Day 149: Brief musing on specialties

Today’s inane image of the day:

This was the sky’s “Good Morning” today — this photo was taken from a study room in O’Dowd [I highly recommend these rooms early in the morning… so peaceful to watch the sun rise].

For our PRISM session next week, each of us is required to complete the 150 question MSPI-R assessment on the Careers in Medicine website. Not surprisingly, the speciality it said I was most compatible with was OB/GYN. Huh, you ask? Haven’t you been raving about interest in anesthesiology, radiation oncology and cancer genetics? Why did you know you would get OB/GYN [beside the fact that the survey asked predictable questions]?

Well, first and foremost, I really enjoy working with the female population [which is probably why I was so involved in the Society of Women Engineers and now the American Medical Women’s Association]. Women indeed have different needs and I find it fascinating how distinct males and females react to problems or emotional expression. I love the connection and the firsthand understanding. And babies are absolutely magical.

But, I don’t know if I really want to dedicate the rest of my life to women’s reproductive health. Maybe after my clerkship I’ll change my mind. Or maybe it’ll push me more toward breast cancers. Or maybe I’ll be back here exactly where I started [hopefully not that last one!].

Bah! It stresses me out not to have a more concrete idea of where I want to and hope to be after medical school.

“Why women are better at everything” and other semi-related musings

The Times article, “Why women are better at everything” by Meredith Melnick was the lucky winner of the “article-that-caught-my-eye-this-morning” award. Sorry to anyone who is sick of me going on and on about women… but 3 very dedicated years to the Society of Women Engineers [SWE – pronounced “SWeeeeeee”], a full year of running an after-school engineering club where women were hard to come by and a future dedication to the American Medical Women’s Association [AMWA – pronounced “AM-wah”] kind of sets me up for this mindset.

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Application resources and other recent ramblings

I was thinking about what I found to be the most consistently helpful resource for the whole medical school application process and decided that it was undoubtedly the Student Doctor Network (SDN) Forums. Although I distinctly remember stumbling upon the forums in high school, I only returned to the site as I was crafting my AMCAS personal comments last summer [I cannot believe it has been a year since I started my primary application!] and somewhat regretted not keeping tabs on application threads earlier [say, like a year before I was planning to apply]. While it takes some time to learn how to weed out pertinent information, read between the mounds of sarcastic lines and muster the courage to finally post in a thread you’ve followed for weeks [well… it took me a while to actually post something], there is so much valuable information available [and all for free — what a deal!].

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