Pre-Meds

Today I am tired in a way that can only be described as "The Day Before Science Fair". Although, as my grandmother pointed out, it seems like so recently that it was September and that Science Fair was ages away. Today I spent a lot of time setting up the library for the event. It'll go well, I think. I'll try to take lots of pictures.

This weekend, I had lunch with a college friend. We ate delicious, cheap Venezuelan food and complained about pre-meds.

Pre-meds. Pre-medical students. A rare breed of student that I interacted with A LOT as a biology major at Brown. See, at Brown, if you want to study biology, they assume you want to go into medicine. My course requirements were almost identical to any medical school entry requirements.

I don't want to go into medicine. There is too much politics involved, and not the kind I can handle. I don't want to spend the next 8 years training for a job. (Yeah, I know, I'm always learning, but this is different.) I don't want to sacrifice time spent interacting with patients so I can pay my high malpractice insurance. Most importantly, I don't want to spend any more time with pre-meds.

Brown offered an interesting program called the Program in Liberal Medical Education (PLME). PLME students had applied right out of high school for an 8 year program, which is pretty much just undergraduate stacked under medical school consecutively. The advantage is that it allowed students to skip the whole medical school application process, which is the worst application process I've seen. This meant that of my peers, a certain number of them could fly through science courses with no concern over grades or competition.

The PLME program was created so students could explore other areas, and become more well-rounded. Unfortunately, that is not what happens. Students either keep the hyper-competitive, impossible-to-be-around attitude of other pre-meds, or they take the opposite route and spend four expensive years drinking cheap liquor.

My pre-med friend is one of the only PLMEs I know who took the third route. She joined EMS to get some patient care experience (although she was already an EMT at home). She double-majored in biology and Spanish. She spent her summers working as an ER tech/translator in a hospital. She took the opportunity she had to not worry about MCAT scores and GPAs, and made the world a better place. (She also was part of my other two favorite campus groups, the best ever co-ed literary fraternity and the coolest Jewish a cappella group.) I wish all pre-meds were like her.

I wanted to share that thought. In the mean time, I'm still keeping up with exercise and healthy(-ish) eating. Also, bar trivia. Tonight is bar trivia.