Missionary Orthopod in the Making

Wow, I really do want to thank all those who gave me encouraging comments regarding my MCAT score. I was almost sure that I’d get flamed because on SDN even a 34 on your MCAT is considered low, LOL. But yeah, anyway, a good amount of stuff has been happening. I guess I really have been slacking in talking about my classes as a premed student. As you all know, I’m taking Plant Biology, Mammalian (Gross) Anatomy, Intro to Research, Art Appreciation, and a religion course. Most of these classes are pretty easy, but just annoying. The class I want to focus on is our Mammalian Anatomy class. My school, like a few other schools has been blessed to have a cadaver lab in the Biology department. What happened is that usually our graduates were failing out of medical school because they couldn’t handle Gross Anatomy when they got there. So what happened is that the chair of our department sent a teacher to Loma Linda University School of Medicine, and the teacher actually took the Gross Anatomy class there. Then that teacher came back and started teaching students the same way at Oakwood College, and not one student has failed out since (its been like 10 years). Anyway, now we have 4 bodies, and we basically go through just how it is in medical school. The teacher can’t get as deep as they do in medical school, but shoot, they sure do pack as much as they can. Over all, I’VE LOVED THE CLASS. Honestly, when it comes to doing well in this class, utilizing your atlas and OPEN LABS is vital. When you are actually dissecting (at least me) I don’t feel like I can actually learn anything, it’s just mechanical dissection. It’s during the open labs that you actually get a chance to learn stuff. We use the same books they use in medical school; for the main book Clinically Oriented Anatomy, by Keith Moore, and for atlases, we are supposed to use Grant’s, but I got the Rohen Atlas because it has real pictures of the cadavers not drawings. Honestly, the Grant’s atlas has more detail, but I love my Rohen atlas. I’ll probably end up buying the Grant’s atlas and using both. But yeah, we just had our midterm and it was massive. It covered all we’ve dissected including all the back muscles, the muscles of the chest, the muscles of the shoulder, arm, forearm, and hand, all the vessels, nerves, and veins that run through the axilla, all the bones between the skull and the two femurs, origins, insertions, innervations, blood supplies, clinical terms associated with all the above, and other crap. It’s a lot of information, and the fact that its not as detailed as medical school scares me as to what I have to face ahead. Anyway, it’s a great class, and I should be ahead of the game, because I’m taking it as a Junior, I’ll be teaching it next year as a lab instructor, and then I’ll take the class again my 1st year of medical school.

The Dean of the Loma Linda School of Medicine, Dr. Hadley, came to hold interviews and give a presentation today. He’s a really great guy. Yesterday, I actually had an interview with another admissions guy from LLU SOM, and he basically told me that although my MCAT score isn’t stellar, I’m on track to getting into medical school. They really seemed to like my GPA more than my MCAT score .

Anyway, back to Dr. Hadley. So yeah, he basically held group interviews for all the non seniors and we got a chance to talk to him. In this group interview he basically wanted to know why we choose medicine; so we went around the table answering his question. On the real, I’ve been in Adventist school since Kindergarten, so for medical school I really wanted to go to a non-Adventist school, hence Loma Linda was very low on my list, but he really sold me on LLU because of a special program they have. Loma Linda is the only medical school which still overtly pushes Christian values and education in their curriculum (at least that’s what they told me). Anyway, he told me how LLU has always focused on mission work especially over seas mission (which yall know that I LOVE). Anyway you are given the opportunity to do foreign mission work at least one weekend every month, and then you can take an extended mission trip for 2 months after your first year. After that, if you show that you are committed to doing mission work, what you do is, is that you go do your residency. And then, if you commit to do medical mission work overseas, and you do it for at least 10 years, Loma Linda will pay back your medical school loans 100%!!! Now they don’t talk about this program, because they really only allow Adventists to do it (from a theological stand point you can see why, Georgetown [Catholic] wouldn’t want to send an Adventist to do mission work, and vise versa). Anyways, they are still tweaking some things, but it sounds like the perfect program for Brittany and I. Yall know I’m interested in Trauma Surgery, and he told me that General Surgery, especially in underdeveloped countries is the best specialty to have as a medical missionary. The best thing about it is that you are required to also hold evangelistic meetings, so you get to physically heal in the day, and spiritually heal at night. And the way they do it, is that when you volunteer during medical school to do mission work, you are actually working with a doctor who is part of their “pay you back in 10 years” program. So yeah, I think it is really cool. I want to give the Lord the best years of my life, and although it seems like a long time, I’m positive that I will enjoy it thoroughly. Anyway, after hearing about this program, LLU moved to second on my list, and if I got into both UMD and LLU, I would really have to pray and fast about that one.

Anyway, during his presentation, we learned a lot about Loma Linda, and what they are doing. He talked about being a surgeon and balancing a family, and an Internist attending that accompanied him also talked on that subject. After his presentation, someone in the crowd asked him, “Dr. Hadley. If you have two applicants, one with a high GPA and a low MCAT score, and one with a high MCAT score and a low GPA, which one do you look on more favorably?” It was a good question and I appreciated his answer too. Basically he told us that no one should depend on one part of their application to make up for something else that is lacking. He said if they have a student who as done a ton of research, won a noble prize, has a 4.0 GPA, and a 38 on his MCAT, but when he walks into the interview he basically tells them that he should be accepted because he is God’s gift to science and his patients will run to see him, they won’t accept him, of course because of his arrogance. Despite his great stats, that didn’t make up for his horrible personality. In the same way he said, they really want you to have both a good GPA and good MCAT score, but they do weigh things differently. For instance he said, as a Dean, if he sees someone with a high MCAT score, but a low GPA, that tells him that this student is probably a great test taker, but he doesn’t apply himself in class. He joked and said that the kid is probably playing video games the night before a test, betting on his wit in the test to get him by. He said this may work, but when it comes time to residency, this student will be the most frustrated because when they go for interviews before the MATCH, these people aren’t so much focused on your board scores as much as they are concerned about how responsible you are, how you work in groups, how you interact with patients, etc. So in the end, if he had to choose, he would choose a high GPA, over a high MCAT score and a low GPA, but he said if someone’s MCAT score or GPA is too low, its clear that they just aren’t going to be able to make it in medical school. Anyway, it was encouraging to hear that from the Dean of the medical school.

Next week, from Wednesday to Saturday, I’m going to be in Maryland for this UMBC graduate school Horizons program. Basically, they fly minorities out to their school to show them their program, and encourage them to apply their for graduate school. I just signed up because it’s a free trip home, LOL.

Also, I’m really excited because next week Sunday, the admission director for Mayo Medical school, and Mayo Graduate School, and the Mayo Medical school director of diversity are coming to Oakwood to hold interviews and give a presentation. The Lord is really blessing us, because Mayo is big time. I think they are coming because they were so impressed with an Oakwood who did research there this past summer. Anyway, I hope they will let me interview, even though I’m a Junior. But yeah, I’ll keep yall posted on that.

At this point, that is all that is going on with me. I’ll post again when something interesting happens.