It gets better.
Dear pre-med student,
I know it may seem overwhelming right now, but you should know how well it will all work out. I know you’re sitting inside of Library West or Marston until past midnight skimming through the blue pages of the CHM2045 Study Edge review packet, questioning every ounce of your worth. Everyone keeps telling you that “college will be the best four years of your life,” but you keep hoping it’s not true because you haven’t gone out to Fats on a random Tuesday and you drive back home almost every other weekend. It gets better.
As a pre-med student at a top public university, you will question your worth over and over again. You may find that the so-called “academically rigorous” major you choose will be genuinely rigorous. Suddenly, the effort you applied to your high school classes doesn’t compare to the effort you need to put towards your pre-med courses. You will study more than you ever have before. You may barely score a 50% despite your efforts because you panicked in the exam hall when you realized the person in front of you was on question 20 and you barely made it past question 7, all while seeing the intimidating timer at the front count down the seconds. You feel like you’re being “weeded out,” and seeing people change their paths because of this may discourage you. Don’t let this define you. You will learn what study method works best for you, you will get testing accommodations if you learn that you need them, and you will learn that prioritizing your well-being will always be more important than a 4.0 GPA. If you are on this path for the right reasons, you will see a light at the end of the tunnel. It gets better.
Don’t let comparison get in your way. Easier said than done. But, you will feel pressured to volunteer at a hospital or local nonprofit simply because “everyone else is” and you’re “behind” – I promise there’s no such thing as being “behind”. You will feel so overwhelmed and stressed because “everyone” is a research assistant at a lab and you’re the only one who isn’t, but the number of people who feel the same way as you is unimaginable. Do things because they interest you, not because you feel like you need to follow a certain timeline to be a “successful” pre-med student or appear “more competitive” to medical school admissions. Being sucked into this mentality will do nothing but create another robot pre-med student and make you lose sight of why you’re doing this in the first place. As a pre-med at UF, you have the whole world at your finger-tips. There are so many different things you could do to volunteer, labs catered to every curiosity possible, and clubs that appeal to every interest you might have. It gets better.
Beyond academics, comparison will affect you, but how you reframe these thoughts will be what matters most. I promise you that there is so much more to the college experience than the football games and night clubs. Do things at the pace that you’re comfortable with. If you feel better about wearing a baggy tee-shirt instead of a bathing suit top to the tailgate, I promise no one will even bat an eye. It will not matter if your first time going out is in your second semester of sophomore year because then you will actually feel ready and have a great time. We often think that college students will follow the timeline that’s been engraved into our minds from the very start, but getting rid of this idea will be the most freeing thing. It gets better.
You will make friends. There are times where you will feel like the high-school friend group you came into college with is falling apart. Sometimes that might be the case, but it’s also important to understand that we’re all growing and that might mean things will be different than how they were a year or two ago. There will be times where you feel like no matter how many clubs or extracurriculars you join, you still haven’t found “your people”. Like many things, this will take time. It might be months until you feel like you’re finally settled into a group that is actively reaching out and planning things, and that’s okay. You will find your people and you will find a space that finally feels like home. It gets better.
There was a point of my freshman year where I was not a fan of the extracurriculars I was involved with, did everything to avoid my roommates, and consistently felt disappointed in my grades – the only solution in my head was either switching out of my pre-med path or transferring schools. But, if I could only take one lesson from my freshman year experience, it’s that things take time. I will not lie and say that it’s easy, but you will find a support system and begin to get back up again because it gets better.