's less hierarchy and more progressive attitudes towards medicine. would it be real challenging to do both - get in to an academic program on the west coast? i'll cut it off here because this is already becoming monstrous and loose =) thank you so much for reading this. i can't tell you how much i would appreciate some guidance right now.
I was surprised to find that inpatient psych appealed to me because previously i felt like i would think that psych overly relied on meds.. but in the hospital, there is an acute situation that needs to be controlled or the person is sent on their way with the resources they need if they wish to follow up (in theory at least). and mental health treatment seems to make a lot more sense to me than giving someone a bunch of meds that they could avoid if they would eat differently and move around every so often. at this point.. what are your thoughts? am i making a lot of assumptions that may not be true? do other people feel this way? Now, i have the feeling that if I were going to enter the field, I would really want to be involved in academics in order to increase what I consider to be the good aspects of my job - even being an educator has a positive and appealing quality to it but it would be awesome to get involved with research or other side projects that an academic setting may facilitate, leadership roles really appeal to me as well. long term, i'm really in to a lot of body/mind stuff but i'm okay with keeping that on the back burner during residency.
I am at a school that is barely on the radar but the education is solid. My scores are not stellar - 222 on step 1, average class standing, i do really well on interviews and i am an easy person to work with, pretty passionate, i'm going to work on having good letters, i have been involved with some interesting and altruistic extracurriculars, and i have a pretty good entrepreneurial/creative side. now here come some specific questions in case anyone prefers that kind of thing, but feel free to write anything back even if you feel it's totally random.
would i be a decent candidate for academic psych programs? what would you recommend to be a better candidate? for some reason, i feel drawn to the west coast - i think it's because out there people seem more in to the 'softer side' of medicine and there's less hierarchy and more progressive attitudes towards medicine. would it be real challenging to do both - get in to an academic program on the west coast? i'll cut it off here because this is already becoming monstrous and loose =) thank you so much for reading this. i can't tell you how much i would appreciate some guidance right now.