MedEx Day 17 - July 21, 2021

To start today, Tier III had our headshots taken. After this, Mr. Al came and spoke to us/ gave two presentations. His two presentations focused on gap years and on a values assessment. Mr. Al's presentation on a gap year focused on making a gap year a "gain year." Gap years can be intentional or unintentional, but regardless of the circumstance, a gap year is a year in which an aspiring medical student or an aspiring graduate school student has the chance to make themselves a better applicant by improving their skills or trying to complete a hole in their application. While a gap year is not currently in my plans, I enjoyed hearing about gap years/ getting to consider the benefits/ disadvantages of them. Gap years can provide much needed rest to a student who is near being burnt out. Medical school is not the final stop on the journey to becoming a physician/ it isn't the hardest step either... a gap year can provide a break before going into this next very tough step of life.

Mr. Al's next presentation focused on a values assessment that changed his life. This particular values assessment focused on seeing if our future career lines up with our values for life. We could put down different levels of agreement between our future careers/ our values, depending on how conducive our planned career field is to our values. My values assessment yielded that my hopeful career aspirations of being a surgeon line up pretty well with my values, except that making time for family and friends will be difficult but not impossible. I thoroughly enjoyed Mr. Al's presentation, and I thought that I was better able to visualize that my values align with my career choice of the future. Overall, today was a wonderful day in affirming that I really do want to be a physician.