Yana's and Leo's distilled premed advice
Yana and Leo Vaks-Aliaga
In the past few months we have had the pleasure of speaking to several groups of premeds about our own paths to medical education. As a result we each distilled a few bits of advice that we would have given to our premed selves.
Leo's top 3:
1. Realize you don't know important things you should be asking.
2. Prioritize activities that you are passionate about.
3. Take risks because you don't yet know all the pieces of the puzzle you'll need to complete your mission. But take calculated risks. You can learn to vet these risks and develop a sense of what might pay off and what will just eat your time away.
Leo's barrier - "I didn't know what I didn't know"
Yana's top 3:
1. FIND YOUR TRIBE. For instance, your assigned college premed advisor might not be the person who believes in you or roots for your success. Keep looking for the person who does. Premed culture is all about "weeding out," surround yourself with people who instead want to pull you in.
2. Remember that ASKING FOR HELP ≠ WEAKNESS. When you live the impostor syndrome life, you would rather die than ask for help - a self-fulfilling prophecy. What you may not realize is that the best students ask for help all the time!
3. When the going gets rough, find a "patient" to talk to. By "patient" I mean any person that you are working to help - maybe it's a resident at a homeless shelter where you volunteer or a high school student that you mentor or an actual patient in a medical setting. It will quickly remind you why you are doing all this in the first place.
Yana's barriers - not knowing WHEN or HOW to ask for help.
Finally, a bonus bit of uber-pragmatic advice from both of us - PROTECT YOUR GPA!!! If doing an extracurricular activity compromises your chance of getting an A in organic chemistry or takes time away from completing every calculus homework, consider postponing that activity until you have a lighter course load. Yes, even the activities that you are passionate about. At the end of the day, taking a year or two after college to get involved in more premed activities and strengthen your medical school application is much easier than having to "fix" your GPA.