2,500 Premeds

In my last blog, I alluded that I would be away at a premed conference this weekend. I really wish that more of my friends (okay, at least even just ONE of my friends) went with me, because there was a lot of good information there. But anyways, I'll try to give my take of what went down this weekend, and not be too boring while I'm at it.

Saturday

I don't drive much. This is the route that my mom and dad drove four times. That's 320 miles, or roughly a trip to LA.
The program formally started at 8AM, and to be on time, my parents would have had to leave home at 6AM. We Chens are morning people, but that is really early, even for us. So I arrived a little late, at around 9:00, and it was fine and dandy.

As I was wandering on the opposite side of the UC Davis campus around trying to find the registration, I ran into another girl who was also lost. Her name was Helen. She graduated college a couple years ago, lives in San Francisco, and has been working for a biomed company. We wandered the vast, vast campus sans bicycle until we found hoards of yellow-shirted volunteers, got our purple wristbands, and free four-sizes-too-big T-shirts.

We made it in to the Pavilion time for the Dean's Panel, which was a mediated Q&A session. I enjoyed that there were questions prepared ahead of time, asked by the president of the UCD AMSA. It's a pet peeve of mine when people ask pointless, too-specific questions that don't apply to anyone but themselves (anyone else thinking of Friday's anatomy lecture?). Anyways, the panel was helpful and reinforced a lot of what I had already heard dozens of times. Questions like, "What do you look for in an applicant?" "What's your interview process like?" "How do you view nontraditional premeds?" were answered thoroughly and honestly from a bunch of different dean perspectives. I think a lot of the replies were encouraging, especially the Jesuit schools. Their mission statements just completely jive with what I've been feeling and learning in these last three years at Berkeley, being involved with IV and living to serve! So Loma Linda, Creighton, and Loyola have found their way on my list now. =)

After lunch (all meals are included in registration fees), there was a medical school fair. I basically futzed around, talked to deans of admissions, collected brochures and pamphlets, and collected a dozen pens. This was around when I realized it was hot in Davis, and walking around in business casual wasn't exactly comfortable. I felt sorry for the men, for whom short-sleeve professional attire doesn't exist. I happened across the UVA table, and lo and behold--Mrs. Gray from SMDEP was there! I never thought I'd see her after leaving Virginia. What a pleasant surprise.

There were time slots for 45-minute workshops after the fair. There are 75 workshops, and only time to attend 4 of them each day. This is where making friends comes in handy. Helen and I attended different ones. The ones I chose to attend the first day were: AMCAS Application (presented by K. Monaco, AMCAS Applicant and Advisor Relations Supervisor), Medical School Curriculum (presented by Dr. David Gordon, Dean for Diversity and Professor of Pathology at University of Michigan), Post-Baccalaureate Programs (presented by A. Nimoker, Postbac Program Coordinator at UCD School of Medicine), and Women in Medicine (presented by four really awesome women doctors).

I'll just elaborate a bit on the last workshop, the Women in Medicine workshop. The panel included one podiatrist, one emergency pediatric surgeon, and two navy doctors. Is it any surprise that the two navy doctors were intense? One of the questions asked was, "How do you manage to raise a family while being a doctor?" To which one of them answered, "You need to set your priorities. You either are seeing a patient with a ruptured spleen, or being with your daughter on her first birthday. For me, it was the patient." She had a live-in nanny, and rarely saw her daughter. She says they're fine now, but I can't think of raising a child that way. They kept saying that if you want to raise a family while in medical school, in residency, then you will make it work somehow. I suppose I do want a family in the future, but don't see how it fits into my career goals. I know that we're relational beings, but I'm the type who could be easily married to my work. I don't like to think about these things because I have a long, long list of qualifications and it's not so easy to find an ambitious intelligent compassionate athletic articulate simple-living parent-loving Christian man who is willing to put up with being neglected all the time.

Anyways I've digressed far from the original topic.

The program originally had "Free Housing" at the Pavilion, which is what I mentioned in the previous blog. I envisioned rolling out my sleeping bag on the floor of the basketball gym and cozying up next to hundreds strangers. Okay more like, curling in the corner studying my IB 117 notecards, but whatever--adventure all the same. However, on Friday morning, the program sent emails to we who had registered for the overnight stay with a change of plans. They said they would shuttle us to a Motel 6, and we'd room four to a room for free. A step up from sleeping at the Pavilion. So Helen and I lounged at Starbucks with dozens of other premeds until the charter bus came....and left without us. There was some misunderstanding about how many rooms were available at the motel (zero). Sometime during the two-hour wait and flurry of signing papers, release forms, and phone calls made by people with earpieces, we thought it would be easier to sleep in the Pavilion in sleeping bags. The people said that was no longer an option. Go figure. We then entertained the thought of sleeping in the car (lucky for me, Helen drove to the conference). Eventually, they booked us at another Motel 6 in West Sacramento and we got there after midnight.

Sunday

So Motel 6s aren't all that pleasant to begin with, but we had a smoking room with one bed, and five girls. It was perhaps the most confusing night I've ever spent. Sometime between 1AM and 3AM, the room got really stuffy, so someone turned on the air conditioning. That thing must have been 150 decibels, and the four of us woke up with a start. A little while later, I woke up thinking "Where am I?" because the smoke in the room saturated my clothes and filled my sinuses. Then at 5AM, someone's alarm clock went off. That particular alarm sounded like a fire alarm, which elicited confused grumbling ("What the heck, this janky motel has fire alarms?"). The five of us hauled ourselves out of bed at 6AM and went to the conference for Day 2 feeling mightily unrefreshed.

We made it this day for the keynote address on health care policy in the US. I think it's so important to follow the health care reform right now, and it's something that I've not entirely been doing my homework in since taking GWS130. But for those who are aspiring to be physicians, I would encourage you to learn more about health care on a larger scale, since in some ways, it is even more important than the anatomical scale. It's not so much that the quality of health care is lacking, but access. I know some people think this issue is limited to public health advocates and whatnot, but I think clinicians should be aware of them too.

The rest of the day, I was less enthused and had a blister on my toe. That's when the dermis and epidermis separates and fills with fluid. Er, sorry my mind is wandering because this post is so long. Thanks for bearing with me.

Oh, one more thing I wanted to say. At these types of conferences, it's inevitable that people are filled with anxiety about not having good enough grades, not being involved with clubs enough, not being this enough, not being that enough. I think this is what I was dreading most coming into the conference--the air of competition and insecurity. But I think this weekend wasn't about that for me. People didn't ask me what my GPA was, what my MCAT score is (nonexistent), where I went to school. Instead, people asked me why I was interested in being a doctor, what qualities I valued in people, what my learning style is, what my story was. It was a good change.

Also, it was weird for me to go into this conference without knowing anyone, which basically forced me to make friends. I'm usually content with being friendly to people without investing time in them, since I can barely keep up with the friends I already have. Basically, I feel like I have enough friends. Does anyone else ever feel that way, or am I just a freak? Anyways, not to say I'll remain particularly good friends with the people I spent the last 40 hours with, but it was a good break from my comfy IV bubble. Even though I'm a senior, I'm still developing interpersonal skills.

Okay I am thoroughly exhausted. Good night!