- Joined
- Apr 16, 2000
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- 996
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This may be a stupid thing to worry about, but as I peruse these boards I can't help but notice that many other pre-med students seem to be a lot more involved in various committees, volunteer work, etc. than I can find time for in my schedule. I'm a junior now, and since I started college I've been taking a medium to heavy class load and doing well in it (3.9 GPA so far, although we'll see how much o-chem brings it down this year). I also work part-time at a reproductive health care clinic for low income/uninsured patients(I have worked there for almost 4 years now and volunteered there for two years prior to that in high school, so I think I should have sufficient clinical exposure anyway). I have done some things outside of school and work- I spent this last summer as a lab assistant at the NIH, and the summer before that volunteered as a counselor at a week-long camp for children with HIV, as well as some pretty minor volunteer work with political causes that I feel strongly about. I'm also going to study abroad next year for 5 months. The point of all this being, I feel like I'm pretty busy just between work and school, and I've done and plan to do other things that interest me when I have time, but I can't seem to find several additional hours every week during the school year to devote to volunteering or participating in the pre-med committee or anything like that. I have to work since I'm paying for college myself, and after that I only have two evenings a week and Sundays when I could really do anything else, and I can't quite bring myself to give those up! Does this make me lazy? Is every one else really doing so much more besides work and school, or am I just being neurotic? I'm not real worried about my application to med school or anything, I feel like I'm a reasonably strong candidate and if I do decently well on the MCAT's I'll have as good a shot as anyone at getting in. But maybe I'm being overly optimistic. I do plan to do some more volunteer work before I apply in June of my senior year, since there are a lot of organizations in my city that interest me and I hope to find the time to get at least a little involved. So I guess I'm wondering, should I really waste even one more second thinking about this? Is it accurate to say that most pre-meds are really involved in extracurriculars (sports, committees, volunteer work, whatever), or are most of you more like me, just finding time to do things summers and in between work and school? Any input is appreciated.