The medical training path in becoming a doctor is an arduous and long journey, lasting anywhere
from 11 to 15 years after completing high school. That includes your 4 premed years
in college, 4 years of medical school, and 3 to 7 years of residency. These are the highlights,
the best parts that you'll surely look forward to.
Dr. Jubbal, MedSchoolInsiders.com. These are the five best parts in your path
to becoming a future doctor. They say your fourth and final year of medical
school is the best part of your entire medical training process. In reality, it’s only
the second half of your fourth year that’s truly glorious, and that’s because you’re
just coasting and enjoying life before starting residency on July 1st.
During the first half of your fourth year, you’ll be crafting your residency application.
Similar to your medical school application, that will include a personal statement, work
& activities section, research, letters of recommendation, and occasionally some supplemental
essays. You’ll be applying in September, and doing residency interviews anywhere from
October through early February. Interviews, depending on the specialty, can
be varying degrees of stressful, but I found it immensely fun to travel around the nation
and meet fellow applicants from other medical schools.
Your average emergency medicine interview is going to be more relaxed than your average
general surgery interview due to trends in cultures between specialties, although it
will vary from program to program. At one plastic surgery program, I was asked
to fold origami while simultaneously explaining complex research. And at another, I was to
carve an ear out of soap and to make it as anatomically correct as possible. If you want
to hear more about my personal stories in medical training, check out my second channel,
Kevin Jubbal, M.D., linked in the description. The summer before you start medical school
is one of the best opportunities you have to enjoy your freedom. Unfortunately, many
premeds succumb to their neuroses and don’t fully enjoy this summer. Instead, they’re
stressed about what medical school is going to be like, whether they’re prepared, whether
they should be studying now so they can hit the ground running, and getting their extracurriculars
or research lined up to have a head start. The reality is that the best way to spend
your summer before medical school is to enjoy it and live it up. If you’ve wanted to travel
to Europe, now’s the time to do it. If you want to reach the leaderboard of Fortnite,
now’s your best chance. The reason it’s important to take this time for yourself is
because burnout is a serious problem in medical school, and not coming in from a relaxed and
rejuvenated state will hinder your performance. Speaking of summers, the summer between your
first and second years of medical school will likely be the last summer vacation of your
life. Most medical schools provide this time off, although accelerated programs will not.
You’ll have approximately 3 months off, and this is one of the best times to capitalize
on research in your specialty of interest. Doing so will greatly improve your candidacy
when it comes time for residency applications, but you’ll still have time for other things
during that summer. It won’t be as carefree as the summer before medical school, but hopefully
you’re able to do something special to enjoy the last summer break of your life.
Believe it or not, you’ll look back on your premed years fondly as some of the best years
in your doctor training journey. If you’re in college right now, you may be rolling your
eyes saying “sure, grandpa, and I’m guessing you also walked to school in the snow, 15
miles, uphill both ways.” While there is a tendency for people further
along the training path to downplay the difficulty of earlier stages due to recency bias, the
fact remains that your premed years offer the greatest flexibility and control of your
time. You will never again have so much room for
experimentation with which extracurriculars you pursue, which clubs you are a part of,
or what sports you want to play. In college I experimented with guitar, was on a dance
team, got into powerlifting, went to countless music shows, and did many stupid things too
with comparatively minor consequences. I also had the ability to take incredibly interesting
classes, some of my favorites including the history of electronic dance music and the
neuropharmacology of drugs of abuse. Obviously the two had substantial overlap.
I found that in medical school, I had much less time, and therefore had to be far more
selective. Rather than experimenting with rock climbing and running and dance, I focused
on just weights and cycling. Rather than being part to half a dozen clubs, I was part of
only two. If you've learned even a smidge of something
new in this video, show me some love with a like and gentle tap of the subscribe button.
Or if you're a gunner premed, let us know with a thumbs down.
There are many other peak moments that you’ll remember fondly for the rest of your life.
While college graduation is special, and it had particular meaning to me given the less-than-straightforward
path my premed journey took, it wasn’t nearly as meaningful as my medical school graduation.
The amount of sacrifice, perseverance, and pushing of your limits that you must confront
to finish medical school makes that moment all the more sweeter.
When you receive your first medical school acceptance letter, you’ll be ecstatic, realizing
that you are in fact going to become a doctor. When you get the acceptance letter from your
dream school, you’ll be over the moon. White coat ceremony, typically done at the
beginning of medical school, marks the transition from being a premed to now truly being part
of the medical profession. Similarly, Match Day is a culmination of your
hard work and seals your fate for the next 3 to 7 years of residency. And of course,
graduating from residency or fellowship is the final leg in the race, closing the final
chapter on your marathon to becoming a fully fledged attending physician.
I still remember the day I got my MCAT score report. I was going down the elevator as I
opened my email, letting out an excited yet non-sensical sound, getting glances from the
two other students in the elevator. I walked to a bench in front of Royce Hall at UCLA
and sat there for 30 minutes, reading and re-reading the score report to make sure I
wasn’t misinterpreting it. And then I called my mom to give her the good news.
I want you to experience that same feeling; for the day you open your MCAT score report
to be one of your best academic memories. My team and I have been working tirelessly
to create the best MCAT study resource available. After over 2 and a half years, the Med School
Insiders MCAT course is now in early access, and combined with Memm, these offer the most
effective MCAT prep available. I'll be keeping all Med School Insiders newsletter subscribers
updated on the latest with regards to both, including when the full public release is
live, including newsletter-only discount codes. Sign up for my free newsletter at medschoolinsiders.com/newsletter.
If you enjoyed this video, check out my MCAT playlist or the 4 years of medical school
explained. Good luck my friends. Much love, and I'll see you guys there.