Stuck - discouraged, frustrated, venting

I am so stuck. I’m part of the way through a new personal statement and have been since the beginning of June. And I’m thoroughly stuck. I detest the personal statement. For me to be genuine would be to say, “I’m not a writer, but here is who I am and why I am passionate about wanting to be a doctor.” But that has no “hook,” no “personal vignettes,” no “story.” It’s just me.
Add to that, my husband is getting cold feet about the whole thing. Now he wants me to do PA school so that we can “get on with our life” and actually pay for the kids’ college when they get there in 7 years. I can’t say I blame him, but I also can’t stand the idea of being a PA. I honestly don’t think they get enough training for what they are asked to do, and I don’t want to always have to run back to the physician I’m assigned to and get everything okayed by him/her.
So here it is the beginning of August and I have NO applications in at all. I’m very discouraged after my rejections last year and the subsequent rejection interviews (“you’re a great candidate! can’t really tell you how to improve unless you want to retake all of your undergraduate prerequisites”).
Plus, my husband is looking to relocate with his job, which could land us anywhere in the southeast, so short of applying to every osteopathic and allopathic school in the southeast (WAY too expensive for my husband to swallow), I don’t even know where to apply to.
Would it look bad to take a year off and let things settle down before I apply again? I’m not even planning on taking any classes this year to “improve my application.” It would just be a year gap in the application process.
And if I did do PA for the next 10 years or so, would it look bad to apply again to med school after my kids graduate from college? I took the MCAT 1st 9 years ago, then decided to put things on hold until my kids were older, and now I’ve actually retaken the MCAT, applied, and been rejected in the last round. My thought is that it would look like I don’t have the staying power if I don’t reapply this year and would look really bad if I waited another decade.
Whew! That is one rambling post! Thanks for reading it, and any thoughts would be appreciated.
–Alison

Here’s a big, silly hug from me just to start off! You need one!
It does sound like you do need to take a year off. Find out where you’ll be living, work out with your husband how you’ll manage this process, and maybe DO find a class or two to take just so you have some momentum. You don’t have to retake all your darn prereqs; just do SOMETHING with this time.
And take some time to just breathe, and give yourself a little break. You’ll arrive somehow; the path just isn’t clear today.

I don’t think it would hurt to take some time off to “decompress” from the issues going on in your life. However, I do think that after a brief “vacation” it may come time to really examine your options in light of med school rejection and your family’s dynamics. Doing so may help you decide whether the long road to and through med school and residency is worth your time, expense, and sanity. Only you – not your husband, not your kids – can make the choice whether or not to continue.
The danger of taking time off is that you may stop pursuing your goals because the challenge of “getting in” has been removed, at least for the meantime. Given that it appears you still want to go for the MD, perhaps in your time off you work on strategies for improving your application and chances for selection.
To remedy being stuck in your personal statement, consider getting outside help. An outside premed advisor such as Judy Colwell (who regulary reads and posts on this site) may be helpful: www.judycolwell.com. There are a number of on-line essay editing companies that can offer assistance in writing and editing personal statements, such as www.essayedge.com. A pre-professional admissions advisor at San Diego State University wrote a book on how to write personal statements for professional schools; it’s called “Writing About Me” and is available from Montezuma Publishing Company or through Amazon.com. Check out: http://www.sci.sdsu.edu/preprof/BOOK/writingaboutme.htm. or call 619-594-7552.
You mentioned that your PS (personal statement) has no hook, no vignettes. What are your health care experiences like? Have you done volunteering or other quasi-health care activities that you could tap for ideas?
Look critically at the reasons for your rejection. While you state that you do not want to retake past courses or take more courses, it it seems that lack of acceptable coursework is among the reasons for your rejection. Even a stellar personal statement cannot erase a mediocre academic record. AdComms are telling you – quite blatantly – what they are looking for; it is up to you to give it to them. So consider ways to improve your academics.
From what I have been told and read, adcomms like
to see persistence; it shows you still have the interest and, hence, the passion. If you don’t want to take classes, perhaps a health care job or volunteer work if you are not already doing such.
I understand your feelings about PAs, but – depending on your particular state – they may have considerable autonomy in their work. For example, in rural Alaska, many remote villages are staffed soley by PAs working under the standing orders of doctors in larger communities. Unfortunately, PAs are not universally recognized outside the U.S. and Canada, although this has slowly changing in the past few years.
OTOH, I believe that doing PA and then doing MD would be unwise given that you clearly state that you would rather be an MD. Why spend years trying to become something you already feel in your heart that you will be unhappy with? Why be an unhappy PA and then try for the goal that would make you happy? Go for the goal that would satisfy you the most rather than go for a stop-gap career. Plus, medical school admissions committees may wonder why you went PA only to turn MD later. However, PAs have been accepted to med school, but it is not common.
Getting into medical school is not a race for the swift, but a long journey for the committed and dedicated. Good luck!

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I am so stuck. I’m part of the way through a new personal statement and have been since the beginning of June. And I’m thoroughly stuck. I detest the personal statement. For me to be genuine would be to say, “I’m not a writer, but here is who I am and why I am passionate about wanting to be a doctor.” But that has no “hook,” no “personal vignettes,” no “story.” It’s just me.


Does it help to know that most of us have felt that way? While I ended up with a PS that I was really pleased with, and that definitely had a “hook,” it was much more painful to produce than probably anything else I’d ever done, including giving birth three times.
I can think of lots of pragmatic, “how to write your PS” suggestions that might help here but I sense that the problem is the underlying one of motivation, and all the practical tips in the world can’t address that. It sounds to me like you’re stuck on your PS because you’re stuck on the question of whether applying again this year is the right thing to do.
And it sounds like you have a lot of good reasons to be uncertain. First of all, your confidence took a hit. You got interviews, you got good feedback, but you didn’t get in. When you think about the insane level of determination involved in getting into medical school, this is a huge blow.
Then there’s the uncertainty with your husband’s job. While some folks do in fact apply to an ungodly number of schools to cover eventualities such as the one you’re facing, no one can tell you that that is what YOU should do. It sounds like your geographic position will be a lot clearer in a finite period of time - can your med school hopes be factored into the evaluation of potential places to relocate? I would hope you and your husband could discuss this as a good plan.
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Add to that, my husband is getting cold feet about the whole thing.


Consider that part of the reason he’s got cold feet is that he is reflecting YOUR uncertainty. If you are not only sure of what you want to do but convincing in how you’re going to do it, his hesitance might diminish. I don’t mean that you should plow ahead without talking to him. You’re in this together. I am thinking back on my own application days - the times when I wondered aloud why the hell I was doing this were the times my husband would get panicky and worry that it was a bad idea.
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Now he wants me to do PA school so that we can “get on with our life” and actually pay for the kids’ college when they get there in 7 years.


Well, it’s nice to be able to pay for the kids’ college, I will grant you that. But that seems an awfully short-term goal, and going to PA school is likewise (IMHO) an inappropriately short-term solution to that goal. Your first child enters college in 2012? If you enter med school in 2007, you’ll be in residency when daughter #1 starts college and by the time she finishes college, you’ll be out of residency and making a good income. Yes, loans are scary, but educational loans are investments and I think they should be viewed pretty much like mortgages instead of, say, credit card debt. Whatever loans you end up with for your schooling and your daughters’, you’ll be able to pay it off.
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So here it is the beginning of August and I have NO applications in at all. I’m very discouraged after my rejections last year and the subsequent rejection interviews (“you’re a great candidate! can’t really tell you how to improve unless you want to retake all of your undergraduate prerequisites”).


Retaking all your prerequisites is a tough suggestion to swallow, but I agree with Nahani that taking SOME courses and really kicking butt in them would be a good statement for your future application. If you don’t apply this year, I would strongly encourage you to figure out how you’d like to further your education in preparation for the next run.
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Plus, my husband is looking to relocate with his job, which could land us anywhere in the southeast, so short of applying to every osteopathic and allopathic school in the southeast (WAY too expensive for my husband to swallow), I don’t even know where to apply to.
Would it look bad to take a year off and let things settle down before I apply again? I’m not even planning on taking any classes this year to “improve my application.” It would just be a year gap in the application process.


See, if you ask me, you really are chasing your tail with trying to apply this year. If you have an idea of, say, the top three places he’d be LIKELY to end up, you could come up with a somewhat more manageable list. If there really isn’t any way to know your eventual location, then I think this really might be a sign that you are supposed to take this year to regroup, invest some energies into your family, and get yourself psyched to apply next year. As I commented above, however, I do think some further coursework would be a good thing.
I don’t think you should do PA. You clearly aren’t enthused by the suggestion, you’ve got all sorts of reasons why it doesn’t do anything for you, and in terms of it as a stop-gap measure, it’s just a way to while away the next ten years without actually meeting your goal. And PA school ain’t cheap either. As a long-term investment, I think med school is a much better way for you to go in both the short and the long run.
And you thought YOU were long-winded!
Mary

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I don’t think you should do PA. You clearly aren’t enthused by the suggestion, you’ve got all sorts of reasons why it doesn’t do anything for you, and in terms of it as a stop-gap measure, it’s just a way to while away the next ten years without actually meeting your goal. And PA school ain’t cheap either. As a long-term investment, I think med school is a much better way for you to go in both the short and the long run.


Hi, Mary,
This is an interesting point. There seems to be a conventional wisdom that people “shouldn’t become a PA” if their ultimate goal is medicine. Medical schools don’t like it. I the student won’t like it. It’s as though PA is this sort of dead end, a rut that you don’t want to get stuck in.
Yet, I have met many people who went from RN to medicine. Is it that PA is simply too close to medicine? Not complementary* enough, in other words? So an RN-MD is a person with a broader background than a PA-MD. I would have thought that PA would be a great background. Plus, it’s got fantastic hours, lower malpractice costs, and really good pay. I’m an ignoramus here so someone please enlighten me!
-Terry
* Regarding complementary. The other day I saw an article somewhere that mentioned “complimentary medicine”. Wow. And they say there’s no free lunch!

I’m not trying to generalize about the PA profession. I just think that if you know you want to be a doctor, why would you go through a lot of the same stuff that medical students go through, but then end up a PA? If you WANT to be a PA, and it’s a conscious and positive career choice, then go for it. PAs are great, there are tons of cool career opportunities for them, and their patients love them. But if you are going into this thinking “I want to be a doctor… in a few years, so maybe I’ll be a PA in the meantime,” I think that’s a horrible career decision that isn’t likely to last well. I am not making statements about PAs here, but rather about the philosophy of choosing your career.
The PA who goes into it thinking that’s where they want to be, and then LATER decides, “ya know what, I should be on the other side of the OR table or I should be the one handling the tough middle-of-the-night calls, it turns out I really DO want the extra grief that goes with the MD/DO,” I don’t know why such a person would be looked at askance by a medical school. They’ve “reality tested” their decision in the trenches and know for sure that they want something different from what they’ve got now.
Joe Wright wrote some great thoughts on PA/NP vs. MD/DO some time ago - if you do a search that goes back a couple of years, you’ll find some very thoughtful stuff that really states it far better than I could.
I don’t think that either RN or PA is a good stepping stone to a medicine career IF YOU KNOW THAT YOU WANT TO BE A DOCTOR. Frankly taking all that time to go into a similar profession seems a waste to me.
Mary