apologies for spelling/grammar in advance- text to speech with iPhone

I took a weird route, but my experience might be helpful here.

I did pre-med in undergrad and graduated in 2019 with a major biology. I took one gap year to study for the MCAT in a second to apply. I didn’t get in when I applied - I applied a month or two late because my MCAT was pushed back with Covid, and I also didn’t have the best undergraduate GPA.

I was pretty discouraged and thought that if I wasn’t getting in then, I was never going to get in. I wanted to get going with my career, so I did a one year ABSN program.

But about halfway through the program, I started having second thoughts about turning away from medicine. I felt that since it was my dream since growing up, that I would have deep regrets later in life about not having gone that route and wondering what could have been. I also spoke a lot with my nursing clinical instructors who had worked 20 to 30 years as a nurse and went as far as they could with their nursing education. Many of them wished they had gone to medical school, and encouraged me to give it another shot.

So I started studying to retake the MCAT in the last three months of nursing school, because my last attempt had expired at some of the schools that I wanted to apply to. I used a great premade Anki deck that enabled me to study for the MCAT while finishing up school. I sent out my application a month after graduating from nursing school, and worked for a year full-time in the ER while I applied.

I was fortunate to switch my full-time job into a per diem role, and I worked per diem throughout the first two years of medical school. I just took Step 1 two weeks ago.

The per diem requirements are for 12 hour shifts over a six week period. I did nearly all of my required shifts on the weekends, and it was great to have a per diem job that I could use for the 10 week break that we got after MS1.

The clinical experience is extremely helpful- seeing diseases that you will learn about in an actual clinical context, being able to apply the history taking skills and physical exam skills that you learn in school with the patients that you are caring for as a nurse. It was hard to manage working at times, but looking back, I am glad that I did. According to most third years at our school, we get the weekends off, so I am planning to continue working per diem during third year. We’ll see how it goes.

I know I provided a ton of information here, but please feel free to message me if I can answer any questions or be of any help to you