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Posted this is MD but also want to know about DO! Any advice is appreciated. thank you!
Hey all, I will try to keep this short but I know it will be long, so thanks in advance to anyone who reads it. Anyways, excuses aside I know its not where you start, its where you end that matters. I would love to go to med school, but don't know how to go about fixing some past mistakes.
Currently about to graduate from a good UC with 3.88 GPA in neurobiology, and physiology.. however when you scratch beneath the surface its not so pretty.
Basically.. I stopped going to school in the 7th grade. Shouldn't have been legal, but it was. I ended up getting a diploma at 17 having never been in a classroom since I was 11. There was a reason for this, however its not such a great story and I have changed a lot since then.
Anyways, at 19 I decided to go to community college.. didn't know what I was doing, but just took some gen Ed classes. First semester I took ONE class because I was super nervous and new to school... and got a B lol. Anways, I was working as a nanny and taking night classes after that.
Had no idea what I was doing, and was very self conscious about not having gone to junior high and high school. I grew up with a lot of people telling me I was stupid because of it, and I believed this. So I avoided others at school and never talked to professors or guidance counselors. I have no clue what I was thinking... no one expected much of me and I didn't expect much of myself so I think back then I was literally going to school just to go and learn new stuff lol the idea of a career just wasn't even a thought.
I took a lot of business classes thinking I would get an econ degree but somewhere in genEd i took biology and it was the first time I had taken a class like that. I loved it. Same with chemistry. I worked incredibly hard eventually earning a 3.96 at community plus took a bunch a classes ( i think 56 units) for nothing because I had no idea what I was doing and they didn't transfer. This all took a really long time... a couple of semesters I took off just to work. Most of the time I went part-time, and even took two Ws.
Eventually I thought I would go into nursing since I liked all the pre-nursing classes, but was persuaded otherwise by people who knew me and told me " thats not a good idea you have to be smart to be a nurse". So i decided to get a biochem degree ( lol at this now, but considering how I grew up.. i believed everyone else that nursing was hard and biochem was not).
I transferred to university and still felt super self conscious... did well academically but didn't do anything else. Not to mention I go to a great research school, I didn't do any. Never went to a teachers office hours, no school events. I paid to live on my own, so this didn't help and I basically became someone who sat alone in my apartment and never left. Basically just always felt like I didn't belong around "smart" people.
When I learned about PA, i though that was cool and realized I needed to get out of my box and get patient contact hours, volunteer hours going etc. Once I started doing this ( late senior year), I realized I wasn't much different from all these "SMART" people..
Why MD? well all those years during childhood after leaving 7th grade, a lot of stuff went on and while I was always the patient, I thought being a doctor would be so cool but impossible for someone like me.. yes I get it, low self esteem is bad for a doctor. That being said I'm not self conscious in the way most people assume, I'm not socially akward. People like me when I go out and I generally just shyed away from people who were well educated.. So idk if its the fact I got my degree finally, or something else but I'm suddenly over the whole " im stupid" thing.
So heres my question - how do I fix this? If I apply to med school I wouldn't take me... no research but went to a great school. Few hours of volunterring, lots of student run clinic here but I didn't get in any, no clinical work etc. I have nothing but a good GPA that took me 6 years to get.
I think a post-bacc is not appropriate for me because I have a good GPA in a hard science... should I do a master's??? That way I can do research and volunteer etc all at the same time to show I can handle it all? I'm not sure how to fix this but basically feel like my whole undergrad degree is meaningless, minus the fact I learned a lot and now know I'm not stupid.
Hey all, I will try to keep this short but I know it will be long, so thanks in advance to anyone who reads it. Anyways, excuses aside I know its not where you start, its where you end that matters. I would love to go to med school, but don't know how to go about fixing some past mistakes.
Currently about to graduate from a good UC with 3.88 GPA in neurobiology, and physiology.. however when you scratch beneath the surface its not so pretty.
Basically.. I stopped going to school in the 7th grade. Shouldn't have been legal, but it was. I ended up getting a diploma at 17 having never been in a classroom since I was 11. There was a reason for this, however its not such a great story and I have changed a lot since then.
Anyways, at 19 I decided to go to community college.. didn't know what I was doing, but just took some gen Ed classes. First semester I took ONE class because I was super nervous and new to school... and got a B lol. Anways, I was working as a nanny and taking night classes after that.
Had no idea what I was doing, and was very self conscious about not having gone to junior high and high school. I grew up with a lot of people telling me I was stupid because of it, and I believed this. So I avoided others at school and never talked to professors or guidance counselors. I have no clue what I was thinking... no one expected much of me and I didn't expect much of myself so I think back then I was literally going to school just to go and learn new stuff lol the idea of a career just wasn't even a thought.
I took a lot of business classes thinking I would get an econ degree but somewhere in genEd i took biology and it was the first time I had taken a class like that. I loved it. Same with chemistry. I worked incredibly hard eventually earning a 3.96 at community plus took a bunch a classes ( i think 56 units) for nothing because I had no idea what I was doing and they didn't transfer. This all took a really long time... a couple of semesters I took off just to work. Most of the time I went part-time, and even took two Ws.
Eventually I thought I would go into nursing since I liked all the pre-nursing classes, but was persuaded otherwise by people who knew me and told me " thats not a good idea you have to be smart to be a nurse". So i decided to get a biochem degree ( lol at this now, but considering how I grew up.. i believed everyone else that nursing was hard and biochem was not).
I transferred to university and still felt super self conscious... did well academically but didn't do anything else. Not to mention I go to a great research school, I didn't do any. Never went to a teachers office hours, no school events. I paid to live on my own, so this didn't help and I basically became someone who sat alone in my apartment and never left. Basically just always felt like I didn't belong around "smart" people.
When I learned about PA, i though that was cool and realized I needed to get out of my box and get patient contact hours, volunteer hours going etc. Once I started doing this ( late senior year), I realized I wasn't much different from all these "SMART" people..
Why MD? well all those years during childhood after leaving 7th grade, a lot of stuff went on and while I was always the patient, I thought being a doctor would be so cool but impossible for someone like me.. yes I get it, low self esteem is bad for a doctor. That being said I'm not self conscious in the way most people assume, I'm not socially akward. People like me when I go out and I generally just shyed away from people who were well educated.. So idk if its the fact I got my degree finally, or something else but I'm suddenly over the whole " im stupid" thing.
So heres my question - how do I fix this? If I apply to med school I wouldn't take me... no research but went to a great school. Few hours of volunterring, lots of student run clinic here but I didn't get in any, no clinical work etc. I have nothing but a good GPA that took me 6 years to get.
I think a post-bacc is not appropriate for me because I have a good GPA in a hard science... should I do a master's??? That way I can do research and volunteer etc all at the same time to show I can handle it all? I'm not sure how to fix this but basically feel like my whole undergrad degree is meaningless, minus the fact I learned a lot and now know I'm not stupid.
I really think a master's is not appropriate for you as you don't seem need to need it for your career goals.* Continue volunteering, try to get a job in a lab (or even just email some profs offering to volunteer as a research assistant for them or a grad student). Since all you're missing is that volunteering and research experience, you should be ready to apply next year.
