Find somewhere you would want to serve even if you weren’t premed
In this section, I want to describe an ideal for you to shoot for as you think about getting clinical exposure, physician shadowing, and volunteer experience for your AMCAS. It is a vital part of your application for you to get exposure to the patient-doctor relationship in anyway possible, and you will hear premed advisor folks talk about that in practically every seminar you go to. The line of thinking is that during an interview they will ask you why you want to be a doctor, and you will tell them that you like science and that you want to help people, just like everybody else. The next logical interview question will then be “How have you already helped people (volunteering) and enjoyed science (research), and how do you know that you want to do those two things through medicine (shadowing)?”. What have you done demonstrating those things that differentiates you from everyone else? Letters of recommendation often come from these experiences as well. For this reason it is a goal for most premeds to get lots of volunteer hours, shadowing experiences, and research in order to be competitive. I want to give you a higher goal to strive for. Start. There is this idea in the premed world that we have a really long road ahead of us before we someday maybe reach our goals of helping people and enjoying science. We have to get through undergrad, make it into medical school, match to a good residency, pass the boards, and then someday we will be able to eventually start helping people. We think that in order to help people that we need to go get a white coat first. That is a lie. You can start right now. It is true that a physician’s white coat is a huge weapon in a someone’s arsenal to help those in need, but as a student I would argue that you actually have something more powerful. You have a more powerful tool that is completely inaccessible to most physicians. You have free time. Wield it like a sword. I know you don’t feel like you have free time, but the reality is that as students we have more free time than anyone else does. If you leverage your free time in the context of an organization that is already in the middle of doing great things you can start making an impact today. Find an organization in your community that you would want to serve even if you weren’t premed, and then put yourself at their service. Ask them what they need the most, and then do it with excellence with no strings attached. File patient charts, answer the phones, bring patients coffee, fax records, enter data into computers, clean rooms, and help people. Get excited about their mission and vision for the future, and then jump in and serve people. For me, that organization was Mercy Health Center in Athens, GA. Mercy’s mission is “Through a community of volunteers, Mercy provides quality whole person care in a Christ centered environment to our underserved neighbors”, and our core values are that we are Christ-centered, we value each person, we are faithful stewards of all that we have, we seek excellence in all that we do, and we are motivated by love for one another. I never sat down and memorized that. I just know it, and the main reason that I know Mercy’s mission statement and core values is that they strongly reflect my own personal mission for why I want to go into medicine. When I work at Mercy, I am actively working towards the things that made me want to be premed in the first place. While I am there it feels like I get to skip ahead ten years of life and just go ahead and start doing what I want to do. You need to get volunteer hours and shadowing experience in order to be a competitive applicant, and so why not use the work you need to do to support those who are already making a difference in your city? If you connect your work to the greater work of what is already happening in your community, then instead of being a chore your volunteering will be the highlight of your week and will motivate you after it is over to return to the library more energized than ever. Not only that, but when you do someday get interviewed about your experiences, your authentic excitement for what you are already doing will shine through and make you stand out. By working for an organization you would want to serve if even if you weren’t premed, you have the opportunity to start “practicing medicine” today. While you cannot literally practice medicine right now, you can work towards accomplishing the things that you want to someday use medicine to accomplish, and that’s the point all along right? Dream big about the impact your work right now as an undergraduate could have in the community. Start. Acknowledgements: This entire section is essentially an encouragement for you to go read the book Start: Punch Fear in the Face, Escape Average and Do Work that Matters by Jon Acuff; it is my experience framed around his content put in the context of being premed. Go read it. The footnote of this section is based on the talk “Fearless” that Louie Giglio published as a part of the book Passion – The Bright Light of Glory. Footnote: Hey Christians, Something I’ve been learning about through this process has been that not only can we start to make a difference right now before we get these shiny white coats, but that as Christians this entire conversation actually looks totally different. Read John 15 in the context of your volunteering as a premed. Here’s a teaser to get you to actually read it, but I want you to get the full context: Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. - John 15:4-5 Sorry to burst the medical school dream bubble, but you cannot bear fruit apart from Jesus, and a white coat is not going to change that. There is this perception that if we work really hard then we will someday be able to help people through medicine, and while it is true in a sense that physicians help people you don’t really want to just help people. You want to bear fruit. You can abide with Jesus right now, and start bearing fruit today. I boast in the work that God has done through me at Mercy Health Center, and the reason that I boast is that I am not boasting in myself. I did the work that I have done at Mercy through Christ for “I can do all things through him who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:13), and the hilarious thing is that I have done it as an undergraduate!! During my time at Mercy I had a high school diploma to bring to the table, and that was it. I am just a weak and very young undergraduate student, “But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2nd Corinthians 12:9-10). We are weak undergraduates, but through abiding in Christ we are strong, and we glorify God through the work that he does in us because the only way it was ever possible was through his power. I boast in how God has used me at Mercy because it is patently obvious that it was his plan, his power, and his purpose that brought me here, and he gets ALL of the glory and credit for what HE has done. Guess what Christian! God has a plan for your life! He wants to use you to bear fruit, and through abiding with him (read John 15, remember?) God can use you right now!! Pray. The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field (Matthew 9:37b-38). This applies to your entire life, and your work as a premed is a part of your life. Your faith and your work do not have to be separate, and while places like Mercy are awesome, this idea of God using you in your work does not apply only to volunteering at Christian clinics. Jesus can use you as you get coffee for patients on hospital floors, he can use you as you sit in chemistry class, he can use you as you shadow, and he can use you wherever he has placed you. You just need to abide wherever you are. Here then is your charge: Hey you! Undergrad! For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them…Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen. – Ephesians 2:8-10 and 3:20-21 You are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared beforehand that you should walk in them. Now lets go to work!
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AuthorI am a premed senior at the University of Georgia, and I hope you find this blog helpful in your journey. Archives
January 2016
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