How Medical School Interviews Changed My Views on Love

Until very recently, I subscribed to the belief that persistence and tenacity were the most essential character traits of the future healthcare providers of America. In 2013, I joined the ranks of nearly fifty thousand other medical school hopefuls, applicants ranging in age from 19 to over 40, drafting responses and essays that left no doubt as to my absolute, unflagging determination to become a physician. It would not do to even hint at the possibility that I would accept another career for myself. Any prompt of, "What will you do if you are not accepted to medical school?" was answered with a variation on the theme of, Try again, and again, and again, until I am. On the surface, such a dogged pursuit of medicine seemed to make sense. Good physicians, after all, need to have the mental stamina to push through the long years of schooling and residency, especially when the nearly quarter million dollars of debt begins to rear its ugly head. Despite the fact that American medical schools have increased their first-year class sizes by over twenty percent since 2002, only two out of every five applicants will clinch one of those coveted white coats each year. Considering that the average undergraduate GPA of all of those applicants topped the charts at 3.54 in 2013 (with matriculants' average GPAs even higher at 3.69), I reasoned that any application written with anything short of tireless resolve must immediately go to the bottom of the application pile. (Perhaps this ...
Source: Healthy Living - The Huffington Post - Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news