The First Steps

I've known for a long time that I wanted to be a doctor.

It might have started earlier, maybe with my mother's incessant "Oh, you're going to be a doctor when you grow up, you'll see!", but if I had to pinpoint a specific day, it would be in grade 9 when we had a university counselor came to speak to my class for the first time. She had a whole spiel about how it would make life easier in the long run to start thinking about goals and career aspirations, and to aid us in this difficult task, she produced a 200 multiple choice question personality test. Great.

An hour and a half later, we had to match our answers to an answer sheet which told us how high we scored on 4 or 5 facets of our personalities (sort of like one of those quizzes in Cosmo that girls like to make their boyfriends take, that once completed tell them how insensitive and what an all around shitty boyfriend you are). Once we had our scores, we could go through this booklet that would tell us what careers we were best suited for. Now, two of the most interesting careers I matched into were (I'm not making this up, I swear) Professional Wrestler and Neurosurgeon. This resulted in me trying out powerbombs and pile-drivers on my brother for about 3 weeks in our basement, but once he decided against playing with me EVER again, I had to pursue other interests...

It dawned on me that the more I thought about medicine as a career (not necessarily neurosurgery), the more I saw myself doing it for the rest of my life. As I neared the end of high school, I of course began thinking about University and what programs to apply to. I knew science was what interested me, but when you take out research positions or academia (both of which I think would bore me to no end) there isn't much else. All I could see myself doing, and loving it, was medicine.

Now, here is where things get tricky. I was a talented football player through most of my elementary and high school years. I was captain of the varsity squad in Senior year and ended up being recruited by quite a few schools, including two NCAA Division I teams. I'm not saying I was NFL material here, or that they even thought I'd be one of the better players in their programs, but thats still a big deal for a high school football player in Canada. I ended up signing with the (at the time) #1 program in Canadian university football. This lead to my first falling out with the idea of being a doctor.

I was consumed by football. It was literally a full time job that ate into study time like you wouldn't believe. We're talking 3 hour practices every night except for sundays, meetings before and after practice, hitting the gym (and thats only the mandatory sessions) and the occasional physio appointments. I was a football machine which didn't leave much time or energy for me to be an efficient science nerd as well.

My 93% high school average quickly fell to a well below mediocre C average in my freshman year. Yikes. How the hell was I supposed to get into medical school with a C average? Wasn't gonna happen. So, in second year, I forgot about having a social life and studied as hard as I played. I managed a 3.8 GPA that year, but this still left me with a horrible cumulative score due to my dismal first year. I started to lose hope and direction, and let me tell you that when you aren't sure what you are putting yourself through hell for, its difficult to work hard. I mean, why should I work my ass off just to end my degree with a 3.3 and never be considered for admission ANYWHERE? Football also took a turn for the worst, and I realized that even my long-shot dream of going pro wasn't going to happen either. I began to think that sometimes things aren't meant to be, but I didn't think that it was fair that NOTHING was meant to be for me!

I worked less and less, got more and more sedentary and rarely saw friends. I slept a lot too. I skipped a lot of class because I just couldn't be bothered to wake up. I got to know daytime TV (especially the food network) very well. And, to make things worse, my grandpa passed away completely out of the blue. Now I had to deal with upset family, upset me, and a very sad funeral which made it all much worse. And then my girlfriend of 3 years left. All was not well in Coxy M.D. land. I stopped going to class completely and studied half-heartedly for my final round of finals. Actually, to my eternal embarrassment , I even slept through one of them. Not because my alarm didn't go off; I was actually awake about 20 minutes before it was set to ring. No, I just decided that I'd rather just sleep than walk 5 minutes to school and write my test. Needless to say, I failed that course. I got fired too.

Now how do I find myself with two medical school interviews after all that? My transcript wasn't fit to line a litterbox, I was clearly not in the state of mind to do any work whatsoever and my life was in shambles. Oh, I had also decided to become a cook btw.

The answer is I decided that I was being an ass and I got my shit together. I researched schools, got my pre-requisites done (I was only missing 2 courses for one of the schools) and finished in the top of my classes for both. I got a job and started getting myself out of debt. I also found myself a nice girl who I love and who helps me get through the crazy bits (when she's not crazy herself after reading the previously mentioned Cosmo articles). My latest feats were studying for my MCATs over the summer and earning a 34Q (which put me in the top 5% of test takers... more on that later) and getting all my applications done in a timely manner. Life was great! I had goals and aspirations again. I had direction. I was me again.

This "getting my shit together" phase has taken up the last year of my life, and now here I am, anxiously awaiting October 16th at noon for my first medical school interview. Yeah, its not Harvard Med, but its a great school and it will get me to my ultimate goal.

Anything is possible. You just have to be willing to take those first steps. They are the hardest, but they get easier and soon enough you are running.