One of the most important characteristics in a medical school applicant is their demonstration of maturity. To delve into today’s topic, I opted to check out dictionary.com‘s definition of the word and was sadly met with: “the state of being mature; ripeness” — so apparently we’re all just fruit ready to be eaten by a ravenous being? Being unsatisfied with this definition, I moved to the next one: “full development; perfected condition” — say what?! First off, if one had to achieve this to successfully matriculate at a medical school, we’d all be, well, screwed. In my mind, no one will ever be fully developed mentally because there is always more growing and learning to be done — yet there are a number of people who I’d call mature. Second, perfected is such a limited word — it invokes images of something pristine, immaculate and incredible. While I’d happily use the terms pristine, immaculate and incredible when discussing my medical school peers, the word perfected also implies the absence of mistakes. And while there are ways to perfect one’s technique, no one person is perfect. In fact, much of maturity is built from the post-mistake-reflection-period.
Month: June 2011
“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.
Engineer to medical school
As I mentioned in my Introductions post, I am an engineer by training. Quite often, I see posts on the Pre-Medical SDN Forums discussing this particular path to medical school with mixed reactions. While a large number of users adamantly recommend staying far, far away from engineering and technical courses, I have also seen some posts from people who have successfully made the transition and would do it all over again in a heartbeat. While I cannot say I identify with one particular group, I do have some opinions on the matter.
“How to talk to little girls”
A recent Huffington Post article entitled, “How to talk to little girls” by Lisa Bloom caught my eye this morning [no it’s not about how to be a successful pedophile]. Although the piece also serves the purpose of publicizing her book, I think it’s important to recognize the mindset that girls are growing into. The statistic that Bloom cites from her book — “fifteen to eighteen percent of girls under twelve now wear mascara, eyeliner and lipstick regularly” — was alarming to me. I barely maintain eyeliner on a daily basis out of convenience — I can’t imagine having to wake up extra early in middle school [or even elementary school] just to apply makeup.
Thanks for viewing!
About to hit the 350 page views mark! Thanks for coming by [even if you just came for the schedule preview — I promise I’ll provide the link to the full schedule once orientation begins] and I hope you’ll come back often!
Don’t forget, I’m always open to answering your questions [OUWB, application process, or whatever]. Feel free to leave a comment.
2011-2012 application cycle secondary
Word on the street is that the OUWB secondary has been released to candidates who passed the “pre-screen.” I quoted that because the admissions team stated that they are only screening out candidates with extremely subpar statistics [Dean Grabowski cited MCAT scores of below 20, so I’m assuming that’s around where they set the bar].
Application numbers, road tripping
Oh, hey, were you looking for the preview of the OUWB Fall 2011 Schedule? [either click the lazy person link to go straight to the entry, or just scroll down]
Since I’m sure that a number of people are curious about the “numbers” for OUWB’s inaugural class, I thought I’d start by giving you a sample size of n=1 [and if you think about it, with a class of 50 people my numbers account for 2% — how many people can say that about their medical school?!]. You could have already been really SDN savvy and found that one post that I listed them, but not everyone is a forum expert [trust me, you’ll catch up real fast on that front]. Anyway, this post is going to be slightly more detailed.
Are you ready?
Numbers and impressions
Oh, hey, were you looking for the preview of the OUWB Fall 2011 Schedule? [either click the lazy person link to go straight to the entry, or just scroll down]
Being the engineer I was/am [I guess I’m working full-time as an engineer right now, so I should make it present-tense], I am somewhat obsessed with numbers [and random lowercase greek letters that do not appear on Fraternity/Sorority houses] — what does this mean? Well, I think it means that I need to start keeping track of certain numbers [this also means that, yes, I will share my application numbers with the viewing audience in the near future] such as days of medical training [I’m thinking that I will count any day that I attend lecture, train in a hospital or study as a day of training] starting with my first day of class [AUGUST 15. Wow. That’s coming up…]. [Have you noticed that I like inserting commentary within my commentary?]
Schedules make things real
In my fervor to update last night, I completely neglected to mention one of the most exciting emails I received — the “tentative-but-mostly-finished” fall semester OUWB schedule. Being the neurotic person I am, in almost every interaction with the faculty and staff I asked whether the schedule was ready for release. Finally seeing it in all its glory has really made me quite giddy [oh, and there were a couple of other pleasant surprises in that email too…].
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!].