Hello everyone! I am so thrilled to find this place because I seriously feel like I am going to stick out like a sore thumb in the months/years to follow, so it’s nice to have a forum to commiserate with! 
I’m Melissa, I’m 27 and live in Chicago. My entire life I’ve wanted to be a doctor, but first I tried to lash out against my family’s tradition of going into medicine, and then I was just afraid of the science.
I graduated from college in 2007 with an International Relations degree and joined the Peace Corps, where I did Environmental Health. I stayed in Panama afterwards, where I’d met my husband (who is a doctor from Panama), and in the meantime I taught English at local universities.
Now I’m back in the US, and working for a really well-known language learning corporation from home, and they’re generous enough to pay for education, provided it’s within their realm of interest. SO I’m getting my MA in linguistics, currently, and it’s actually surprising how life brings you to where you need to be, because for the first time since undergrad, I’m in a situation where I can take affordable pre-med classes at a 4-year university. What’s especially nice is that my job is from home, so I can study while I work, and most of my work hours are flexible.
What’s even more exciting is that I love linguistics, and have found that it’s much more scientific than I’d ever imagined. Studying linguistics from a medical perspective should not be a far-fetched thing at all, and I’ve spoken with my advisor in the Linguistics dept at my school. I never dreamed I’d get someone so supportive on my team, and she’s pushing me to do my pre-reqs and apply to an MD/PhD program, and eventually study things like Universal Grammar from a neurological standpoint which would be AWESOME.
So there’s my story. I’ve taken biology I so far but am enrolling in Chem I this spring, with Chem II in the fall, and then I’m gonna bite the bullet and take Ochem and Physics over the fall and spring semesters of the 2013-2014 school year (as well as one or two grad level ling classes, but they come easily to me), hopefully to take my MCAT next April-ish. In the gap year between applying to med school and hopefully attending, I’ll be finishing up my MA in linguistics!
It’s gonna be an interesting next couple of months, as my husband studies for his USMLE Steps 1 and 2 CK/CS and as I buckle down and spend my life studying and working, but I’m glad to have found this forum to be kind of a support device!
My schedule for next semester, in case anyone is interested in what I’m facing, is:
Mondays 7:05-9:45pm - Intro to Generative Grammar
Tuesdays 8:55-10:40am - Chem I Lecture
Tuesdays 4:15-6:55pm - First Language Acquisition
Tuesdays 7:05-9:45pm - Morphology
Thursdays 8:55-10:40am - Chem I Lecture
Thursdays 10:50am - 1:30pm - Chem I Lab
It sounds like a lot, but the busier I am, the better and happier I am, especially in the winter when I have a tendency to hole up in my house and sleep for 20 hours a day. The hardest part of this is that I work overnights Monday to Tuesday, but I can definitely make it work.
So hey guys! 