Fuck Pre-Meds

The BBQ Pit
1

Whoohoo, first Pit thread eva!

Ahem.

After 4 years as a German major, I decided I wanted to go into medicine. Why? Because I grew up in rural south Georgia and I realized that there are, simply put, a lot of people out there who have a lot less than I do and I wanted to do something for them. Privilege, wealth, opportunity and luck are not doled out equally at birth, and that ain’t right, and we gotta do something to fix the consequences.

Furthermore, I find human physiology really interesting, and had done quite a bit of volunteer work in hospitals. My parents are doctors who work with underserved rural populations, and, odd as it sounds , I really like people, especially country folk. I have a higher tolerance for the ways of backwoods America than most people I know; I even enjoy it. So I felt like it was something I would do well in. Just to do something for some people, what I couldn’t do with no German degree. I’m not a saint or anything, I’m just like everyone else, mostly selfish but I saw some need to help fill it in a way that I think I would be good at. So that’s the alpha and omega of it for me.

But fucking hell if the halls of premedical academia aren’t filled with some of the most arrogant, self-centered, grade-obsessed, self-aggrandizing little shits on the face of the earth. These little fucking 19-year-old cuntfaces trot around toting huge science tomes, faces buried beneath equations, one eye darting back and forth to absorbeverythingasquicklyaspossible while the other one keeps watch to make sure no one else is looking over their shoulder and possibly gleaning a piece of useful knowledge from their hard-earned notes. These whiny little shits cry to the professors when they get a 95 instead of a 97 LIKE THEY DESERVED on the cell bio final, which drops their score from an A+ to merely an A. They fucking obsess over the MCAT, and sob about being only in the 93rd percentile, lose sleep over the fact that the score from their practice test last week was a point higher than the score they got this week, and hyperventilate about it to everyone they know. I’m not fucking kidding.

More than their obsession with their grades, they have a general attitude of entitlement and self-centeredness that really gets to me. Like they are somehow better than everyone else, like they deserve medical school more than anyone else, and hell, anything but an ivy school isn’t good enough for the precious little science brains. Above all, their sense of entitlement makes them more competitive than fucking professional sports teams cause heaven knows that if someone else does well, it means that you failed.

Well listen up punks: This is not about you. This field is not about your own personal little achievements and successes. You are not in this to win awards and accolades that you can frame and put above your desk so that you can crow internally (and to anyone who will listen) about how brilliant and accomplished and deserving of love and adoration you are. It’s fucking about healing people, dipshits. That’s what the whole field is built on, ultimately. It’s about making other sick people well. It’s NOT ABOUT YOUR GODDAMN EGOS. So shut up and chill the fuck out!

You know, I know deep down that the ruthlessness of the medical field probably ultimately benefits Americans. I know that personal academic achievements and patient health are not mutually exclusive goals and that the two actually can work together. I realize our system puts the initials, “MD,” behind the best and brightest, and that is a good thing.

But goddamn people, just realize that a lot of the people in whose hands you place your healthcare didn’t get there because they were the most compassionate, caring, or dedicated to other’s well-being. No, they got there cause they were smart, ambitious, motivated, and sadly enough, often above all, cutthroat.

Gestalt.

2

When you structure something as a business, don’t be surprised when the people you attract think of it that way.

3

I’ve never been to med school, but I find your OP easy to believe. Last year I had a cousin start and a good friend finish, so I’ve heard plenty of stories and complaints like yours.

Part of the issue seems to be that you’re at least 22, I assume (4 years of german), and you’re surrounded by a bunch of kids who just finished high school. That’s a huge difference. Really, at this point, you can still blame the parents :).

4

Hang in there, Gestalt. Your compassion and attitude will make you a better doctor than these folks in the long run. I have a friend who’s going through much the same thing. He’s just started med school in his late 20s, after working for some time as a CNA. His goal is to have a family practice in Appalachia. He says it’s amazing how many of his colleagues are young, privileged, ambitious snots with no real world experience.

5

Wow. I’ve never seen anything remotely approaching the scenario you described among the medicine applicants here at the University of Saskatchewan. Sure, people stress over school and grades, but that’s more a “being in university and wanting a career” than a “pre-med” thing.

6

Would any of these pre-meds, per chance, also happen to be on your lawn?

7

[Unnecessarily broad brush]

Oh god I hate pre-meds. I was a pre-med once. The other pre-meds influenced me so strongly that I got out of the track to do research. Very few of them actually seemed to care about the science. Here’s a fun exchange I had in my histology class–

Pre-med Douchebag: Why are we only killing one rat?
Me: What?
Pre-med Douchebag: Well, we have to share the tissue. What if we all want to section kidney or something?
Me: You want to kill 30 rats instead of one, so that everyone can choose from any tissue they like, regardless of the fact that we have histology textbooks, share slides, and that the point of this lab is to learn how to fix tissue and section. Essentially, you’re totally unconcerned with the unnecessary loss of life.
Pre-med Douchebag: Yes.
Me: You’re a psychopath.

So, so glad I went into research. So glad. Grad students are awesome. Also, they pay me to go to school.

[/Unnecessarily broad brush]

8

See Really Not All That Bright’s post. The medical field is very different in the US.

9

If given the choice between:

A highly motivated and intelligent asshole who only wants to save my life so it will fluff up his ego and save him from his crushing fear of failure of any kind

and

A person that really cares about helping people
I’ll take the asshole.

10

So people are psychopaths if they do not care about rats?

11

I was a pre-med, and I taught pre-meds, and yes, it’s really annoying. However, the reason they go completely unhinged at a 95 rather than a 97 is that there are absolutely no guarantees in medical school admissions. So you have a 3.9 GPA? So what? There’s a whole battalion of 4.0s applying. Everything you do has to be oriented around differentiating yourself from the pack. Most people fail at this, and most medical school applications may as well be stamped out on an assembly line. The reason for that, though, is that you can be a unique snowflake, but that 3.5 can be the kiss of death.

So you have to have that 3.7+ GPA (at least), you have to have that high MCAT score, you have to have logged your hours in a research lab, you have to get healthcare-related experience, you have to write gushing essays on how you just love medicine so huggy-wuggy much and just want to heal the world, goshdarnit, and you have to do this so much more than everyone else that you’ll stand out. Most don’t manage this, becoming yet another ‘medi-clone’ in the stack of applications, and hoping to luck out. You could, of course, go off the beaten path and try to make yourself stand out another way, but that’s even less likely to work.

When admissions are so competitive, only the people who are willing to go the extra mile have a decent chance of succeeding. That’s all there is to it. And nameless, to be honest, I find the people at the medical school to be a lot more congenial and collegial than those at the graduate school. Sure, everyone’s competitive, but it’s all honest and in good faith. Maybe that’s just my school, though.

12

Back in the 80’s, I enjoyed TAing the physics for biologists classes. A fair number of the students were presumably pre-meds. The students, taken as a whole, were more mature than the engineering students. Mostly, because the biologists were juniors and seniors, while the engineers were freshmen. I never ran students of the ilk you describe.

I did have one pre-med who came up to argue about getting a 99 instead of 100 on a test. When he walked away, one of the older students, a nurse going back to school to move up in nursedom, looked me in the eye and said “Another fucking uptight doctor.” But, really, he was trying to find out why what he did wasn’t right. He was probably the brightest undergraduate I ever had as a student; he was the only one in that line of physics classes who straightforwardly solved three simultaneous equations for three unknowns in one lab. (Most of the other students panicked, he just remarked to his partner, “Well, I just assumed you did the same things you do with two equations.”

13

Heh. Most pre-meds are that way because that’s the way they went to school–incredibly intelligent, competitive and driven. You can see this in 3rd graders in the honors or “gifted” programs. I say this from experience (as a mom). The worst offenders have no friends, even at those rarified heights, but they do have adversaries who respect their abilitiies. For some, that’s all they want or need.

I’m torn as to which makes a better doctor, and it’s crazy to try to define people on such narrow traits… The humanitarian is necessary, but there does come a time when someone needs to know what they’re doing.

To put it in the crudest terms: if I’m mildly ill or need surgery, I want Wilson. If I’m on the brink of death, get me House.
Good luck in med school. I think you’ll find that those who shoot their mouths off are the most insecure. When you become a resident, please treat the nurses with respect and courtesy. We can make life very, very difficult for you. (not a threat–a promise).

14

People are psychopats if they WANT to kill stuff for no reason.

Can’t really contribute, the medical students I know are all really sweet. The psychology students are creepy, though.

15

He had a reason―hands on learning.

But I would not care if he didn’t have a reason. Going down to the dump and shooting rats is a fine pastime. The participants are not psychopaths.

Rats are not people.

16

I have to say, I dispute this. I know a lot of people who have less than stellar GPAs who got in, less than stellar MCATs and got in, etc. I don’t think it’s quite as competitive as everyone who freaks out about it makes it to be. I think a 3.6 GPA and a 30 MCAT is okay for most schools. Many schools have lower MCAT averages (28ish) and GPAs. I really do not think all the freaking out is merited.

Gestalt.

17

I spent a few years living and breathing the social side of a med school class (best friend growing up was my roommate while he was in med school).

Interestingly, very few of his classmates had been pre-med in their undergrad. Lots of chem and bio majors.

Maybe it’s the young, undergrad 19 year olds who are that way, but the 22-32 year olds who made up the class I hung out with were generally fun, interested, and compassionate people who seemed pretty on-par with every one else I’ve ever known as far as general anxiety over grades, etc etc.

18

Just because many people in those schools have 3.6s or 30 MCATs does not mean that most people who apply with those scores will get in. If one goes through the trouble of applying, one wants to get in, not get a set of scores that is similar to those who got in.

19

Not always true. I went to a state school that participated in a program wherein the pre-med students were guaranteed admission into state med school provided they stayed in the program and got an acceptable MCAT score (can’t remember what the number was). To stay in the program, they had to maintain a 3.75 gpa (IIRC).
They were, in general, a bunch of egotistical, entitled, hive-minded, cheating assholes, even with the guaranteed admission. (there were a few nice ones - they stuck out like sore thumbs)
What do I mean by cheating? A couple memorable examples: There was a group of about 20 of them that photocopied a lab report for organic chem, put their own name on it, and turned it in. A lab report complete with hand-drawn mechanism. The professor was incensed that they thought he wouldn’t notice twenty copies of the same report.
Grades in quantitative analysis lab were based on whether you got the right chloride ion percent (for example) from your analysis of an assigned sample; the actual numbers were a locked secret. One year a group of them broke into the prep lab and stole the numbers for their “unknowns” so that they could fudge their results to get the right numbers. (frankly I thought that one was more trouble than it was worth - easier to do the lab right)

The pre-meds had a reputation, especially with the professors, who knew to expect such things. They assured us, however, that the first couple of years of med school would take the majority of them down several pegs.

20

There’s a limit to what I’ll defend. Throw the book at’em. :mad: