If you’re a fellow pre-med, or just someone curious about the slightly chaotic path future healthcare workers go through, welcome.
This week’s topic? Comparison.
Come on, we’ve all done it. But for pre-meds, comparison almost feels…necessary. Like it’s part of the process of figuring out where you stand in a journey that’s already so competitive.
Don’t believe me? Take one scroll through r/premed and tell me comparison hasn’t taken over people’s entire mental space. When I went to a med student panel, one piece of advice kept coming up over and over again: “Stop doomscrolling Reddit and Student Doctor Network.”
And yet… it’s hard not to.
Comparison feels built into this path. I catch myself doing it all the time, looking at my stats, then looking at admitted students and thinking, yeah… we are not the same.
But here’s the thing I’m starting to realize: comparison isn’t going to get my hours done. It’s not going to raise my GPA. And it’s definitely not going to make me a better future physician.
So this is me reminding you (and honestly, myself): put the phone down.
Seriously.
You are so much more than a checklist of hours, grades and experiences. Almost every week, I sit with my study group, and somehow the conversation circles back to medicine. And just like clockwork, that quiet panic creeps in, am I doing enough?
But the truth is, your best is enough.
I’m learning to show up each day and do what I can, knowing I get to try again tomorrow. Growth doesn’t happen all at once, it happens in consistency, in the small efforts no one else sees.
And as future healthcare providers, we talk so much about caring for others. But we can’t forget to care for ourselves first, even now, even in the beginning.
Because burnout doesn’t start in residency.
Sometimes, it starts here.