Academic honors rival personal growth

By Landon Roussel     8/21/08 7:00pm

How will this affect my grade point average? Will this help my application? Does it improve my chances of getting into medical school? These questions likely cross the mind of the Rice premedi-cal student in evaluating time us-age. The momentous enthusiasm, which often drives pre-meds to be-come doctors, combined with the inescapable fear that they might not achieve the dream of holding a prestigious medical position makes for a dire sense of anxiety. I know. I have been there. I spent four years as a Rice pre-med going through the whole gamut. Now, nearly four months after graduation and hav-ing experienced life free of pre-med responsibilities, the emotional toll of those four years has become much clearer. The struggle to grow both aca-demically and personally in the pre-med environment can be intense. True, this is not a unique conflict for Rice students, and it can affect any motivated student undertak-ing a heavy course load. But for the pre-med, the stress seems height-ened. First, there are prerequisites and the Medical College Admission Test, and if those are not enough, there are the upper-level science courses to prove competence, non-science courses to show depth and well-roundedness, volunteering in hospitals and clinics to show sin-cerity, building relationships with professors for good recommenda-tions and then the application pro-cess. All the while, pre-meds must grapple with the worry that they might not get into medical school and eventually don the white coat.

With anxiety eating away at what little emotional energy being a pre-med affords, when is there time to be a person? It does not help that the bulk of the classes they have to take - at least initially - are basi-cally "hard science" courses, which provide little opportunity to help ex-pand understanding of themselves and of the world around them. In the realm of modern science, learning and discovery happen through build-ing our definitive knowledge of the material world, so for Rice pre-meds uncertainty does not sit well. Exert-ing ourselves, with little regard to the toll it takes, becomes more preferable than allowing such unknowns about our futures to lurk in our minds.

In the midst of this consuming yet noble pursuit to help human-ity through medicine, development of ourselves as social beings is in danger of stagnating. Time that might be rightfully spent going to the museum with friends or calling relatives on the phone is lost to the ever-growing tasks needed to guar-antee medical school admission. Energy that could be used to main-tain close relationships - platonic or romantic - or sustain healthy exercise and eating habits gets sucked up by anxieties over tests, lab reports, MCAT preparation or medical school applications. In extreme cases, the stress becomes so encompassing that it consumes personal identity, as one becomes defined by the pursuit.

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Even the most ambitious and intelligent pre-meds must strive to maintain a balance between excel-ling at their work and simultane-ously staying whole. Yes, it is eas-ier said than done - I am certainly guilty of not having maintained it. It is not impossible though; you must simply be aware of the burden it will require and discern whether or not it is your calling. For those already decided pre-meds, I urge them to reserve time for themselves to be individuals, not simply pre-meds. They will find that this allow-ance will not worsen their chances of career success as physicians, but rather add depth, variety and color to their lives. So, when they apply to medical school they can say, "I am an individual who happens to be a pre-med" - not the other way around.

Landon Roussel graduated from Jones College in 2008.

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