nena said:
why have most of you decided to go to carib schools instead of trying to boost your credentials to apply to US schools? i just wonder b/c im in a situation where i have to pick one or the other..and i come up with a million reasons to stay here and do my master's..and then i come up with a million reasons to leave..i just don't know what to do..but i have always wondered why most of you just leave..what motivates you to pick up and go? and are you happy? after you've made the decision to go, are you content?
You know, with today being my day off, and able to sleep in, enjoy my morning coffee and play 3 hours of XBOX straight I realized how absolutely lucky I have been since deciding to head down to the Caribbean for med school. I was your typical drunk-ass college student, who didn't take ANYTHING seriously until it was, unfortunately, too late. Deciding to NOT pursue a grad degree with hopes of diluting my past, I said f*ck it... What the hell. Now, with my ophtho residency starting next year, and enjoying my pretty sweet internship I realize that nearly all my friends who ended up taking the "typical" route (aka, MS, PhD) are still no closer to becoming the physician they always dreamed of. Instead, they are chugging away, day in and day out in a lab. Not to say that they aren't happy, but that had I chosen THAT route, I would no doubt be pipetting my life away, one microdrop at a time. There are two types of people who go to med school in the Caribbean: 1) those who are penultimate students, and 2) those who have simply suffered an accident of geography. My friends from Saba were all just like me in college. Now they are in residency programs ranging from surgery to anesthesia to ophtho. This is my "success" story, if you will... What's best for you is up to you to decide.
Oh yeah, and I'm also Canadian. Getting into med school in Toronto (or anywhere in Canada for that matter) is MUCH more difficult than in the US. The decision for me was easy. Had I been a US citizen with a state residency requirement, I'm sure I would have had an option other than going to the Caribbean... But I agree, for those of you who are Americans, it is very possible to simply reapply and you'll get in the following year; something that does not happen up north...
