what did you do after you got accepted?

I have decided to get a second job and pay off as much debt as I can as someone suggested in another thread/post. Friends and family are nice but they don’t pay the bills (and I wouldn’t expect them too either :slight_smile: ).

  • racerx Said:
  • OldManDave Said:


So, do yourself & your loved ones a favor & INVEST your precious time by spending quantity & quality time with your friends & family. You will not have the same magnitude of opportunity for many years.



Read this, Digest this, and make it so. Dave hit it exactly.

I will cherish the "Summer of miniature golf" my wife, kids, and I had before med school.





I did mean YEARS! I started Ugrad fall of 96 - the most recent & SERIOUS attempt at Ugrad - and it is now early 2008. I am still critically rationing my time b/t training/education, family, friends and...who else...oh yeah, ME! Seriously, quantity of time gets damned thin, DAMNED THIN! So, you must learn to maximize quality of time, but even so - this approach has its practical & pragmatic limits. I had NEVER been a 'coach potato" until residency. Now, every time I have a moments opportunity to vegitate, I take it with aplomb! Because I never know how long it will last nor when the next opportunity to do precisely NOTHING will present itself.

Take my advice to heart - INVEST your pre-matriculation time in you & your loved ones. Read stuff for fun, non-medical stuff! Go to movies. Listen to music. Go sit with a friend & talk about minutiae. Watch FOOTBALL!!! Because once this roller-coaster ride starts, there is no getting off, rarely any breaks & it lasts a looooooooooooong time.

I started med school in 1999. That was the beginning of my usual ~100hr workweek. Today, in 2008 - nearly nine years later - I still maintain approx a 100hr workweek & that is exclusively for the education/training element of my life. Folks, there are ONLY 168 hours in a week...a WEEK. That means I have condense the most important stuff (family, friends & me-time...and SLEEP) into the remaining 68 hours left over. Or, look at it this way, 60% of your time - NOT just your awake time - will be spent in education/training leaving you with only 40% of your time to spend on "life". As a pre-med or pre-contemplative pre-med, I seriously doubt you spend more than 33% on your education...food for thought.

Greetings,


As I recall I have shared this elsewhere but, I drove a semi-truck and covered about 42,000 miles that summer…


Richard