Sunday, February 27, 2011

Foiled Again

The first O. Chem test of this semester is going to be this Tuesday. I've actually been working on that hard for the last two weeks but, again, not in the proper manner. And I didn't figure that out until a few days ago, so it was too late to really fix anything.

Our book is awful, and has no answers to the problems (you have to buy another 150 dollar book to get those.... which I don't own). I was planning on hitting my book really hard over these last two weeks to get ready but that's proven impossible. I can spend all the time in the world with my book, and it's almost useless if I can't confirm that I'm doing things right or not. I don't know why I didn't figure out that would be a problem sooner, since it's the same book as last semester. I guess it was less of a problem last semester of that other small o. chem book I had on the side. Without anything like that this time, I've been left kind of staring at pages.

The test won't go well.

The semester itself isn't ruined, of course. It just means I need to do better on the second test and, probably, I'll have to take the optional final this time (if I want a 4.0, at least. or a 3.7). I'll also have to change my approach to studying for the next test immediately, and suppose I'll have to break down and buy that answer manual. Even though this doesn't ruin anything, it's really really frustrating. Was hoping to do well on this test and have that trigger a wave of good happenings. No chance of that now.

Wish I had the test tomorrow, instead of Tuesday. I'm going to keep stressing over this all of tomorrow, while not being able to fix anything. It's something that just needs to get over with.

This will be the last week of courses before spring break though, so I'll have a week off soon at least. Or a week to spend trying to track down more letters of recommendation and work on personal statements, rather.

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Mentorship

I said I'd talk more about the upcoming set of things I have to do, so here goes. The first up was find a faculty "mentor" for me by February 15th. Their job, more or less, is to review the 3+ letters of recommendation that I'm going to get, and add their own letter of recommendation that can tie the previous ones together into a coherent whole. So it's a pretty time intensive job on their part, and I'm glad I found someone to do it. However, it makes finding people for the actual letters of rec a bit harder, because I don't really know /that/ many teachers having not been in undergrad lately.

Anyhow, here's what needs doing (beyond studying O. Chem and MCAT material).

March 15: I need to my resume, a brief autobiography, a lengthy personal statement, and all of my transcripts from undergrad and lawschool brought into the premed office. The resume and personal statement are going to medical schools, so have to be super-well done.

April 1: This is my last day to have done a mock interview with the admissions-help people at the college. And that's a service I really ought to take advantage of, because the medical school interviews are actually really important in determining if you get in. Your grades and MCAT determine if you can get an interview, and then the interview by a panel determines if you get in the school. There was nothing equally like this for law school or undergrad, so it's worth preparing for.

April 15: All letters of recommendation have to be /recieved/ by this date. Which means that I'd better start asking for those letters right about now. People have stuff to do, and probably would want at least a two months head up on having to give me letters. Especially people I haven't been in touch with lately - if I wanted a letter from the law professor I did research with, for instance.

~May 15: This is when my transcripts have to go from the premed office to the AMCAS website.

May 29: MCAT Day. Can't push it back again and still successfully apply for this cycle.

~June 1: This is when the actual application can be submitted to most colleges from the AMCAS website.

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

MCAT Date Change

Well. I spent a long while trying to decide if I should push it back or not. After meeting with the pre-med adviser today I was able to get a pretty straight answer about how bad it would be to take the MCAT in May, rather than April, and was told it wouldn't matter much. And that's all it took to tip things for me, so the new date is May 26th instead of April 29th. I was actually able to keep the same location and test time, although I had to pay another sixty dollars to make the change.

I figure that if I don't get into school because I applied late, but got a decent MCAT score, that's a much better situation to be in than if I were to take the MCAT early and not get in anywhere because of a bad score that would stick on my record permanently. The extra month will be much needed: whether it's sufficient or not remains to be seen.

What keeps me hopeful is that I'm really more qualified for this than I ever was for law school. I got into law school pretty much on a whim, just because there was nothing better to do. I had no prior extracurricular activities or work that were relevant, and no particularly great letters of recommendation or personal statements. Getting into medical school is much tougher, but in the last few years I've picked up a job in a Chem lab, have worked in a hospital, have met people who'll give me good letters of rec, and have a great "why do you want to be a doctor" statement lined up from my own experiences with epilepsy. So .... maybe I can pull it off.

Anyhow. As far as actual MCAT studying goes, that's officially kicked off now. I've been trying to study at least four hours or so for at least five days a week now, if not more, and it's pretty exhausting. Especially with work at the chem lab just starting up as well. Work at the chem lab isn't time exhausting, but it's mentally draining. I feel really dumb not knowing exactly how stuff works there yet, and have lots of questions.

O. Chem is draining too. I'm behind on my mechanisms, and there are so many. But now I can study a bit more for O. Chem specifically, since the MCAT is a bit further off. Hopefully that will end up helping me out both in my class and on the MCAT itself.

When talking to my adviser I got a list of things I need to start setting up, and dates they need to be set up by. It was interesting, and helpful. I'll go talk about those in another post though.