As I prepare to matriculate in medical school in August, I have had some time to reflect back on this past year which I have spent at The “Almost” Doctor’s Channel. As I witness other friends happily celebrating their acceptances, while others struggle to make alternative plans due to not-as-happy outcomes, I can’t help but wonder, “why did they choose me?” I had a decent/good MCAT score (depending who you ask). I went to a good undergraduate school and had a good/decent GPA. I was in an a cappella group because I love to sing, played on a few intramural sports teams because I loved to play sports and held a position on the board of my sorority because…well, I like having a voice within a large group. That about ends the list of extra-curricular activities that I participated in because of my own desires and interests. As pre-meds, medical students, and residents, we train from a young age to be the physicians we hope to one day be. We go to “DNA Camp” in high school (uh, was that only me?) and finagle together a sad excuse for a Siemens or Intel paper (again…any others out there who did this?), and then when we finally get into our dream college, the cycle starts all over again. We hound heads of labs in the hope of being a (unpaid) research assistant, we volunteer in our local communities, we tutor the young and underprivileged, we “voluntour” in 3rd world countries, we spend our Saturday mornings changing sheets in a hospital because, as “almost” docs, emphasis on the “almost,” that is all we’re currently qualified to do. Some of you may genuinely enjoy doing these things. But I’m just guessing that for most college students, spending your Saturday morning in a hospital hungover never seems to be the most efficient use of your…or anyone else’s…time. It has become accepted that in order to be a successful doctor, or at least a successful medical student, you need to have not only a spectacular academic performance demonstrating your intelligence, but also a propensity for volunteering, a desire to teach and learn, and the selflessness to prioritize someone else’s needs above your own. Logically, this makes sense. Medical Schools need not only make sure that you have the motivation and intelligence to keep up with your studies, but also that you have the characteristics necessary to become a doctor: compassion, respect, empathy, and humanity, to name just a few. But while medical schools in the past may have been able to identify these exemplary characteristics through the extra-curriculars in which students participated, the algorithm falls short when we, as aspiring doctors, learn the methods behind the madness. Volunteering, for the majority of premeds, no longer manifests compassion, research no longer shows a desire to better medicine or satisfy a genuine intellectual curiosity, participating in a medical brigade fulfills a more selfish motive than anything else. We do these things because we are expected to — because years of applicants, some of whom were genuinely curious scientists, some of whom were sociable enough to tutor or some of whom decided to combine their love of travel with their desire to become a doctor, have somehow come together in this conglomeration of a “super” applicant…whom we are all expected to be. But if we’re doing it “because medical schools said so” does participation in any of these activities prove anything at all? I personally believe that these hoops we are forced to jump through — and yes, sadly they have become obstacles more than anything else — serve merely as a funnel to filter out those who do not have the drive and/or desire to reach the ultimate goal: medical school. But if, then, the only purpose is to identify those who simply are doing what they need to do to become doctors, can’t we find another way? One which doesn’t drain the passion from aspiring doctors with trivial necessities or deter the best and the brightest from one day helping others in need? source
