BY BRIONA PRICE ’16
Staff Writer

I’m not pre-med anymore. Well that’s not exactly true, but it’s what I was thinking last week when I
was pulling my third all-nighter of the year,
when it took three
hours to come up with
an equation for my…
well whatever I needed
the equation for. I can’t
really remember but I
do know that particular equation made me very 
angry.

Seriously. Okay, back to this Pre-med dilemma. I was feeling pretty bummed out last week. I mean, for years I’ve wanted to be a surgeon, and I felt like I was giving up. I blame chemistry for all this. We had our chemistry quizzes passed back and everyone did horribly. The guy next to me got a zero (I swear I didn’t mean to look) and, overall, everyone was pretty disappointed in their grades.

Next came the surprise lab notebook check and although I saw the faces of despair, I was ready. This was going to be an “A” for sure. When it was returned, I was so happy that I had gotten a… “B”?! What? There was no way. I made sure my notebook was perfect, well, almost perfect. During the usual chemistry rant, a friend confessed she got a D on the notebook check because she didn’t know we had to use actual words.

It’s not like the upperclassmen have helped with “words of wisdom.” Here’s an actual conversation that happened:

Boy 1: You know Gen. Chem. classes are designed to weed out people who want to be pre-med, right?
Me: Um, I didn’t know that.
Boy 2: Well now you know.

Me: Do you think the professor will curve the grade?
Boy 2: If this was any other subject, then yeah, but it’s chemistry… so hell no.

Me: Oh. Okay.

I started to hate the idea of pre-med. I began to have career envy before I even had a career, but luckily the whole thing was over as soon as it started. The doubts about being a surgeon were gone and I thought of how close I had come to being weeded out of the pre-med pool because I had doubts in my abilities.

Well, fortunately (or unfortunately) for you, I’m still going to become a surgeon and I’ll never have to have one of those “My GPA is 2.1; do I have to go to Med. School in the Caribbean?” talks with the pre-health advisor. I’m going to work hard to make sure.

Thanksgiving Break is coming up and I’m looking forward to going home and studying…I meant spending time with my family.

Yep, no studying for me and then when I have a quiz that I fail, I’ll have Thanksgiving memories to keep me happy.

Um, yeah right.

Questions? Email Briona at bprice@fandm.edu.

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By TCR