Hey friends!
My name is Abby Wilmer, and I am a medical student at the University of North Dakota. I graduated from Cal Poly in June of 2017 with a B.S. in biochemistry, and I took a gap year and moved back to my hometown in the Midwest. If you have a chance to take time off before you jump into the intimidating med school curriculum, I would highly recommend it! I used this time to travel, be on the lake, and spend time with family. Honestly, I wish I had taken another year off! There are so many medical students with different backgrounds – some are married and have children, others are coming straight from undergrad, and I even have a classmate who was a professional violinist! So the point I’m trying to get at… there is no “right path” to get into medical school, everyone’s experiences are individualized.
I know you might be thinking, “Why in the world did you go to North Dakota?” And honestly, I don’t have a good answer for you because soon enough it will be -30˚F and I will be wishing I was back in California. I started medical school only 7 weeks ago, so I am still trying to figure out my time management and study techniques. Medical school is so fast-paced! Since Cal Poly was on a quarter system, I feel like I had an easier adjustment to the pace compared to some of the students who came from a semester system. There are not enough hours in the day to learn everything that you need to know, so my goal is to learn 85% of everything versus everything of 85%. As a typical type A medical student, this concept was hard to grasp, and it has been a slow transition. School and studying can take up your entire day, so the trick is to find a healthy balance between studying and healthy living.
And who knew you could have fun in medical school? From day one, our professors and fellow medical students have stressed the importance of finding balance in your life. As awful as it sounds, it is extremely easy to fall into the routine of studying all day long and not taking a break to enjoy the journey. Don’t forget – the same applies during undergrad and during the application process! My balance includes playing hockey once a week with the medical students and visiting my family and friends on the weekends. Over the past few weeks, I had been going to football practice with fellow medical students because we were training for the “Malpractice Bowl.” The Malpractice Bowl is an annual football game – medical students against law students – and we won this year! It was extremely fun to be active and competitive with my classmates and it was a great escape from studying and school.
Undergrad is hard. Getting into medical school is hard. And then medical school is even harder. Yet it is all fun and exciting, so you have to make sure to find your balance! If you know the secret to this, let me know! Please don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any questions. It is important to use your resources, namely your prehealth advisors!
Cheers!
Abby Wilmer
abby.wilmer@und.edu
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