Where to go from here for ECs?

[wanderingstudent10.10]

---

Members do not see this ad.

Hi all,
Junior pre-med here and I'm at what feels like a plateau in my life right now. I want to start something new but it's also going to involve having to give something up. I've been doing the same thing for about a year now, I volunteer at a hospital, volunteer at a crisis line, work as an orgo grader, and then I go to school full time as well in addition to trying to manage a marriage and home life. I've been at the hospital for awhile now (1.5 years) and while I love the people there I AM SO BORED. I would like to leave the hospital and do another volunteer project I am more passionate about, I applied to volunteer at Planned Parenthood but nothing came of it, so now I'm setting my sights on a domestic violence shelter or a free clinic in my town. I have plenty of clinical experience (CNA for roughly 1000 hrs, clinical volunteering for 200ish), but I'm worried moving away from clinical work with the domestic violence shelter might not be in my best interest as far as admissions go. Any advice?

 

[Hospitalized]

You should not be worrying. Just do it.

 

[FeinMS]

well if you're interested in psychiatry, volunteering at a crisis line and helping the victims of domestic violence would help

 

[wanderingstudent10.10]

I'm interested in primary care, specifically integrating quality mental health into primary care by understanding and being comfortable talking about stress, grief and mental illness. True health is mental as much as it is physical, and that's something that has been a driver in my life.

 

[FeinMS]

I'm interested in primary care, specifically integrating quality mental health into primary care by understanding and being comfortable talking about stress, grief and mental illness. True health is mental as much as it is physical, and that's something that has been a driver in my life.

Agreed. I think you should definitely convey that in your PS and along with your EC, it will make a good story. You should definitely go for helping domestic violence victims. IDK if continuing to work as an orgo grader will help you with your application, but if you need a source of income, you would have to juggle all of them together I guess.

 

[wanderingstudent10.10]

Noted. My old orgo professor is a mentor for me (and one of my strongest LOR writers), so I don't mind helping out with his grading a few hours a week. I don't mind juggling all of them together, just so long as I don't have 3 volunteer gigs going at the same time as work and class. I'm hoping giving up the hospital for something I feel has a better pay off for my community won't be seen as a weakness in my app. Thank you for your input!

 

[gamieg]

if you mean whether the hit on "longevity" of an activity will make or break your application, the answer is no as long as you don't make it a habit. one year commitment already is also not a bad place to leave off, and you're just putting your volunteering efforts elsewhere.

you'll be fine, and happy holidays

 

[protego]

Honestly, my opinion is to do something you're excited about. Do something you love. My best conversations in interviews so far have been about activities that I thought may have been irrelevant to my med school app but I continued and included on there anyways. People like to talk to people who are excited about something! If you have a significant amount of clinical experience, I say do what makes you happy.

 

[mcatjelly]

Especially given your clinical experience is already more than sufficient, I agree with everyone else that you should do what you love. I had one interview where the ONLY part of my application we talked about was a mental health-related activity that I was very passionate about, and my application as a whole had much more to do with psych/mental health than medicine. So go volunteer with the domestic violence shelter. 🙂

 

[begoood95]

Like others have said, I wouldn't worry about moving away from clinical volunteering at this point, since you already have plenty of hours. When you're interviewed, the interviewers will be able to tell whether or not you're passionate about the work you've done, so I don't think it ever hurts to follow a path such as your; especially with your future interests in medicine, I think a move towards volunteering with a more "psychological" focus would be beneficial.