I decided to start this blog for my friends and family (and anyone else out there who might be interested in postbac premed programs).
So who am I (if you don't already know)? Well, I'm Whitney, and I've recently quit my job (Youth Ministry), moved from DC to North Carolina and accepted the true and inevitable fact that I will be in school for another 5 years (plus residency). Yep, folks, that's on top of the undergraduate degree I already hold.
What could possess somebody to make this kind of drastic, life-altering switch at the age of almost 30? Well, the story is long and goes back almost 25 years ago, but basically, I've loved medicine and science and bodies since I was a little kid. I squished a cadaver brain in 5th grade when my friend's Doctor-Father came in to our class and I knew I wanted to be a doctor. But, when I got to college, as sometimes happens, I lost the dream. I found a job I loved in youth ministry, and as life has a way of doing, I settled in just fine, nice and comfortably. 10 years, 5 states, and 2 countries later, I looked around at my life and at what I wanted from the future, and the idea of becoming a Doctor simply wouldn't leave me. It's like that perpetual dry skin on my elbows that won't go away no matter how much moisturizer I use (alright, so maybe that's just me?) I thought long and very hard about it, did LOTS of research, and settled on the idea of a postbac premed program.
If that phrase holds absolutely no meaning to you, don't feel embarrassed - it didn't for me either. In fact, when I first began thinking about switching my career, I almost immediately dismissed the idea from my mind because I didn't even know that postbac programs were out there, and that if you didn't do pre-med as an undergrad that you could still become a Doctor. And that's how we got here. In this blog, I plan to talk about life as a postbac, what went in to my application process (preview: there was a lot of rejection and maybe more than a few tears), the classes I'm taking, the strange and wonderful stuff I'm sure to learn, and I'll talk about studying for the MCAT and applying to Medical School (in 2016).
So, to start, just a quick overview of the main question - What is a postbac program?
Postbac is, in and of itself, an abbreviation. It stands for Post-baccalaureate Pre-Medical Program. There are hundreds of postbac programs at Colleges and Universities all over the country, and they're all basically the same when you get down to the nitty gritty. They're designed (at least the ones that I was interested in) to help students who did not take the required prerequisites for Medical School in undergraduate to go back and blitz through them with advising and support along the way. There are other programs called "grade enhancers" for students who were premeds, but for some reason got a little derailed in the grades department (and for some reason, Med Schools don't like to admit people with crappy grades) so there you go.
But for me, my program is designed to get the big 8 requirements to apply to medical school out of the way.
They are:
Chemistry (1 year)
Biology (1 year)
Organic Chemistry (1 year)
Physics (1 year)
I'll also take a couple of electives - one of which I've already chosen, and it's physiology.
The allure of doing a postbac program is that you can actually humanly accomplish this insanity in a calendar year if you work it out correctly. So for the next year, I'll be eating, sleeping (sometimes), dreaming, and breathing science. I'm actually very excited, because I'm a huge nerd. Welcome. I start classes on May 11, and will kick off the party with an intro Chemistry and Biology twofer.
There are some people who choose to do a "build your own" postbac program, and I give them a lot of props. It's totally do-able, but I wanted to knock these prereqs out as quickly as humanly possible which is something that isn't always possible in the do-it-yourself route (more on why that is later).
So that's where I am. In my next post, I'll talk about the application process (it was long), and how I decided which schools to apply to.
It's never too late to do it!
Whitney
So who am I (if you don't already know)? Well, I'm Whitney, and I've recently quit my job (Youth Ministry), moved from DC to North Carolina and accepted the true and inevitable fact that I will be in school for another 5 years (plus residency). Yep, folks, that's on top of the undergraduate degree I already hold.
What could possess somebody to make this kind of drastic, life-altering switch at the age of almost 30? Well, the story is long and goes back almost 25 years ago, but basically, I've loved medicine and science and bodies since I was a little kid. I squished a cadaver brain in 5th grade when my friend's Doctor-Father came in to our class and I knew I wanted to be a doctor. But, when I got to college, as sometimes happens, I lost the dream. I found a job I loved in youth ministry, and as life has a way of doing, I settled in just fine, nice and comfortably. 10 years, 5 states, and 2 countries later, I looked around at my life and at what I wanted from the future, and the idea of becoming a Doctor simply wouldn't leave me. It's like that perpetual dry skin on my elbows that won't go away no matter how much moisturizer I use (alright, so maybe that's just me?) I thought long and very hard about it, did LOTS of research, and settled on the idea of a postbac premed program.
If that phrase holds absolutely no meaning to you, don't feel embarrassed - it didn't for me either. In fact, when I first began thinking about switching my career, I almost immediately dismissed the idea from my mind because I didn't even know that postbac programs were out there, and that if you didn't do pre-med as an undergrad that you could still become a Doctor. And that's how we got here. In this blog, I plan to talk about life as a postbac, what went in to my application process (preview: there was a lot of rejection and maybe more than a few tears), the classes I'm taking, the strange and wonderful stuff I'm sure to learn, and I'll talk about studying for the MCAT and applying to Medical School (in 2016).
So, to start, just a quick overview of the main question - What is a postbac program?
Postbac is, in and of itself, an abbreviation. It stands for Post-baccalaureate Pre-Medical Program. There are hundreds of postbac programs at Colleges and Universities all over the country, and they're all basically the same when you get down to the nitty gritty. They're designed (at least the ones that I was interested in) to help students who did not take the required prerequisites for Medical School in undergraduate to go back and blitz through them with advising and support along the way. There are other programs called "grade enhancers" for students who were premeds, but for some reason got a little derailed in the grades department (and for some reason, Med Schools don't like to admit people with crappy grades) so there you go.
But for me, my program is designed to get the big 8 requirements to apply to medical school out of the way.
They are:
Chemistry (1 year)
Biology (1 year)
Organic Chemistry (1 year)
Physics (1 year)
I'll also take a couple of electives - one of which I've already chosen, and it's physiology.
The allure of doing a postbac program is that you can actually humanly accomplish this insanity in a calendar year if you work it out correctly. So for the next year, I'll be eating, sleeping (sometimes), dreaming, and breathing science. I'm actually very excited, because I'm a huge nerd. Welcome. I start classes on May 11, and will kick off the party with an intro Chemistry and Biology twofer.
There are some people who choose to do a "build your own" postbac program, and I give them a lot of props. It's totally do-able, but I wanted to knock these prereqs out as quickly as humanly possible which is something that isn't always possible in the do-it-yourself route (more on why that is later).
So that's where I am. In my next post, I'll talk about the application process (it was long), and how I decided which schools to apply to.
It's never too late to do it!
Whitney
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