<p>I am a speech language pathologist, and I’ll be honest that I started UNC with an intent to get a physical therapy degree and couldn’t handle chemistry or biology well enough to get into an intensely competitive program. I fiddled around with a business major and didn’t understand higher level economics courses. So I switched to psychology as a major at the beginning of my sophomore year. By this point, I had cracked the code of how to study in college and the pressure of science and math courses was lifted – I made Dean’s list that semester! I couldn’t get the idea out of my head that I really wanted to be in a medical field, though, so I made a last switch to speech pathology as I started my junior year. </p>
<p>Like M2CK – I feel like you need a brutal reality check, and I understand it isn’t easy to accept it. I don’t see anything in your grades or approach to studying that indicates you can handle medical school. How about you spend a year taking fewer hours in classes that match your academic gifts – maybe things like psychology, English, history, etc.? Find the resources that you have been given here and work hard to learn how to be a student – how to study, how to budget your time, how to organize yourself, etc. </p>
<p>Communication disorders was not an easy major even once I figured out what I was doing. Comparing myself to the girls in my sorority, I may not have been working quite as hard as the med school girls but I was studying way more than most of the rest of the girls. Anatomy and physiology takes a huge amount of studying because it requires a lot of rote memorization – neuroanatomy was even more rigorous. In grad school, you have to learn how to balance studying with clinical hours (don’t be fooled by the fact that a clinical course may only have 3 credit hours – you spend way more time in clinicals that credit hours indicate). </p>
<p>And lastly, find some ways to get in some observation hours – shadow some of these medical professionals and see if you really have a passion for any of these fields. Being passionate about something greatly increases the chance that you will want to spend the time and effort to spend so many hours studying. </p>
<p>Oddly, after thinking I wanted a medical profession – I ended up in a school setting and went back at 40 to get a teaching degree. But I wouldn’t trade my experience and background as an SLP. </p>