Why, oh why, I ask, do colleges make it so hard to become a doctor? All I want to do is save people's lives. That’s all. You know, make the world a better place and whatnot. I don’t think that’s a horrible thing, so why am I being forced to take (relatively) irrelevant classes that make me want to cry at least once a wee-who am I kidding, once a day? Fellow pre-med students, I know you feel me. And I know you’ll be able to relate to the next 13 things we’ve all experienced.
1. You question your decision to become a doctor every. Single. Day.
Do I really want to go to school for 234980 years? Is it worth it? Should I just become a MILF?
2. You sit in class wondering what any of this has to do with becoming an oncologist or surgeon or oncologist or whatever.
Gibbs Free Energy? Hybridization? Let me know the point of knowing that the universe wants entropy to increase helps me when I’m prescribing medication to a patient. Lmk.
3. You're friends and family frequently ask you to diagnose them with some disease.
Listen, I’m in my first year of not-med-school, I am learning about photosynthesis. Are you a plant? No? Then sorry, I can’t tell you what kind of infection that is. Web-MD that ish.
4. When you tell people you're going to be a doctor, they assume you have your life together.
Haha. Good one.
5. You've never not had homework or something to study for. And on top of that, even after you've studied for eighty-five hours, you're still confused.
What is party? What is sleep? What is sun?
6. You're about one dropped pencil away from a mental breakdown at all times.
The stress is UNreal.
7. You pride yourself in getting C's and sometimes D's even though you were undoubtedly an A student in high school.
When the class average on the biochem test is a 49%, suddenly, a 63% doesn’t sound too shabby.
8. You've never experienced an easy A or blow off class.
Pre-reqs for medical school are about 185 million credit hours, so having an easy gen-ed isn’t an option for you.
9. Professors let you know right off the bat that their class is hard.
Here are two quotes that I heard from two different professors this past semester: “I would probably get a B on my own tests” and “For this class, I will make the curve so that an 82% is a high A.” And then I say “okay let me just drop out now.”
10. Parents: "what's your GPA?"
You: *looks around nervously* "Well I didn't fail all of my classes."
I'm sorry I don't understand ecology, okay?
11. The idea of seeing the brain or the heart of a cadaver is like Christmas.
Surprisingly, the brain is not squishy. Kind of a letdown, if you ask me.
12. You have that one anatomy class that you really like and then you kind of despise the rest.
Are you kidding me, Organic Chem?
13. When people say “wow, you’re gonna be rich huh” you really couldn’t care less.
Because you’re not in it for the money. You’re in it because you want to save lives. And that’s what makes everything else worth it.