Whether you just found out yesterday that being a doctor is your passion in life or if you’ve known it your whole life, the road to get there is all the same. Being in college, the idea of med school becomes insanely realistic, especially sophomore year when you are no-where near that 3.8 GPA and thinking about taking the MCAT is something you need to start planning for. Something I feel like isn’t told to pre-med students often is that we need to relax. Everything suddenly comes so fast, life is passing us by, stress is building up and some nights you just wonder if this is really the path you’re meant to take even though you couldn’t imagine yourself doing anything else.
The best advice I can give is, make sure this is what you want to do. Don’t consider how difficult the courses are and the hours of sleep you’ll lose and the amount of times you’ll have to say no to friend for the sake of saving your grades; make sure this is what you want to do. Whenever you see someone in distress when you’re on your way to Publix or if someone gets injured during a game or if a little kid falls off his bike, if you’re not asking yourself a million times whether you should stop to help them, then that might be a big indicator that it’s not the job for you. In all honesty, grades are something anyone can attain. If you truly have a passion for the field then you will make those grades, you will pass that MCAT, you will get into med school, and you will get to wear those scrubs.
However what I’ve learned from years of research on becoming a doctor (I literally started this research when I was 9) is to not go into it for the money. Don’t go into it for the prestige or for the title or because your parents want to tell their friends their son or daughter is a doctor. Go into it because you truly believe this is what you were meant to do. Ask yourself if you wouldn’t mind leaving everything behind to go and provide medicine to third world countries. Ask yourself if you can really live through all the struggle of getting into med school and working 48 hour shifts non-stop just to be able to afford your Mercedes. A nice car or a nice house or money in the bank should be nowhere near as gratifying as knowing you saved someone’s life or that you gave some person some extra years to be with their loved ones. Ask yourself if you can handle being under fluorescent lights for hours at a time or stand alongside a patient in the operating room for 14 hour surgeries; or if you’re willing to leave your kids 1st birthday because you’re on call. Ask yourself if you want to live the life of unpredictability, and upset families, and a type of stress you’ve never felt before and the negligence of your family because they haven’t seen you in months. If this is appealing to you then do it. Continue this route and graduate and get the chance to put that M.D. in front of your name. If you feel like you can handle it, go out there and make a difference in hundreds of people’s lives. Because although you may be giving up your life you will be changing so many others, it may not even seem like a sacrifice.
