I’m SO excited and scared. I’ve been accepted to Saba School of Med this Fall, 2016. I’m giving my work a one month notice tomorrow (I work as a chemist) and it’s all starting to feel real. I know Caribbean Med schools have a bad rep sometimes because they have a high attrition rate, but I’ve done my research and it looks as if, if I work VERY hard and study basically nonstop, I’ll survive. Any encouragement, advice, opinions, are welcome.
Just as a quick background, I loved being a chemist for the longest time, but as I got “promoted,” it’s become more of a computer job, and I’m too hyper to sit all day. It’s killing me and I’m ready for a change. A friend of mine who helped me in my decision to go to med school asked what I thought was a brilliant question… She said, “what are you looking for?”
At first, I said the generic, “I want to help people,” but as I was driving home, the answer hit me. I’m looking for excitement in my life. Please don’t beat me up over this. I know I shouldn’t want to become a doctor because it sounds exciting (Btw, I do also want to help people!), but I truly believe that without something exciting to look forward to, why are we here?
Thanks for reading!
Welcome! Your reasoning for switching is similar to mine. In my previous career, I felt that I spent way too many hours in front of a computer and ended up with little in the way of tangible results. I made the shift to medicine to end up in a space where I felt I could have an immediate and tangible impact on the lives of others.
Best of luck as you start school! It’s a big transition.
I’m a former Chemist too, congrats on starting med school! 
PS- I’m GLUED to my desk studying Biomedical Informatics as a PhD student, LOL!! 
first of all congratulations. second, you have a lot of work ahead of you. the best advice i can give would be to find your study method and stick to it. be anal about your studying and most importantly do not, i repeat do not be too proud to ask for help. in fact, sometimes getting a tutor, if it is available from the get go would be a good way to review things and make sure that you understand them. i found youtube to be a great resource for videos to help solidify concepts as i am a very visual learner and there are a lot of resources out there on the interwebs such as online tests and quizzes to see where you need to focus on.
Not sure I ever saw the comments to this (my post). Sadly, I survived a year at Saba and failed out, along with about 40% of my classmates. I worked real hard but I blame myself because I never quite figured out how to study well there. Everything was presented to us in power point, as I’m sure is the case for all med schools, and I had a hard time embedding the material. I guess I’m used to learning from a textbook. Also, I focused too much on small details instead of high-yield information. So sad. Not sure what to do now. I can always go back to my chemist job but I’m pretty devastated because I loved what I was learning. I wouldn’t recommend the Caribbean schools to anyone though. We had no support and it felt as if they needed to get rid of some of us. I should have listened to the warnings