While I had previously written a brief post on admissions consulting and why there was nothing inherently wrong with it, I feel a need to write a more complete article on it and examine the issue on a deeper level.

Before I begin, let my begin by saying that I have essentially done consulting for scholarship, awards, undergraduate admissions, and medical school admissions for numerous individuals, both friends and even complete strangers.  I have never asked for a single penny from any of these individuals.  I currently don't charge for advice/help, although that's not to say I haven't considered it (as a side job) and it's something that could happen for me sometime in the future - who knows? 

(As a side note, some of you may have noticed the Consulting Services link on the left hand menu.  This is not a consulting service provided by MedChatter - it is simply a link exchange we are doing to help promote MedChatter to medhopefuls).

Because of that, it may surprise some of you that I don't have any problem with those who do charge for consulting advice.  Understand that whether I personally choose to charge or not for the help I provide is completely irrelevant.  I still believe there is nothing inherently wrong with charging for admissions consulting.  There are problems that can stem from admissions consulting (which we will soon discuss), but the existence of some related problems alone is not enough to say admissions consulting is "wrong" or "should not exist".

Why am I writing this?

I think far too often in too many things we focus on just one side of the coin.  And that's not necessarily a bad thing, but it can be counter productive if you're looking at the side that prevents you from succeeding, and succeeding big.

While I don't have any specific role models that I look up to, one of the things I have come to admire are people who are masters of their trade - those considered "great" in their respective fields.

One of the things I have come to realize is that a key characteristic such individuals have in common is that they are fearless.  To be more specific, what I mean is that they are not scared to lose.

I think it's important to make this distinction between being fearless of losing and simply being fearless because fearlessness is all too often misconstrued as foolishness when it need not be.

Yes it is true that there is foolish fearlessness.  For example, a fearless person who takes a test without studying is foolish.  Fortunately, that's not the type of person I am talking about and clearly not the type of fearlessness I am advocating for.

A master who is fearless is one who recognizes the failures or losses he may experience, but chooses to not focus on them.  Instead, he focuses on succeeding.

There are many reasons why being fearless is critical to being successful, but there are two that stand out to me.

Focusing on Failure Prevents you From Taking Advantage of Opportunities to Succeed

This past Monday I took my Metabolism and Nutrition mid-term (I think I passed...)  As usual (and as expected) the weekend was a major cram session, and I finally turned into bed at 4 am (where I proceeded to roll around in bed with my mind constructing random thoughts about hypokalemia which made no sense whatsoever).  Basically my whole weekend was spent between phases of studying and whining about studying.

In undergrad, I usually only spent one or two days studying for a test or exam.  Here, I had to start like 3-4days in advance.  So basically, the amount of material I needed to know for my medical school exam was 2-3 times as much as for an undergrad exam.  All that said, the exam questions weren't any harder than any undergrad exam.

If you ask any medical student about whether medical school is challenging, I'm sure they'll say yes, but I'm sure they will also tell you that it's not intellectually harder (though I guess it depends on what their undergrad major was.  But I would say this is probably true for any student with a science background).  Rather, the reason why academics in medical school is more challenging is simply because you have to learn a significantly greater volume of information in a shorter period of time.

Why is Your GPA Important to Admissions Committees?

When most people hear about plastic surgery, they think nose jobs, breast augmentation, botox, etc. Mental references to Dr. Christian Troy from Nip/Tuck may come to mind - the cash, the cars, the glory, and the girls.  Even among premeds and medical students, plastic surgery can often be viewed as a superficial specialty with a cushy income. Is this general perception accurate? Based on my exposures, I'd have to say no.

To quote Dr. Borschel, "The goals of plastic surgery are threefold: (1) to alter surgically the form and function of anatomy - either normal or pathologic; (2) to improve quality of life; and (3) to preserve life itself. Just to get a sense of the breadth of the field, the following sub-specialties all fall into the realm of plastics surgery:

Source: Clerkship Info Night Handout 2010, Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto.

So this week, the 2nd year medical students at UofT have a big decision to make.  We have to rank our clerkship rotation schedule preferences so that the UofT clerkship matching system can match us.  In case you are not familiar with the matching process, or the rotation schedules, let me break it down for you.

Today at lunch, a bunch of my friends were having a very heated yet interesting argument.

 It all started when a close and smart friend of mine (Let's call him Mr. G) approached me asked me to become his debate partner at the debate club after school. I actually used to be in debate club back in Grade 9, but I left after a month or two because I just did not enjoy what it had to offer. To be honest, I just didn't like debating; sure it can help improve your confidence and your oral skills, but standing up for 7 minutes arguing about a topic you just don't really care about is definitely not something I enjoy doing.

So I told him "Sorry, don't like debating very much" and then we kept going back and forth on whats good and whats bad about it. However, he then brought up these points:

I have to say that today has been a pretty good day.  Only had three hours of class, and the professors today were actually good.  I think I space out in class more than anyone (e.g. I don't think during class and mindlessly take notes unless the lecturer is really good and/or the material is particularly interesting).

For someone like me, today's main professor did everything right.  First, he had all of the important points listed in his notes.  It really gets on my nerves when lecturers hand out extremely bare notes that makes it impossible for you to both listen/understand AND have all the necessary information.  Don't get me started on lecturers that provide slides with three word sentences where the context of those words is completely unclear.  

Second, he went at a good pace - not too many slides/info, not too few.  Nothing freaks me out more than opening up my lecture notes and seeing that we need to cover 100 slides over the hour (obviously exaggerating, but you get the point).  Conversely, there are those lectures where the lecturer obviously did not need an hour to teach everything, but chose to anyways instead of letting us out early.

Finally, the material was explained in a straight forward and easy to understand manner.  It's never a good sign when everyone is confused by the end of class.

But today's professor did a great job in all three categories, so I was quite happy that I finally felt like a good medical student today (lol).

Passed my DOCH exam

Last fall I went to a talk run by the UofT Internal Medicine Club and at the end of the session there were sign ups for medical students interested in being matched for a shadowing experience with physicians from various non-surgical specialties.  I can't remember what specialties I wrote down, I think it was internal medicine as a first choice (e.g. general internist) and then neurology as a second choice.  I wasn't really thinking too much at the time.

Well I got hooked up with a neurologist (sign, anyone? haha) at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre.  I'm not going to mention his name out of sake of privacy, despite the fact that I thought he was fantastic and I thoroughly enjoyed the experience.

It was my first time going to Sunnybrook, and I was using their shuttle bus service to get there directly from Women's College Hospital (which is downtown and fairly close to me).  Because I didn't have a pass for those hospitals, I had to get a bus pass directly from the hospital, and the person who gave me the pass told me to just tell the driver that I needed the pass for the round trip (even though the pass says it's only meant for one trip).  Obviously, when I hop on the bus, the driver tells me no, I can't use it for a round trip, despite me giving the name of the person I talked with and everything (they were just being responsible of course, so I can't really be upset or anything).  Good thing my buddy had negotiated another pass for me last week from Sunnybrook!

Check out the "Interview" link for new articles: "The GIANT List of Interview Questions" and "Top 15 Interview Tips".

This past Wednesday our first year medical school class was given our final lecture on Management for the year, along with the assignment of producing a one page document that shows where we see ourselves in 10 years (and considering that most of the lecture was about career planning as future physicians, I’d guess they want us to have some sort of focus on where we see ourselves fitting into medicine). There’s a ton of flexibility with this assignment (I know Mike made something in Photoshop), but as you can imagine, I’m choosing to write. And what the heck, I might as well write it here.

The truth is that I have no idea where I’ll be in 10 years. “Obviously you don’t”, you say to yourself, since I can’t see the future. But I really mean that I’m pretty conflicted over where I actually want to be in 10 years. I always thought I knew what I wanted, but the older I get (and presumably the wiser I get) the more I realize I’m not exactly sure what I want when it comes to my career. Perhaps it will help if I give you a brief time line of my thought process since I first began to be interested in medicine.

In high school, I thought I wanted to be a doctor. Not just any doctor, but exactly a “pediatric neurosurgeon”. Boy, that sounded cool. Imagine how awesome it must be to remove brain tumours from kids and completely change their lives. Not to mention how prestigious being a neurosurgeon seemed.