Not exactly a Green Day fan, so I took some liberties with the title. If anyone needs a more graphic description of this month,
I’ve been hiding all my hopes & dreams away
Just in case I’m gonna need them again some day
I’ve been setting aside time
To clear a little space in the corners of my mind~ (Way Back into Love)
This marks the first serious heartbreak I’ve to live with. Probably 75-80% in the clear today, and hoping for a 2-3% improvement tomorrow.
Application for medicine at YLLSoM didn’t work out. When I was a little more clear-headed, I figured out what I was lacking in:
Service: it seems an irony that service learning has to be ‘demonstrated’, or perhaps my idea of ‘do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing’ seems to be working against me on this one. For better or worse, community service is the only way to demonstrate compassion. Since I’m not going to be that awfully busy while studying science, it looks like I have another clean slate to capitalize on after all…
Admittedly, I regret not doing any of this in JC. Maybe it was being clueless, maybe I was lazy, the excuse doesn’t write away anything. To the undergraduate medicine hopefuls, please do yourselves a favour and sort this out the soonest you can; while you’re still in school, nothing is ever too late!
Activities: I tried smoking out a focused-group discussion, but it wasn’t enough. My guess is that one-off events don’t quite cut the deal. If you want to rack of a portfolio of relevant exposures and activities, start early & keep at it. The key really is consistency. In that sense, all admissions committees are mathematicians: they look for patterns and analyze the information about you accordingly. It’s okay if you’re not a leader; when everyone is a leader, no one really is. What’s important is that you know what each exposure is for & use it wisely.
A note to the NS guys: getting sword of honour only works if you have the still-decent grades to back you up. As a cross-over specialist-officer, I’ve tried, and maybe it still wasn’t enough.
Grades: There are some things that cannot substitute grades. Even with a heavy-duty portfolio it’s difficult to convince the admissions committee that bad results were a fluke. To them, maybe you bit off more than you can chew, and that kind of overestimation may be deadly in the wards or clinics. Or maybe you lost it & that showed your concentration, focus & stamina need work.
Suffice to say, medical school seeks out perfectionists. There is little room for flaws. I say this not as an elitist, but as a candidate who didn’t make the cut & is still figuring out how to move on.
I looked at the grade profile of my faculty. Perhaps with the 10th percentile being BBC/B, I may not be that far off. Thankfully, I know what went wrong, and I have a plan to fix every one of those things. I just hope that it works.
In that huge pile of hard truths, I can only offer this bit of consolation. It’s working for me, and if you are unfortunate enough to land in the same boat, I hope this helps you:
The first step on the long journey of recovery, is acceptance. When you’ve accepted where you are, you can move.
Ciao
Honest Doubts 