Intro to Pre-med

When I started at MSU, I knew right away that I wanted to be pre-med and I chose to major in neuroscience to be different. A lot of people that I knew were majoring in human biology or something like that, but neuroscience had a mystery to it that I liked. I thought I wanted to be like Dr. Carson and be a pediatric neurosurgeon (THOUGHT...although an influential figure in medicine...not very influential to me as a person *shrugs*). Then I wanted to be like Dr. Shepherd from Grey's Anatomy (It's a Beautiful Day to Save Lives, am I right?). Those were 2 big reasons for picking neuroscience.

Well, I started college, and I'm not going to lie. It was rough. I was accepted into Lyman Briggs (a residential college for the sciences at MSU) and long story short, those classes are no joke. I did pretty decent my first year and thought I had this college thing figured out. Then fall semester 2014 came around, and let's just say I messed up. A BIG "don't" for those who are pre-med, post on that later though. I spent 4 years after that trying to improve my GPA while also being active in my sorority and be a college student. You can not do it all. Learn that early on and you won't struggle like I did.

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So, I want to give you beautiful people 3 lessons to take away from this:

|1. It's ok to say NO!

Do not feel pressured to go out every weekend. Put you and your education first because these professional schools don't care about if you were able to balance night life and school. What they do care about, is if you were able to balance being in an organization and school. If you choose to commit to being apart of an organization (Greek life included) then you need to uphold your commitment. That doesn't mean you have to be at every single program, community service, fundraiser, or party that's hosted, but balance is key. That's something I didn't learn until my *cough* 4th and 5th years. But when I learned it, I saw an improvement in my grades.

|2. Learn how to study EARLY.

I know many of us went to a high school where studying wasn't necessary. You probably were able to do your homework in the class period before and still got straight A's. Some of us probably do this same thing in college and it may work for some but not for all. If you're pre-med, you're probably taking classes like anatomy and biochemistry, those are classes you can't study for the day before. Actually, most of your classes you have to put in time to get that 4.0. Again, I didn't learn to study until my 4th year but when I learned it eliminated SO much stress. I mean, I was still stressed don't get me wrong lol but I didn't go in to many exams concerned if I were going to fail or not.

|3. Make connections!

We aren't business majors, so we don't come with the innate ability to network. A lot of our classmates and professors sometimes seem unapproachable and difficult to talk to and a lot of classmates seem to be in competition with each other. But once you get over that hump, you'll find it easy to form study groups and ask your professor for help when needed. And more importantly, you'll start building those relationships for those letters of recommendation! So build up that courage to talk to your professor. A good way to easily talk to your professor, is to ask a question about material (even if you understand everything). You don't have to go through your undergrad without a supportive group of friends or not knowing any faculty.

|Bonus: Talk to your advisor!

I'll talk more about this in another post, but that advisor? Yeah, talk to them. I promise it will make your life easier.

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That's it for my intro to pre-med. Hit the comment section if you have tips of your own or questions. If there's something you want to see me post about let me know!

Signed, Sasha