Greetings All!
Newbie here who’s keen on making a life/career switch to medicine. Problem is my biography/cv/resume I fear will leave much to be desired by admission committees. Here’s a sampling of my background:
Insurance Examiner: 3 years
Residential Painter: 5 years
Bus Driver: Part time 5 years and counting
College Instructor for the US Navy: Part time 1 year and counting
Political Researcher: 1.5 years Washington D.C.
This is 3/4 of what I’ve done work wise over the last 15 years since I received my BA. (I also have an MA in international Relations and was accepted to a PhD program in the UK but decided against it for a host of reasons.}
My primary interest in pursuing medicine is that I’ve weighed the pros and cons of a Phd in clinical psychology vs. the psychiatrist route and I find myself definitely pulled toward psychiatry. I am fascinated my psychopharmacology and would love to help the sailors and marines I’ve taught and lived with during my brief time as a college instructor.
While I have zero volunteer experience in medical/social services, et cetera, and I am pushing 39, I do have the advantage - I guess - of knowing or at least having grown up in home where my father was a practicing physician and my mother was a registered nurse. (Edit: I am not currently on speaking terms with the old man, that’s one of the reasons for my visit to this site.)
Gosh, I guess I’m poised and ready to start down the pre-med path, err, I mean the post-bacc path.
Well, that’s pretty much the basics for now, and I guess I’ll throw this out there for anyone to comment on. Primarly, I am concerned about my eclectic mix of work. Would the adcom people roll their eyes?
Thanks folks!
Best Wishes to all!
BusDriver2Do
Hello, BusDrive2DO. First off, welcome to the group! Thanks for sharing your experiences and a little of your decision to pursue medicine.
IMHO, I wouldn’t worry too much about the varied experiences you have and how adcoms will look at that. It is what it is, and you can’t change it so you’ll have to find a way to celebrate it and to alleviate the concerns you think they may have. I think the most important thing they’re going to look at are grades and MCAT. It’s sad, but it’s the reality of applying to med school. So make sure those are solid, and then use your personal statement to convince them why they need to accept you and why they’d be doing a disservice to themselves by not accepting you. 
Good luck in the pursuit of medicine!
Thanks MD2B!
Yeah, I guess that’s pretty much the only thing I can do - be positive and have a honest narrative as to why I am pursuing medicine.
I found another poster on this forum in a somewhat similar situation; guess it helps to look around b4 posting. But what the heck I’ve introduced myself and now it’s time to buckle down with my post bacc. I’m starting in spring term '10. I can’t wait!
Thanks again,
BusDriver
Some schools will find your “eclectic resume” interesting. What you’ll need to do, though, is figure out a way to string it all together - what were you working toward? how did one thing lead to another? what about the various jobs you’ve held now leads you toward medicine?
And you need to look for some clinical experience, whether shadowing or volunteering or both. You’ll need to refer to real-world medical experience (recent) to show that applying to med school isn’t just one more whimsical gig in a resume that’s got a lot of direction-changes.
Mary