Wilkommen, Bienvenue, Welcome

I'm in med school. At the moment, I'm a second-year. I frequently talk to people who are applying to medical school, considering medical school, or dead-set on becoming doctors and desperate for any little piece of information about how to get in, how to succeed, what it's "really" like.

Well, I can't tell you how to get in. Sorry! You're going to have to work that out on your own. I also can't tell you how to succeed. I can give you some advice that I hope will be helpful, but the best piece of advice I can give you when it comes to medical school (indeed, life) is this:

Take every piece of advice with a grain of salt.

I've noticed people loooove to give advice. They're just dying to counsel you on what to do, what not to do, how to do or not do it, how to think and feel and talk and which way to scratch your ass for maximal itch relief. Usually, what they tell you has much more to do with the advisor and her personal experience then it has anything to do with you. Usually, it's off-the-mark and not applicable to you. Sometimes it's straight-up counterproductive. Here's what I recommend when someone offers you advice:

1. Assess who it is who's trying to advise you. Is this someone you like and/or respect? Is this someone who knows you and your situation at all? If yes, proceed to Step 2. If no, plaster a vacant smile across your face and wait until their lips stop moving to politely excuse yourself from the conversation.
2. Listen to what they have to say. Who knows, maybe there'll be an iota of good counsel in there.
3. Consider whether the advice relates to your situation and whether it sounds like it fits you. Ask yourself what the advisor's motivation might have been in sharing their wisdom with you, and where they were coming from. If someone tells you to stop worrying about your Physio exam, it's probably because he gave himself a bald spot pulling his hair out during the three weeks he spent forgoing sleep to study Physio instead. His hairlessness has nothing to do with you; when he's saying,"Chill out," he's really talking to himself.
   
4. If you discover that, miracle of miracles, someone gave you some real, honest, useful advice that speaks directly to your situation, state of mind, and particular problem, then give it a try!

But that's just this girl's opinion. As LeVar Burton would say, you don't have take my word for it.

Where was I? Oh, right. How do you get into med school? I have no idea. What do you need to do in order to succeed? Wouldn't even know where to start trying to advise you on that one. What's it really like? Well, that's what this blog is for. I hope to write about what it's really like for me. Of course, that might bear no resemblance to what it's really like for the person sitting next to me in class, and definitely is different from what it's really like for students at other schools. But I'm going to go ahead and avoid studying by typing away in this blog. And if you find what I write to be remotely interesting, amusing, or informative, well that's just dandy. Keep on coming back for more. I'll probably dispense a lot of advice, but I certainly don't expect you to take any of it.