We hope you enjoyed the truly exquisite fall colors that unfolded all around us this fall. Whether this is your first time seeing the maples, oaks, beeches, and birches in this ecstatic display of color or you’ve been in the Northeast your whole life—each year, it is just as remarkable and just as hard to believe your eyes!
We’ve been enjoying many one on one appointments and conversations with students and recent alumni as the semester unfolds, and in particular have been answering a lot of questions about what sorts of activities pre-health/pre-med students should do, what kind of volunteering, what to do over the summer, etc.
These are great questions that get at the heart of what it means to be a part of this pre-health community, because the answer is: everything! Healthcare is a fundamentally human endeavor: it is about humans reaching out to care for other humans. As a result, everything and anything that puts you in touch with humanity or human concerns is important as a pre-health activity. Having experiences that are in explicitly health/medical settings are definitely important: they show you what the day-to-day reality is like as a nurse or PA or physician or dentist. No doubt that’s an important piece in this puzzle.
But if you’re interested in going to medical school, does every activity you do have to be in a medical setting to be “good experience” for medicine? No!!!!
Health and medicine are informed by people in all of their fullness and richness – as a result, everyone will have different priorities or perspectives that lead them to wanting to pursue a career in health, and how they embark on that learning will necessarily be different and unique them as well. As long as you’re reflecting on what you’re doing, and how it helps you tune into the qualities most important for future health professionals (definitely look at, and use as a tool of self-assessment, the AAMC’s Core Competencies for Entering Medical Students to learn more about what those important qualities are), then you’re doing great, important work in preparing for a career in health.
As always, we love to talk with you about this and encourage you to schedule an appointment with either one of us if you have questions about this, or anything else. We wish you well as the semester draws to a close.
