A College student learns a lot in their 4 years of getting their degree. Whether that’s through classes, research, or hundreds of textbooks. But what they don’t have a manual for is the social and mental challenges that you must face as a pre-medical student. As I approach the end of my second year of college, I can say that it took me a total of two years to figure out that in the premedical community, 95% of your peers/friends view each other as competition and use each other to climb the ladder. And I know it sounds obvious, because at the end of the day, indeed we are each other’s competition in front of the medical school admissions committee.
But the point that I am trying to get across is that this mentality tends to come between college friends or sometimes you find out that someone only wants to get close to you so that they can get information on the extracurriculars you are doing currently. People talk about how academically challenging this line is but what they don’t mention is the disappointment from peers that want nothing to do with you but want all the details of what you are accomplishing so that they can get ideas on building their own resumes.
So, after two years of experience, I learned that I need to not communicate about what I am doing, because at the end of the day, someone who is in the same line is not deeply happy for you for obvious reasons, more so you can literally see it on their faces. I have seen so many times where two friends are so close but end up distancing themselves from each other because of academia.
To conclude this, of course, this is not every pre-med experience in college, this is not your sign to drop the friend that does this, this is not advice but simply what I have learned so far. So, my one cliché advice is to leave your career on one side and your relationships on the other side.