<p>PS: I know of two stories about people, in their 3rd or 4th year of school, people with amazing potential, who got into some sort of trouble- drugs, sleeping in, lazy, whatever. Something happened to these two kids late in their college career. Both dropped out. One sucked it up, learned and grew, went back and now has a graduate degree and is successful. The other gave up and, though he did work for a while, he went BK and lives with his parents, he is nearly 40 He had a brilliant mind, but did not have the gumption to overcome whatever happened to make him stop out. I knew both of their families well and heard the stories as they unfolded.</p>
<p>Only you can choose, give up, crash and burn or face the music, grow up and turn all this into a lesson that lets you achieve a life that matches your potential.</p>
<p>Completely untrue. Many people other than doctors contribute to being the “source” of the cure. They are all part of the same chain, working together in order to give that patient what they need. If the hospital only had doctors, then it would be a bust. They need the other jobs, or else helping patients would be nearly impossible.</p>
<p>The doctor usually gets the credit for being the source of the cure. Is that your main reason? To be acknowledged for being a source of the cure? To have the “glory” of helping people? That is a poor reason and it won’t be enough to get through, since this incentive won’t carry you through the harshness of med school.</p>
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<p>With this sentence, I’m officially changing my opinion. I now honestly don’t think you have what it takes to get through med school and become a good doctor. You definitely need an attitude change or being a doctor will never be within your reach. </p>
<p>You clearly don’t care about the love of the field at all. As long as it’s a prestigious, culturally accepted job for you, then it’s alright. You ARE in it only for the prestige and money. There’s no hiding from that. You can tell us some story of how you care for the patients, yet when offered the consideration of being a nurse or paramedic that also helps patients, you shiver from that thought. Some commitment to the patients you certainly have.</p>
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<p>Correction. NONE of the nurses and paramedics are shameful. Next time you go into a car crash, tell me if their saving your life is shameful at all. </p>
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<p>We were all realistic to you since page 1. Right now, I’m being realistic to you. You will die in medical school. Unless you find a new reason for becoming a doctor other than the prestige of being a doctor and avoiding the “shame” that is a person who is equally important in the medical field, please find another interest.</p>
<p>You see, ask ANYONE on this forum who has had the experience or someone else’s experience of med school. There are MD’s here, practicing doctors here, parents of med school or former med school students here. Just ask anyone.</p>
<p>Med school is just…emotionally and physically brutal. It drains all the life out of you. The miseries of holding a retractor up for 8 hours straight, the stories of the OB/GYN rotations, and the toll it takes on your own being. You look forward to the weekends, not to take a break, but to catch up on the studying you’ve been missing and memorize another 1000 terms.</p>
<p>The most emotionally and physically adept people will still find medical school INCREDIBLY challenging to get through. Saying that medical school is an incredible life challenge is an understatement. You DEFINITELY need to be prepared, emotionally, mentally, and physically, or else you will get crushed. You will work harder than never before. </p>
<p>Let’s just say a straight A student at a super competitive university, who never worked hard at all to get good grades and never needed to study that much, will work his freaking ass off in medical school. Pure intelligence does not get you through medical school. You need an incredibly strong and GENUINE drive as well as A LOT OF WORK ETHICS to get through this living hell.</p>
<p>With your self-defeating attitude in life and unwillingness to commit to hard work at all, you will definitely not make it to the second year. If you do, the third year will definitely take you out.</p>
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<p>You think medical school is going to be easier? You think you can suddenly master the intense work habits? If you haven’t been working hard all this time, medical school DEFINITELY won’t be kinder to you. You have a lot of work ethics issues and personality problems to go over before you even consider going to medical school.</p>
<p>WayOutWestMom and Somemom has offered you amazing advice above. It would do you well to follow it. You definitely need to postpone your dreams of an MD until you can find your actual passion in medicine (not for the prestige) and FIX your personality and attitude and START WORKING HARDER. Otherwise, med school isn’t for you.</p>
<p>^ Reading the above post brought back the memories of the four toughest years you can ever imagine and I still marvel at how I somehow survived the endless hours of unrelenting struggles to get clinical responsibilites done while somehow studying for tests. And it only gets tougher when you graduate medical school as a newly minted MD and then spend an endless mind-numbing year of 36 hours on call Q3 as an intern when there never seems to be a minute when you can just sit down and relax. Your pager never stops going off and you come to hate it more than you ever believed it was possible to hate an inanimate object.</p>
<p>OP, you just have not shown any evidence of the mental toughness it takes to make it as an MS1 let alone do clinical rotations as an MS3.</p>
<p>Please re-read my last post in detail. I have clearly explained WHY I have been inspired by doctors and why that is different from nursing or paramedics and it has nothing to do with money or prestige. I never said nursing was not an important job - the people who have inspired me, who I have learnt a lot from have been doctors. I have several stories of patients, one being my mother, of how doctors were able to touch their lives in more ways than you can imagine. Please understand what I am trying to say before rushing to a judgement. Ultimately, I don’t care, if ever I do make to the interview, I can tell them why I want to be a doctor and its certainly not for prestige.</p>
<p>@ Lemaitre: I know med school is going to be grueling and I know its going to take A LOT of effort. However, I am ready, able, and willing to do it. Like I said, I never gave my 100% effort in college, I never really tried to be disciplined on a consistent basis. I have one more year left to learn how before I leave school. I can do it.</p>
<p>@ WowMom: Thanks for the advice.</p>
<p>Your right, my years of university have not gone to waste. I can work as a lab tech. These past 4 years have allowed me to hone my Excel skills. I can create charts, set trend lines, even label axis. I have cultivated my artistic prowess which is reflected in the brilliantly laid out titles. I can make a deep contribution to science, unless I actually get to do research instead of compiling data for those that actually do it…</p>
<p>@ somemom: </p>
<p>Thank you some mom, I understand that I must stop whining and it must seem borderline psychotic at this point. Thank you for your patience, but I cannot, despite my efforts, stop it. Ive accepted that failure is a part of who I am. That is why I am in this mess of a situation.</p>
<p>The things I wanted to do after graduating was to try and do a master’s in cancer research which will never happen given my grades, and I wanted to travel abroad while working for a medical non-profit to let me do research in public health (in countries like India through a Fulbright grant). I can’t do any of these things anymore because of my grades, the crippling chains in my life that have ruined what I wanted to be.</p>
<p>Your right though somemom, I should try to stay positive and see this in a good light. I have every reason to do so. I must remember that I am a college grad graduating with less than a 3.0 GPA after 5 years of university, hopefully working as a lab tech and retaking 2nd year college classes at night. I will have a well respected job that allows me to live the life I wanted too after college. My one-room Emporium. That is the dream of every graduate from university. I must always remember that I am such an inspiration.</p>
<p>I’ve read, dissected [pun], and quoted your post. You have not explained WHY you want to be a doctor specifically. You have not at all explained why it’s so different from nursing or paramedics for you. Your reasons for why you should only be a doctor and nothing else applies to a lot of professions. </p>
<p>Perhaps…YOU should read my post in detail. NOBODY should be fixated on one job. There’s always multiple choices for EVERYONE out there.</p>
<p>Thus, it was a trick question when I asked you why only MD. There is no reason why only MD.</p>
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<p>And I requote, back:
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<p>You said it is shameful. </p>
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<p>I can definitely imagine the ways a doctor touches a patient. I do have many close first hand personal examples. However, to say that the doctor helps people more than anyone else isn’t fair. It’s fine to want to become a doctor because you want to help patients, but what’s not fine is to remain in that mindset that it’s the only job you can do.</p>
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<p>Nope. You don’t really care about giving happiness, because you said nursing is shameful. Nurses don’t give happiness? ONLY doctors? Is this the ONLY FIELD IN THE WHOLE WORLD THAT GIVES HAPPINESS? </p>
<p>An open mind is a healthy mind, young grasshopper.</p>
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<p>Please explain how all you’ve been talking about nurses, paramedics, and all other jobs in the health profession are shameful, how this still means you’re in it for the patients. Obviously, if these jobs are so shameful, nobody should become nurses and paramedics, correct? If they’re shameful, why not get rid of the profession? Yeah, that’s really thinking about the patients.</p>
<p>If you love helping patients, you will also be happy with doing another job that helps them, as long as you get the opportunity to help them. If there are no other jobs out there that you will feel happy doing, you aren’t in it for the patients. You are in it for the prestige. You keep saying it’s “shameful” otherwise. </p>
<p>You’re basically saying: If I can’t be a doctor and help patients, then I won’t be anything else. I don’t care about helping patients if I can’t be a doctor. I might as well be a janitor.</p>
<p>I don’t know how you’re still convinced that you’re doing it purely for the love of helping patients, since you keep saying the help nurses and paramedics give is “shameful”. </p>
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<p>This is a much better attitude. It’s much better to remain in this mindset than to bash yourself over and over. Doing that is unhealthy and counseling is needed if you didn’t get yourself out of that.</p>
<p>Until you give me GOOD specific reasons why becoming a doctor is the ONLY way you can live out your passion for helping patients, like your mother, you don’t have a good reason. I’m not saying this to bash you, but you NEED a good reason to survive med school.</p>
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<p>This is a healthy attitude to think that you can do it. But easier said than done. What makes you think you can suddenly do a 180 degree turn? I would caution yourself before doing this. You do have one year left to prove yourself. If you can’t pull off those A’s, then it’s much too early.</p>
<p>Furthermore, you need MUCH more than a consistent basis of hard work. Much much much more than that. There’s still a lot to be concerned about.</p>
<p>I don’t want to say this to discourage you from working hard and trying to improve your work habits. I just want you to be aware that you have a lot to work on. Not just work habits, but also attitude and mindset as well as finding a true passion for helping patients. Not the prestige.</p>
<p>How can you tell when you’ve found that flame and drive to help patients? When you finally open your mind to other careers that also do the same thing. </p>
<p>Once you open your heart to them and agree to have those careers as second choices, THEN you are thinking of the patients, not yourself. This is absolutely essential that you care about the patients and stop worrying about shaming your culture and family.</p>
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<p>This is what concerns me and this is what makes me think you still can’t make it through med school, at least at the moment. If you keep harboring feelings of bitterness and failure, you won’t make it past 4 months as an MS1.</p>
<p>Start finding your drive. The patients is your drive to become a doctor. If you don’t make it as a doctor, you can still go into nursing or find a job as a paramedic. At least you can help patients. </p>
<p>Because if you DON’T make it to med school, I don’t want you coming back here crying for what you can do next to become a doctor. I want you to take those Plan B careers and be happy that you’re still helping the patients.</p>
<p>You’re getting better with the 'tude but you still have alongway to go. [Pun intended]</p>
<p>I think you misunderstand what Im trying to say. I never said that ALL nurses were shameful nor did I say that nursing and paramedics as a career was shameful. What is shameful is for ME (and I only mean myself) to do that just because of a LOW GPA. That is NOT a good enough reason for me to become a nurse or paramedic. Despite, what you seem to think, prestige is NOT my reason for wanting to be a doctor.</p>
<p>The specific reason why I want to be a doctor is because I had the fortune of shadowing a young doctor (his first month of residency). While on rounds, one of his patients suddenly tried to kill himself by breaking an IV bottle over his head and viciously beating himself. He was in a lot of pain and agony because of his condition and the treatment needed for it. This doctor was in complete shock and fear, but he was able to calm him down and stabilize him. He then went to his room quite emotionally and furiously spent the next few hours pouring over charts, lab results, X-rays, and MRIs. Over the course of the next few days, he was able to completely cure him physically and emotionally. Though I have never been plagued by an illness of that magnitude, I have certainly been at a point in time where I sought to take my own life because of depression. I saw that even when I am at that low of a point, if I can still make one person happy, then it gives me some great sense of satisfaction. It is the knowledge that by doing so, my life has value, and therefore it is one worth living to the fullest.</p>
<p>Nurses and paramedics are not the same AceAites. Yes, they care for patients. They do play an integral role in the healthcare system and no hospital can really survive without them. However, a doctor cures a patient both from the angle of medicine, as well as a practitioner. I do understand that nurses treat patients, but a doctor touches the life of a patient from all angles. </p>
<p>@ somemom:</p>
<p>Thank you somemom. Being proud of yourself and positive is fine when you have a reason too. I have no reason to be proud of myself or like myself.</p>
<p>Ultimately I did not realize this until it was too late. Until I realized how poorly I used my college years. I did not act when I was supposed too. Instead I chose to party, drink, be lazy, and do stupid things with my time. I must now forego the things I wanted to do and instead redo the things I was supposed to have done. I cannot forgive myself for this. No one can just “forgive” themselves and “get over” screwing up college. I will remember this as a failure and feel nothing but guilt, sorrow, shame, and self-hatred. The only way I will get over this is when I succeed - when I can show myself that I am no longer a college failure.</p>
<p>Instead I get to be the inspirational Indian pre-med who graduates with a sub 3.0 GPA and no chance of med school in the near future. I will represent the greater corporate America as an employee of Target while taking o-chem with 2nd year college students. That is my punishment that I will take.</p>
<p>@ WowMom:</p>
<p>That is good to know. I am proficient with Excel and can even label axis. I have honed my artistic prowess to label the charts. After 4 years of college, its the least I could do. My understanding is that lab technicians do not actually do any research - unless I’m wrong. What is the pay like?</p>
<p>I have been researching what I can do with my future and have a few more questions:</p>
<p>1) I am interested in doing research in public health. Specifically, I want to research how vaccines are distributed to rural areas in third world countries (like India). I was wondering if there are companies/organizations that would let me work in the public health sector in third world countries? What kind of qualifications would you need? Would the pay be enough to live off of? Does anyone know?</p>
<p>2) How do I do this whole get a job and take classes thing exactly? I won’t have any money as Im sure my parents will cut me off. Why the hell would they continue to pay for someone who screwed up? Besides they won’t even like the idea of me being a “lowly lab technician” (in their eyes). Where would I do this? When would I take classes (like ASAP after I have a job and a place to live or what?) How do I go to work and go to school? (They are both at the same time of day…</p>
<p>3) Since I have 1-1.5 years of school left and lets (for the sake of optimism which is absent here) assume that I magically get a 4.0. Can I do anything with that showing a super strong upward trend? Could I become eligible for a master’s you think? Or is that aiming too high as usual in my case? Im not sure. If not a masters in cancer research at least a masters in laziness for sure.</p>
<p>I am assuming you’re in a STEM major? And you have approximately a year left of undergrad?</p>
<p>Maybe another suggestion for another direction with the hope of ending up where you’d like to be…have you considered after you complete your undergrad, joining a branch of the military as an officer?</p>
<p>Not enlisted but as an officer? STEM majors or tech 1 majors are hard to come by and many of the service selections are geared toward STEM majors only.</p>
<p>We personally know several officers both active and reservists who work in healthcare, both in the service and out. Many of them received their training and education while in the service.</p>
<p>The Army does research and healthcare in areas of the world most people would never want to visit or work in. Same with Navy docs. That would fulfill your desire for a world view of public health. </p>
<p>Depending on how long you would like to serve would depend on you. You would also qualify for the GI Bill and there are options for while you are in to pursue a MS or just more undergrad classes on their dime.</p>
<p>I do not suggest this lightly nor tongue-in-cheek. You would need to pull yourself together and really buckle down and get your “stuff” in order.</p>
<p>I do not even know if you would qualify physically/mentally but you have a year or so to work on it. </p>
<p>It would make you fiscally self-sufficient, provide you with a career path that could lead you back to becoming a physician. You need to be able to show med school’s that you are more than your GPA, more than academics. That you are able to put others before yourself. That you are NOT lazy, that you can be part of a team.</p>
<p>And you would do this with ACTIONS, not just words. Talk is cheap.</p>
<p>Again I don’t know if you would be eligible, but as an officer you would gain leadership skills, decision-making processes and having to think of your men/women before yourself. You would be doing.</p>
<p>While in this role take some more classes and up your GPA. But it won’t be your GPA getting you into med school, it would be YOU.</p>
<p>Curm, et. al., I hate myself for getting sucked in again, but here goes:</p>
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<p>YET! The operative word is yet. Unless and until you can accept that you screwed up, you cannot move forward. Until you move forward you will not do anything to make yourself proud. Look for a way to improve your participation in life. Perhaps a job at Target where you go to work every single day on time and where you do your work really well, perhaps that would be the step you need to take. It sounds like this would be an accomplishment compared to college?</p>
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<p>Yes, you did poorly. You are not a failure, you earned a degree, you passed with more than the generally accepted minimum of 2.0. You, at close to a 3.0 are still above average. </p>
<p>It seems to me that you are railing at your fate- your fate is that you have average grades after partying hardy.</p>
<p>So, what are YOU going to do next? All this tearing of clothing, gnashing of teeth, sackcloth and ashes whining, not attractive, dude. If you are acting this way around home, I am sorry for your parents. Better to find a job and start digging out.</p>
<p>You have a pretty first world problem, devastated that you got a B- average and earned a college degree. It’s just not that big a problem, if you don’t want to pursue medicine, it is no problem at all, George Bush did it ;)</p>
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<p>Yes, you can attend every class, every day, do all assigned work, talk to profs(briefly) if you need help, do all the work on time, turn everything in on time, keep up on the reading . Skip parties, beer, and drugs. Do the work and earn the grades. No magic, just hard work.</p>
<p>Trust me, I understand completely what you’re saying. As long as you remain with this mindset, you aren’t going to be a good doctor. </p>
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<p>See this? This keeps coming up. I’m understanding you 100%. Okay, so you agree nurse = helping patients differently.</p>
<p>So you think it’s shameful to help patients differently because you have a low GPA. I still disagree with you.</p>
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<p>Yeah, if you do fail at getting into medical school and can’t become a doctor, you don’t have a good enough reason to become a nurse or paramedic or any other career in the health industry.</p>
<p>Caring for patients isn’t a good enough reason for you? Being able to at least help them in any way possible isn’t a good enough reason for you? There’s an incredibly high chance you won’t get into med school. This is true for anybody. </p>
<p>What happens if you don’t get into medical school? Rather than help patients by becoming a nurse or paramedic, you’ll just give up? See what I mean? You obviously aren’t in it because of the patients. </p>
<p>You need to understand what I’m trying to say. By saying you don’t want to be a nurse or paramedic as a plan B, you’re saying that you only care about the prestige.</p>
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<p>Correction again. NO NURSES ARE SHAMEFUL. You need to get this through your head. All professions in the health industry are noble. </p>
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<p>Yes you did. Here:</p>
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<p>What you’re basically saying is that, if your GPA is too low and you can’t make it as a doctor, becoming a nurse would be shameful. So if someone who cares DEEPLY about the patients, but didn’t have a high enough GPA to become a doctor, it would be SHAMEFUL for them to become a nurse?</p>
<p>I would respect this person A LOT more than if you became a doctor for your own reasons right now. They tried to become a doctor, it didn’t work out. They still wanted to help the patients somehow, so they became a nurse. While you just mope around in sadness and and harbor feelings of failure.</p>
<p>Let’s go back to the first quote, though:</p>
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<p>You’re misunderstanding what I’m saying. Please take your time to re-read everything. Obviously, my point isn’t getting across to you.</p>
<p>IF YOU ARE GOING TO TAKE ANYTHING FROM MY POST, PLEASE LET IT BE THE BELOW. This is my main point. Read this carefully:</p>
<p>UNTIL you accept to have a plan B, which could be anything, even in the medical field, then you are in it ONLY for the prestige. Your mind is ONLY closed on the prestige of being a doctor.</p>
<p>Why? Because you refuse to become anything else but a doctor. What if you fail? You’re going to give up helping patients just because it’s shameful to become a nurse/paramedic/other health related profession? You’re not going to ever care for patients unless your name has an MD next to it?</p>
<p>Your reasoning: Not being ashamed>Patients</p>
<p>THIS is why I think you’re going to make a bad doctor. You don’t care about the patients if you feel ashamed of becoming something else that also helps them.</p>
<p>Where I see it, becoming a nurse practitioner/paramedic/other health profession>doing nothing to help the patients.</p>
<p>If your passion lies in the care of patients, you SHOULD have a plan B, so that you can still help patients if med school doesn’t work out because your chances of getting in are LOW, just like everyone else’s chances.</p>
<p>After reading that, if you’re still going to say that you’re not in it for the prestige and that becoming a nurse/paramedic is still shameful, you have not read my post carefully enough. Read it again. And again. And again. Until you get it into your head that you NEED a plan B. You NEED to consider other options as a career. </p>
<p>Becoming a doctor is a great goal and you obviously have a lot of personal connections, but are you going to let those personal connections slip into oblivion if med schools don’t accept you?</p>
<p>Work towards becoming a doctor, but have your eyes open for back up plans, in case this doesn’t work out. That way, you can be sure that you will have a future of helping those sick patients and being happy.</p>
<p>Lab techs are integral part of the research process. They take data, make informed observations, assist at/perform [animal] surgical procedures, do necropsies and determine cause of death, run test protocols, develop test protocols in conjunction with the PI, post-doc or whoever the heck is around, read pathology slides, write code, use analytic software, do preliminary data analysis for the PI, maintain lab logs/QA reports for the FDA/NIH/study sponsor, chart physiological responses, run PCR and read the results, maintain/repair equipment, recruit study participants, do patient screenings, plus tons more things depending on the lab… (Kinda like permanent grad students only with better hours.) IOW, lab techs DO the grunt work of research. And yes, that sometimes does involves using Excel. (PIs use Excel too, btw.) </p>
<p>Pay? Techs make about what a first year teacher makes. Or a STEM grad student. Not a princely sum, but enough to live on. Typically around $24,000-$30,000 to start. Salaries increase with experience and level of responsibility.</p>
<p>So, OP, before you run your mouth off any more about things you know nothing about and thus embarrass yourself even more, take a moment and reflect. There are people here with much more experience and knowledge than you have. It wouldn’t hurt to actually listen what they have to say. They’re trying to help you.</p>
<p>One more thing…I can say for a fact, you’d likely never get hired at our labs. Not because of your poor grades, but because of your arrogance, hostility, racist attitude and lack of people skills. Science–like medicine-- is a team sport.</p>
<p>BTW, some medically related non-doctor jobs are way cooler than anything a doctor gets to do. My med school kiddo is dating an air paramedic. He’s a first responder who rides the emergency helicopter transports. You think he doesn’t make a difference in people lives? Heck, he saves lives that would otherwise never even make to it a doctor/hospital.</p>
<p>Thanks for the suggestion, but I’m not interested in the army and I am a bio major.</p>
<p>@ somemom:</p>
<p>That remark about working at Target was supposed to be sarcastic. I would never work at Target. I would kill myself before my life got that bad.</p>
<p>Yes, I am not starving or plagued with disease and have a place to live. For those reasons alone I should be happy always. I should never have a reason to be unhappy.</p>
<p>Even if its a first world problem - its still a problem. Moving forward is just easier said than done. What your suggesting as “moving forward” (i.e. getting a job and redoing classes) is NOT what I consider “moving forward”. That would something like grad school or a cool job for a pharma company or public health organization. This is “moving backwards” after college which is why it is so hard for me to “get over it”. But I guess moving backwards is better than not moving at all.</p>
<p>Moreover I was wondering if a sudden increase in grades in my last year of school would allow me to do anything in terms of grad school or would that still be a no?</p>
<p>@ WowMom:</p>
<p>Interesting. Do they get to have publications? Thanks for the heads up about my personality. The best way to gauge that is really by threads on CC.</p>
<p>While being an air-paramedic is definitely a pretty cool and important job, its not actually out of the realm of possibilities as a doctor. A doctor can medically do anything a paramedic can. Therefore, given the right vehicles and weather conditions, you could hop in on a chopper and become a doctor with wings. I think there are military doctors that fly with army squads during missions. There are also doctors who are also officers of the air force. So it is a cool job WowMom, no doubt, I just disagree that its cooler than what doctors can do.</p>
<p>@AceAites:</p>
<p>I think there are plenty of reasons why people choose to become doctors - caring for patients is simply one of them. Yes, caring for patients is an extremely important quality to have for any healthcare professional, but it is not my PRIMARY reason for wanting to become a doctor. This doesn’t automatically default my reason to being prestige. As I already mentioned, I find the ROLE that the DOCTOR plays in TREATING THE PATIENT is unique. I also find the role played by doctors in the HEALTHCARE SYSTEM to be very important and I gave you a specific example from my life highlighting why.</p>
<p>It is important to note that this does not make the role of nurses or paramedics less important, their roles are just a little different than those done by a doctor.</p>
<p>That being said, you are right in that I need a plan B. If I am not good enough to be that role in people’s lives then If my grades are good enough, I will go to grad school and pursue a PhD and maybe do an MBA later.</p>
<p>Now i am going to follow the advice given here. Graduate/get a job/ go back to school and destroy everything. Shameful? My family and everyone I know would probably say it is. But no point in moping about that anymore, I must learn to accept it as my punishment for being a failure.</p>
<p>1) When do I take classes? (Immediately when the semester starts after I have a job? As soon as possible?)</p>
<p>2) How do I go to work and go to class if they both overlap? Obviously the answer is to find a way not too, but are classes offered in the evening/night?</p>
<p>3) WHERE DO I WORK!?!?!?! Since I was NOT planning on getting a menial job after graduating, I don’t know where and how to look? What can a bio major with crap grades do in life after college? Where do I find these lucrative and what is surely important job listings?</p>
<p>1+2) you should probably wait a year or two to start classes. To be honest, I don’t see you 180ing and pulling straight As your final year. It’s hard enough to get straight As when you don’t hate yourself and while you’re attitude is changing even within this thread, it’s going to take you a while to realize that having a shot is better than not and to try to not dwell on your failures. Even if you’re finally ready to give 100%, if you’ve never done it before, you probably don’t even know how to be a good student yet, and being a good student with a full time job is even harder. I don’t know much about post-baccs, I’m sure some exist that are part time/night classes only, or you may have to work for a few years and save up/convince your parents you’re no longer a failure so that you can eventually just stop working a be a full time student for the year or two it will take to do the program and apply.</p>
<p>3) Start with your biology department and career office although they will probably only know about opportunities at your school or ones that actively recruit at your school. My guess is you’ll need to start contacting hospitals and universities at the cities you would like to live in (you should probably live at home so you don’t have to pay rent) to find out where they list openings. You may have to get an account on monster or some other job seeking website if you’re looking to land a job in an industry (e.g. pharma or biotech) lab. If you work on a project that gets published, your name is on the paper, but as a tech it’s unlikely you’ll ever be higher than 2nd or 3rd author since most places don’t give techs their own projects unless they are very experienced or really go beyond their job description to try and come up with one. If you were a traditional applicant doing a 1 or 2 year stint, I would say try to avoid jobs that will treat you like a true tech and try to find ones that will treat you more like a grad student but in your position I’d say any opportunity to work in a lab should be heavily pursued. You could also work in less basic science stuff in a hospital. Your immediate plan B should probably include being an orderly or a paramedic.</p>
<p>I would also spend a lot of time working on your attitude. We may have misunderstood you, but the fact is you’ve got several people here who at some point in your posts have thought, “I’m not sure that this kid is cut out for medicine, and it has nothing to do with his sub 3.0 GPA.” Regardless of our validity, the fact that this happened should say something to you about the way you communicate.</p>
<p>There are a lot of hurdles in medicine that everyone falters on and lots of things that often appear to be “beneath you.” You will have to study stuff that appears irrelevant, you will have patients who will not thank you for your efforts or even resent you for telling them that something they think is wrong (sound familiar?), you will stick your fingers in peoples buttholes, you will probably kill someone and to top it all off: you will possibly get into medical school but still not be able to be an oncologist.</p>
<p>There is no shortage of opportunities within medical school to feel like a failure. Can you handle that? Can you handle the fact that the vast majority of your classmates did not have to do the things you had to do to get into medical school? I’m not saying you can’t, but right now I’m not sure you can, and no GPA/MCAT in the world is going to make up for a bad attitude during an interview.</p>
<p>Some techs do get publication credits. Depends on the lab, the PI and the tech’s responsibilities. We have some long-time techs who routinely get 3rd, 4th or 5th authorships. </p>
<p>1) Start taking classes as soon as you’re settled in your job/new living situation and you’re confident in your ability to manage both your work responsibilities and coursework. Allow 6 months- a year.</p>
<p>If you choose to take courses as a degree-seeking student you will need to allow time for your application for admission to go through and receive your acceptance. Exact length of time will vary depending on the school. (Allow at least several months. A full semester would probably be a better.) Pay attention to deadlines!!</p>
<p>The process for enrolling as a non-degree seeking student is usually pretty streamlined and may take as little as 1 day or as long as several months. It will depend on the policies of the college you’re trying to enroll in. And how efficient their admissions office is.</p>
<p>2) Night classes typically meet once a week for 3-4 hours. Not all or even most grad classes are offered in the evening. </p>
<p>You will have to be creative in your scheduling: look for late afternoon classes that start ~4:30, then ask your boss for an early release time with the promise of coming in early/staying late on another day. (Then, make sure you actually do make up the time or that will lead to negative work reviews and you won’t ever get release time again. You could even end up fired.) Asking to leave early probably won’t work until you’ve established a excellent track record at work. I’d probably wait at least a year before asking.</p>
<p>Some workplaces offer flex schedules which give workers Fridays off. (You work an extra half hour M-Th and have your lunch break reduced.) If you work at a site that offers this then schedule your classes for Fridays.</p>
<p>At my workplace, the tech’s workday starts at 7 and ends at 3:30. No scheduling conflicts for any late afternoon course.</p>
<p>Consider online coursework. (Not optimal in the sciences, but may be acceptable in public health, for example)</p>
<p>3) Your college’s career office would be the best place to start. They will have job postings and can help you ‘optimize’ your CV. If you are open to relocating, your job search may go easier.</p>
<p>I think i<em>wanna</em>be_brown summed up everything in this post. Although both a good GPA and MCAT score are critical components of your application which is in itself difficult to achieve. Attitude may be another obstacle that you will have to overcome.</p>
<p>You were missing my point. If you don’t make it as a doctor, what would you do? Give up working with patients/medicine? I’ve already acknowledge several times that the jobs are not the same. But, if you can’t be a doctor, what would happen? </p>
<p>There is absolutely no reason to not have a backup plan and only want to be a doctor and nothing else unless you’re in it for the prestige.</p>
<p>But, with that said, I’m incredibly glad you’re finally seeing things in a new light. I still think you should wait for awhile before doing anything, like what I<em>wanna</em>be_brown has suggested. While your attitude is better now, you still have some self confidence issues to work on.</p>
<p>I wish you the best of luck. You have some incredibly awesome advice to work with. Remember to learn to love yourself a little and have some faith in yourself. You aren’t a failure unless you completely give up on yourself. And no one should give up on themselves. There’s always potential to do something great with everyone.</p>
<p>Thank you everyone for your advice. I understand that a negative attitude can be a barrier to success, however taking a look at my situation, there is no reason to have a positive attitude. I just learned that this semester, I maybe failing a class as well. It is time for me to accept the truth and change my life.</p>
<p>@ IwannabeBrown:</p>
<p>I think having a good attitude is only valid when you have a logical reason to have one. Having a good attitude without having a good reason too is like trying to start a car with no engine. Sure you may be “positive” and “have a good attitude” while you further your attempts to get the car started. However, ultimately it will never start without an engine. Using humans as an example, my friends who are graduating and going to good grad schools have good attitudes, my friends who are graduating with actual respectable jobs have good attitudes. My friends who are in healthy relationships have good attitudes.</p>
<p>I have none of those things. In fact my life is the exact opposite so far, therefore, my attitude reflects that. Having a good attitude while your life sucks is meaningless. It doesn’t change how bad your situation is nor does it mitigate any pain you get from it. You just delude yourself into thinking that things are better than they actually are. Attitude is a reflection of how good or bad your life is. Where am I in life? Looking for a desperate job and waiting a year and then redoing all of college. That is not a success story. Far from it.</p>
<p>So yes, I agree, having a good attitude is necessary. That still doesn’t answer how I can have one in my situation when I have NOTHING to be proud of?</p>
<p>Your right IwannabeBrown. Im 21 and I don’t know how to be a good student. That is pathetic. I just can’t believe that I never woke up and realized what it took to get into med school in college. I just can’t believe that Im going to graduate with no immediate future. Sorry IwannabeBrown, but people like me shouldn’t have good attitudes - I just set myself up for more failure by thinking that I CAN do more, when in reality, I can’t.</p>
<p>Live at home? hahahaha!!! I don’t think I’m going anywhere NEAR home after this. My parents are hopeful that I’ll go to grad school after college before med school. They aren’t going to be ready to here that their only son has to work as a petri dish washer while taking o-chem in night school again. That isn’t what Indian pre-meds do after college. They usually go on to grad school, med school, or something else actually meaningful, and since that is their opinion, that is their expectation of me. My family considers jobs like nursing or paramedics or lab tech to be “lower” than that of a doctor (which isn’t false but I just disagree with being so black and white about it like them), so obviously you can see how they will be more than thrilled with my bright future as a lab tech or some low-level pharm company employee or janitor. No, I am going to have to live on my own and do this all on my own financially.</p>
<p>You don’t get my point - once I am in med school, I am not a failure. I can’t be. Im not denying that there are opportunities to fail, and I am certainly not saying that med school is a breeze. There is a lot of pressure, and I am sure that it must get to you. I agree with all of your points about doing degrading things in med school - but its the knowledge that one day I will become a physician, doing all these degrading things and handling the extreme pressure will be worth it because at the end of the day, I WILL BE A DOCTOR, and I don’t think people consider a doctor doing a colonoscopy to be “degrading” - its just a part of the job.</p>
<p>@ AceAites:</p>
<p>I will stop feeling like a failure when I have reason to believe I am not. Despite however “positively” this is viewed, ultimately, I failed 3 classes last semester, one this semester, and my future is in ruins because I was immature, lazy, afraid, and didn’t realize it till it was too late. There is no endeavor in my life right now that I have been successful at and not just my grades- working out, women, whatever. </p>
<p>Next year I will be graduating after 5 years of college and what will I have to show for it? No fancy job, no grad school admission, no med school admission, but probably a letter from my future employer at a hospital saying that I have a job as a nurse’s assistant to the assistant. How would you feel if you were me AceAites? Do you honestly think you could be positive and happy knowing full well that the reason why you can’t have your dream is because you kept making bad choices all throughout college?</p>
<p>The truth is I want to be a doctor and I don’t want too for prestige. The advice that was given here is good, but its not easy. Its just honestly scary having to think about where Im going to live, what job I will be able to get, where and how Im going to pay for and take classes because all of this is a gamble. I am doing this knowing full well that the odds are EXTREMELY against me and I probably won’t even get into med school. I will try my best to do this endeavor on my own. Like I said, I cannot let go until I know that I have given it my best. The only question is:</p>
<p>Is it too late for me to give my best? Is it ever too late for redemption? 5 years of failing college would suggest otherwise.</p>
<p>Either way, I have to start looking towards my immediate future after college. Time for job hunting I guess. I should have majored in something else in retrospect. Getting a job with a BSc in biology is so pointless - there’s not that much of a market for BSc bio grads - and certainly not ones with such a low GPA. Anyone know of websites where I could go for help?</p>
<p>I get that I could be a lab tech, but what other jobs are out there for me?</p>
<p>Like I said, I am interested in basic research (I have an extensive research background with a publication) as well as working in the public health sector (no experience here).</p>
<p>Do you think I could work in a pharma company lab? Do they require transcripts? Obviously nothing prestigious like Merck or Genentech (they require transcripts), something more to my level (for example a company like GeicoPharmacy - it’s so easy even I can do it!)</p>
<p>When things go wrong, you can’t feel like a failure. You need to use it to motivate you more. In medical school, surgeons and nurses will treat you like CRAP. You will feel horrible. You, as a med school student, aren’t useful and only impede efficiency there. You’re nothing but a nuisance and the personalities there will treat you like utter crap.</p>
<p>If you keep going through this mindset, I’m going to have to beg you to never apply to med school. Not only will you be pushed into the biggest whirlpool of depression ever because of your self defeating mindset, you will not make a good doctor. </p>
<p>What if a procedure didn’t go well and your patient suffered from it and I’m next to be operated. I sure as hell wouldn’t want you to operate on me, knowing that the failure of the last operation will be of detriment to your focus and attention.</p>
<p>Okay, if you’re not in it for the prestige (which I now find it easier to believe since you now demonstrate flexibility in your choices), you’re definitely don’t have the right mindset.</p>
<p>And now, to answer your question, yes you can still redeem yourself but the path is hard. They don’t want to make it easy for slackers to get into med school and become a doctor. Since you’re a slacker, you will need to prove that you aren’t.</p>
<p>But in the end, just because you don’t achieve your “dream career” doesn’t mean you’re a failure or that you won’t be happy. </p>
<p>In fact, I’m sure being a doctor isn’t cut out for you. You just lack the drive to. When you fail, you feel depress and aren’t motivated to work harder. This is the exact opposite of what a doctor should do.</p>
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<p>No, having a good attitude, no matter what, is like attempting to start a car. If it has no engine, you try and fix that problem. Call someone to attach/fix the engine or buy a new car. Having a bad attitude in times of trouble is like not even wanting to drive, no matter what. </p>
<p>If you can obtain this mindset and change your way of thinking, then you will be more ready to take on the challenges to become a doctor. It’s going to take time to change this way of thinking, though.</p>
<p>What do I recommend you do now?</p>
<p>Postpone your plans of becoming a doctor and work on your life and attitude right now. Find other jobs that can still carry your passion(whatever it may be). You’re not ready to be a doctor yet.</p>
<p>AceAites says it well. OP, you are conflating having a good attitude and being proud of your accomplishments. No one is actually telling you to look at your body of work so far and be proud, but your first post asked if being a doctor was still a possibility and initially everyone has said yes. Given that the answer could have been no, we would assume that you would be happy and feel hope over the fact that the answer was yes. A person with a good attitude is not someone who says they are proud to be in your scenario, it’s someone who is ready to do what it takes to get where they want to go. We have laid out plans to achieve your goal, and instead of thanking us and having a positive attitude that you can achieve these things, you have mostly just *****ed and moaned and complained about how now you have to take the hard road and how you’ll always be a failure until you’re a doctor, and all these reasons why what we’re saying isn’t good enough for you. Right now you’re either putting too much stake in medical school, or getting into medical school still won’t be enough for you to feel like you aren’t a failure.</p>
<p>Haha i<em>wanna</em>be_brown, I would also assume that the OP would be happy he even has a chance left… </p>
<p>I personally think that according to how how much OP has messed up, OP’s horrible attitude, bad reasons for wanting to become a doctor, and social pressure all dictate that Alongway should have NO chance of becoming a doctor</p>
He had a brilliant mind, but did not have the gumption to overcome whatever happened to make him stop out. I knew both of their families well and heard the stories as they unfolded.</p>