The End and The Beginning

by MaryBeth

Last week marked one of the biggest milestones in my life: I began medical school. But as I referenced in previous posts, this was not the only big change my family went through in the last month. My youngest of three just turned ONE and her sassy big sister turned three (see adorable birthday balloon above). With my baby daughter starting daycare for the first time after a year at home, I felt an unusual amount of anxiety leading up to this major transition. So much so that, over the last two months, I believe I’ve even experienced a few episodes that could be categorized as panic attacks. Turns out, just because you don’t realize how nervous and anxious you are on a conscious level, doesn’t mean you can avoid a physical reckoning! It’s definitely too early for me to self-diagnose with any degree of certainty, but let’s just say that identifying the issue and working to address it has already improved my daily life.

Speaking of…. my daily life now involves studying hard and working with some awesome peers at Dell Medical School in Austin, Texas. Our workload at the moment is incredibly diverse, which helps keep things interesting. Prep for a typical class day might involve reading a study on social determinants of health, watching a video comparing the costs and risks of different radiological tests, or exploring a relevant clinical case with a team of other students. We are definitely not lacking for material!

I’ll share more about Dell Med’s novel curriculum in a future post. For now, I’d like to impart a few things I learned about self-care during orientation and in my first two weeks of med school. These are things you may already know, but maybe reading about it again will help you make a small change that you wouldn’t have made otherwise!

My current strategies for coping with med school and family stress:

1. Take time for meditation/reflection – I finally subscribed to an app called Headspace (you can check out a free pack of 10 meditations just by registering) and have been pretty good about meditating at school or at home to give myself a much-needed mental break.
2. Bring plenty of healthy (and tasty!) food – I planned out a weekly grocery list and meal plan, including hearty snacks, so that I always have the best kind of fuel available at school or home.
3. Find mundane activities that offer complete satisfaction – if there’s one thing I’m already learning about med school, it’s that you’ll never be able to do/learn EVERYTHING for every class. So it’s helpful to use your off time for tasks that are guaranteed to bring you that slice of satisfaction that you might not get at the end of your study session. Example: this morning I vacuumed and straightened my house so that I could come home and enjoy a clean space. Baths with your favorite music playing are another great option 🙂
4. Smile. You know how they say that if you smile more, you actually start to feel happier? Well, in my first two weeks at school, I’ve found myself smiling at my new classmates and friends A LOT. And without realizing it at first, I think all of that smiling has generally kept my spirits up even through some stress and anxiety. As we all get more familiar, it’s likely that the smiling will gradually decrease, but it certainly won’t hurt to try and keep it up.

Best of luck to everyone who is applying this cycle! I’ll try and post again soon with more updates on how school is going.

With three kiddos under 5, it’s nearly impossible to get a pic where everyone cooperates!!

 

Apply to Med School Like a Boss

USING YOUR MOM SKILLS TO CRUSH APPLICATION SEASON

by MaryBeth

Ever sit in class and wonder, how can these kids complain about not having time to study? I’ve got babies to feed, clothe, and put to bed. I haven’t eaten, I’ve got tons of housework to do…the list goes on and on. This, my friends, is how you succeed in the application cycle.

As a parent, you’ve already learned some of the most critical life lessons you’ll need to succeed in medical school and beyond. Your task during application/interview season is to intelligently articulate what you’ve learned and convince the committees that you belong in their next class of future docs. You need to highlight your already-honed ability to manage numerous tasks at once, your patience with difficult personalities, and your understanding of the immense responsibility involved in caring for others.

Here are some of the concepts I highlighted in my personal statement, supplemental essays, and interviews at several Texas medical schools:

“I will be a source of motivation and inspiration for my future classmates.”

Throughout your time in pre-med classes (or whatever you were doing to lead up to this juncture), you probably relished those moments when you got to talk about your kids and all the responsibilities you had ON TOP of studying. Now is the time to orient that sense of accomplishment toward the future. How will your rock-star work ethic help their school succeed? The answer: your willingness to work even harder to achieve your goals while caring for your family will motivate the other students in your med school class to be at their best. Using an example from your pre-med classes is a great way to illustrate this strength to admissions committees.

“I am mentally prepared for frustration, disappointment, and sacrifice.”

Let’s face it. Before you had children, did you really know what it meant to be exhausted? Had you used up every ounce of your energy to keep someone else happy, healthy, safe, and comfortable? Probably not. As a future physician, you will be tried and tested to your limits again and again. Starting the game with years of practice under your belt is a huge advantage and you should make sure everyone realizes this. In one of my faculty interviews, I was asked to describe how I like to work. I admitted that I prefer to work well ahead of schedule, tackling small chunks of projects to minimize my stress as the deadline approaches. The interviewer caught me off-guard by saying, “but what if you can’t do that?” I took a pregnant pause, and then answered, “I would do my best to figure out what the top priority was, and then I would get to work, realizing that I can only do what I can do – and stressing about the rest won’t help.” As a parent there have been SO. MANY. TIMES. when my mind has raced (and my pulse along with it), thinking of everything I had to get done. But when you’ve got a screaming child, you learn to prioritize. You have to prioritize. And you give up any preconceived notion of doing everything perfectly.

“I am motivated and I can do this.”

Confidence speaks volumes in any interview situation. Being self-assured yet still humble is a skill that most 22-year-olds have not yet perfected. You, on the other hand, have life experience that the majority of applicants do not, giving you a confidence that only comes with age. You’re ready to talk about your passion for medicine, your devotion to your family, and the difficult path you took to get to where you are. If you used an anecdote about parenting in one of your essays, be prepared to add more detail and humanity to your story in the interview. Challenges that you’ve overcome are popular topics among interviewers, so practice telling your story in a compelling way that emphasizes your ability to reflect and to adapt. Even in this day and age, interviewers may use the fact that you are a mother to question your ability to handle medical school. In fact, a female interviewer at UT Southwestern gave me a particularly hard time about this. Nervous as I was, I confidently countered her doubt with details about being an exhausted, working, pumping first-time mom to 6-week-old colicky baby. I felt sure I could handle anything medical school could throw at me.

Making it work: the best way to attend my Galveston interview was to have my in-laws fly down from Ohio, rent a van, and pile all 7 people (including the 5-month-old) in for the ride. Fun times!

 

If you have questions about essays or interviews, feel free to reach out in the comments! I’d love to hear about your experiences as well.

MCAT Test Day!

Well the day has come and I am retaking my MCAT today. I got a 500 on my last test with very little studying. So I am hopeful that with a bit more preparation that I can get a better score.

I believe that the MCAT requires both knowledge of topics and strategy for taking the test. I believe I was lacking in both areas on my last test. I had not completed Organic Chemistry nor Physics, which showed and was my lowest section.

When it came to strategy I don’t think I had any besides these basic test-taking tips:

• Read passages for understanding and think about the whole time what sort of questions could be asked (you really don’t want to have to go back and re-read)
• If your stuck on a question skip it and come back to it.
• Keep your eyes OFF THE CLOCK instead use your own internal clock to know if your spending too much time.

So besides that I did not have any strategy. These are somethings I thought about after the fact:

• Scratch paper can be your best friend 
  • If you are having trouble remembering some key core concepts/formulas review it immediately before entering the test-taking center and once at your testing station write it down immediately on the scratch paper given.
  • Write down some key info from the passages (make it quick only a few words)
• DO NOT DRINK A LOT OF LIQUIDS
  • Yea I did this and I ended up in the middle of my test having to really go and rushing through questions
• Only take breaks if necessary
  • If you are on a roll and really in the zone then skip the break and keep it going.
  • Feeling exhausted or warn out take that break and try and recoup.
  • Also take it if the next section you want some time to think about the subject matter and “refresh” your memory before starting.

Studying & Parenting at the same time!

Many of my classmates are often impressed by how I can achieve the grades I get when I have 2 young children at home. They always say “if I had kids there is no way I could find time to study. ”

But here is the thing we always say that there is no chance we could do something but then when put in the situation we adapt. Well I have definitely adapted.

• My mommy senses have grown. (Yea, I know what there doing even when I can’t see them).
• My ability to zone out my surroundings is exceptional. (You don’t hear the loud children beating on their play drum set? NOPE!)
• Multi-tasking should be my middle name (Ever tried breastfeeding a hungry baby, studying and trying to teach your 4 year old there numbers all at the same time?)

Now I can not take all of the credit. I do get help from my husband when ever he is not at work. Now if your a single mother, more power to you. I don’t know how you manage to do everything yourself.

I have also overtime learned tricks of the trade to be able to find time to study. Here are my top tips for finding the time to study when you are also a parent.

Khan Academy for Pre-Meds

by MaryBeth

Last week I shared a post on how I studied for the MCAT exam in 1 month. Because of my compressed timeline, I spent about 60% of my prep hours in class with The Princeton Review. The other 40%, however, I spent taking practice exams or watching videos from a non-profit online learning platform called Khan Academy.

Way before the MCAT, I used Khan Academy extensively for physics class. You see, much to my shock and horror, I had failed my first exam in Physics I. I contemplated dropping the class and talked it over with the professor. I nearly cried as I told him that I couldn’t imagine studying any harder, what with my packed schedule and two little kiddos. He explained that if I could find a way to study smarter, not harder, I might not need to drop after all. Khan Academy turned out to be the perfect way for me to study smarter and pull up my grades significantly. I found that Sal Khan’s video explanations were succinct enough to keep me interested and clear enough to help me understand. And because my memory is mostly photographic, anything I can do that will help me visualize an answer or solution is extremely helpful.

When I used Khan Academy for physics class, I simply watched the videos pertaining to what we learned in class that day and made Anki flashcards that would help me reinforce the key takeaways. Since I recall best using visual cues, I often included screenshots of the videos in my Anki cards (more on making the most of Anki in a future post). Then, when exam time rolled around again, I would re-watch the Khan Academy videos on 1.5x speed so I could cover nearly everything at least one more time.

In addition to its hundreds of videos on general sciences, Khan Academy offers a whole series of MCAT prep resources that was developed with guidance from the AAMC. Broken down into sections like Biomolecules, Organ Systems, and Chemical Processes, the Khan Academy material allows you to focus on a more narrow subject area. Within those categories, you will find subtopics like Viruses, Immune System, and Kinetics. This is where the rubber meets the road. If you know you’re weak when it comes to hormones or aldehydes, this list of subtopics is where you can find the right videos and question sets for you.

My approach to using Khan Academy for the MCAT was this: I printed off a list of every subtopic within every category in the suite of MCAT materials. Using highlighters, I added dots to every topic I thought I *should* review before the exam, and stars next to topics that I thought I *HAD* to review. The act of prioritizing the material and making an “action plan” was empowering and gave me a huge sense of relief. I made my way down the list, watching most videos at 1.5x speed to save valuable time. I used a different highlighter to strike through the topics I completed and, by the time I made it through the whole list, I felt confident heading into the exam.

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Has anyone else used Khan Academy for the MCAT? Please feel free to share your tips and tricks in the comments!

My 1-Month MCAT Prep Plan

HOW I SCORED IN THE 89TH PERCENTILE AFTER 1 MONTH OF STUDY

by MaryBeth

As Cristina mentioned in a previous post, there are two general approaches to studying for the MCAT: 1) taking a course offered by a professional test prep company and 2) using a combination of books and online materials to study on your own.

When I took the winter 2016 MCAT, I had just a 1-month window between my fall semester’s final exams (I took the last one on December 15th) and my January 19th test date. Waiting until April or May, when I would be 8 or 9 months pregnant with my third baby, just wasn’t a viable option. In my mind, this predicament made the On-Site Winter Bootcamp offered by The Princeton Review (TPR) seem like a necessary purchase. Yes, the $2,500 price tag of this course was a hard pill to swallow. But, when I considered the amount of time and effort I had already put into applying for medical school, this expense seemed like a worthwhile investment toward making the best score I possibly could. The winter boot camp isn’t available in every city, so I was lucky that it was offered in Austin. I totally understand that this route is not for everyone, due to financial or scheduling reasons, so I’ll go over a few pros and cons I experienced with TPR and also mention the free or low-cost resources I supplemented with.

Benefits of going with an in-person review course:

• A clearly defined schedule that you are forced to stick to (lest your investment go to waste), plus books and other online materials you’d pay for à la carte otherwise.
• In-class practice passages designed to teach you to avoid common MCAT traps.
• Teachers who have all taken at least one MCAT exam, and who stay for office hours to answer questions. My TPR instructors were, on the whole, pretty helpful.
• Strength in numbers. The friends you make in your MCAT class will be your buddies from the trenches: Everyone is stressed but also happy to help explain a concept you don’t get.
• Access to several full-length exams that were, in my experience, more difficult than the official AAMC practice exams and were more representative of the real thing.

Downsides of classes like my TPR boot camp:

• The content and schedule are not customized to your strengths and weaknesses. For example, I needed a lot more Gen Chem help early on, which was not scheduled until late in the course. This greatly affected some of my early practice test scores.
• Not all teachers are created equal: Several of the instructors I had at TPR were great (our physics teacher was especially effective), but if you get a weak teacher on your weakest subject, you will be making up for it in your “spare” time.
• Fatigue. Chances are you’re doing this course on top of (or between, like me) some hard pre-med classes. You’re tired of being lectured and the extra in-class time can sometimes be tedious.
• They are expensive. The cost of the one-month course I did was roughly as expensive as a whole semester of pre-requisites at UT Austin.

Hopefully the information above helps you sort out your priorities. You should pick the organized course option only if it makes sense for your budget, timeline, and learning style. Although I supplemented with other resources, TPR helped me achieve a 129 on both CARS and Psych, a 128 on Bio, and a 127 on Chem/Phys (my weakest section by far), for a total score of 513.

Free or low-cost resources that can really help:

I made flashcards using Anki. If flashcards have worked for you in the past, I highly recommend upping your flashcard game to pro status with Anki. My husband and I share a paid version of the app so we can review decks on our phones, but there is also a free version for computer. This flashcard system uses a spaced repetition algorithm that delivers you the cards you need to review, in a manner that will help you learn faster and retain the information longer. My TPR books suggested that flashcards weren’t helpful for the MCAT, but making and studying Anki cards for the concepts that I missed on practice exams did seem to help me improve.

Khan Academy’s MCAT prep offerings were developed with input from the AAMC and, considering they cost NO MONEY, they are Internet gold for pre-med students. I can go into more detail about how I used Khan Academy in a future post, but if you’re not using Khan Academy yet for physics or o-chem, you should definitely check it out for the MCAT.

Finally, AAMC puts out its own set of print and online prep materials at a moderate price. You can see the full suite of options on their website, but this Complete Bundle is probably worth the $240 they charge for it. Their full-length tests are good practice for test day, but on the whole I found them easier than the real thing. From what I’ve heard, the questions within the section-specific Question Packs are more representative of questions you will actually see on the exam, so you shouldn’t just buy the official sample tests and call it a day.

Good luck structuring your MCAT studies and, of course, best of luck on the exam itself. As you’ve heard about so many other skills, “practice makes perfect” on the MCAT, so do as many practice passages as you can. Happy to answer more questions in the comments section!

Hello From the Other Side

STARTING MED SCHOOL AS A MOM OF 3 UNDER 5

Hi everyone! Cristina was kind enough to open up SuperMomMD to feature guest posts from fellow mommies in medicine. This first post will be an introduction to me and my family and soon I’ll also pass along some advice based on my journey so far.

I’m MaryBeth and I live in Austin, Texas with my husband of seven years. My undergrad and Master’s degrees are both in advertising and, as of 2011, I envisioned myself working in health communication. I had my first baby, my son Torsten, in 2013 while working for an Austin tech startup (needless to say, short maternity leave). More on being a working/pumping mom of a colicky baby later.

By 2014 I was pregnant again (on purpose), this time with my oldest daughter, Mina. Something about expecting a baby girl made me reevaluate my potential, the goals I had laid out for myself, and the example of womanhood I wanted to set for my daughter. My passion for preventive health had been evolving at my job, since I worked with nonprofits like AHA and saw the amazing work they did to improve people’s lives. I decided to enroll in an evening, pre-med track biology course at UT Austin.

I started class about two months after Mina was born, right around the time I returned to work at 30 hours/week. Leaving for class that semester was tough, knowing that my baby girl spent a lot of time crying at home while I was gone. But my performance in the class was strong, so I continued the biology sequence and made the pivotal decision to leave my job and enroll in a grueling, 12-month pre-med boot camp of my own design at UT. I finished the rest of my science pre-requisites in three terms: one very hard summer, a packed fall, and finally, a more manageable spring. All I can say is, I survived. And by the end of it, I surfaced with a 4.0 science/math GPA and had another baby girl, too!

I studied for the MCAT in one month over winter break, and I took it when I was around 4 months pregnant my littlest baby, Tove (rhymes with nova). Averaging the 4 sections together, I scored in the 89th percentile (513). I had not yet taken some key courses when I approached the material, so I was relieved to have made it over that hurdle in good shape. Taking it again at 9 months pregnant really wasn’t an option.

Fast-forward through interview season (more on that later) and where does that leave me now? Well, I’ve been doing contract work from home with my baby daughter for almost a year, catching up on rest (ha!) and gearing up for med school. Our family’s dreams came true last December, when we learned that I had been accepted as one of 50 students to join the UT Dell Medical School’s second class. I will be the only mom with multiple young children in my class, but luckily Dell Med seems very family-friendly. I’m sure there will be plenty of challenges ahead, but I’ve made it this far (and our family is stronger for it), so I have high hopes.

My crew at our home-away-from-home, IKEA

I’m excited to share more details and advice in future posts on tackling a large pre-med science load, studying for the MCAT in a compressed time frame, interviewing, and making your application stand out from the crowd. Feel free to reach out with a comment!

AAMCAS APPLICATION IS OPEN!!

Hello Future Doctors,

For those of you who may be applying this year for medical school the AAMCAS application has officially opened and you can now start filling it out.

I highly suggest you get started AS SOON AS POSSIBLE!! If you did not already know the application can be long and tedious so doing a little everyday will help it not seem as tedious.

Plus you really want to get the application completed and submitted Early. You can begin submitting applications on June 1st and you really want to get it submitted no later then June 30th, especially if your application is lacking in some areas.  June 30th is also where AAMCAS begins to send your application to medical schools. Exciting!! (or maybe nerve-racking).

I wish everybody who is applying this year GOOD LUCK!!!

Mother of 3 under 5 Accepted into Medical School!

Hey everyone,

I have exciting news! I will be having another Super Mom joining me on giving tips and advice on juggling being a mother and pursuing a career in medicine.

I’d like to introduce Mary-Beth, a mother of 3 under 5!! She was recently accepted to Dell Medical School in Austin, Texas and has an amazing story. So look out soon for her first post!

Progress Report

Hey ladies & Gents,

So I know I was supposed to update you on my progress when it came to writing my personal statement & studying for the MCAT. Well lets just say…. It’s been slow moving on both fronts.

Personal Statement

So I started writing my personal statement last month and while I did get my basic story down I definitely need to go back and revise and really making sure it answers the question: Why medical school? I struggled a bit in trying to pick what was important to include and what wasn’t. I wanted to make sure that it told my story of perseverance but also did not want it to come off as if I was giving excuses and/or too personal.

My tips for starting your personal statement:

• If you are struggling to start just start writing anything and everything that comes to mind.
• Afterwards revise and pick out what really is important to include and really gives the best impression.
• It’s ok to have multiple versions of a personal statement.
  • If you are anything like me I kept coming up with different ideas of how I could organize or tell the story. So just open up different word documents and write as the ideas come to mind. Cut & Paste is going to be your best friend at the end of this all.
• BOTTOM LINE: Don’t get stuck in the details just write what comes to mind and then later you can go back and really take a look at the best way to organize your statement. Getting the content on the page is a great start especially when you don’t know where to start.
  • A lot of times they can start taking on a life/theme of its own.

 

MCAT

So it seems like it is taking me an eternity to get through the Chemistry book. It definitely is my fault as I have not been as disciplined as I probably should and could be (DAMN YOU CANDY CRUSH!). Also seems like my children have been needier then usual 😀 so only time I could study is early morning or late night. I also know that Chemistry is my weakest subject and considering I have not even taken OChem II yet and the last time I took OChem I was in 2010 I believe :-O .It has been a struggle to grasp the concepts. Especially the Reactions. (Like how am I suppose to know what the product is going to be, it could react there, there and there… so technically it could be all these answers :-/)

But anyway I’m almost done with Chemistry study and I know the other books should be able to go pretty quickly as it should mainly be review. My next subject will be Physics and now that I have actually taken physics I think it will actually be easier for me to grasp then the first time I studied for the MCAT.

So the MCAT app that I mentioned in an earlier post is MCAT Mastery and I can tell that I am just going to have a love/hate relationship with this app. I will do a more detailed description on the Pros & Cons of this app soon.

Bottom Line: Its a great app to study when your on the go and helps you easily track your strengths and weaknesses. So yea go ahead and buy it but not for the extravagant price of $30 they have it listed for. Download the trial version and I can bet in a week or so they will have it at a discounted price of $14.99. So definitely wait for that.