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.
Author: Amanda Xi
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!].
Introductions
With this blog I plan to chronicle my experience as a medical student in the inaugural class of Oakland University William Beaumont School of Medicine (Rochester, MI) and whatever else gets thrown my way. While I cannot guarantee what this blog will mature into (or if it’ll even be updated regularly), I hope that someone, somewhere can benefit from my words. I guess we’ll see.