Category: Pre-Med Advice
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Why?
What is your why? Following a recent conference on academic hospitalist medicine, I have spent a lot of time these past few weeks with learners – medical students, residents, pre-med college students – as well as community researchers who have survived various forms of gun violence. It’s no secret to anyone that I was quite…
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Writing a Christian Personal Statement: Part 3
In today’s culture, there is no greater sin than to be a phony. No offense to the lawyers out there, but Holden Caulfield said it well: “Lawyers are alright, I guess — but it doesn’t appeal to me”, I said. “I mean they’re alright if they go around saving innocent guys’ lives all the time,…
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Writing a Christian Personal Statement: Part 2
My essay for admission to medical school was brutally honest. I talked about my low GPA, my relationship with my parents, my obsession with the problem of suffering, quotes from my personal journal, and how it was all driven by a radical faith in Jesus Christ (and images in my head of suffering children). It…
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Writing a Christian Personal Statement
Writing any application for a school can be difficult, and writing the Personal Statement can become the most challenging part of it. By the time you are preparing to submit an application, most of its elements are already fixed: your GPA, your MCAT or GRE scores, the activities you did (or didn’t do). The Personal…
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In Its Time
[The third post in a series on becoming a Christian physician, originally written for the ESN blog. Earlier posts are Do You Want to Be a Doctor? and Helping People Is Not Enough]. After working 24 hours on call in the pediatric ICU, I was exhausted. I wanted to sleep, but friends had recently been reminding me of…
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Helping People Is Not Enough
[This is the second post in a series on becoming a Christian physician, originally written for the ESN blog. The series began with Do You Want to Be a Doctor?] “Why do you want to work in healthcare?” “I want to help people.” This dialogue is the most common conversation people will have about a…