I'm currently a freshman in high school and I'm interested in going to med school some day. Is there anything I should keep in mind as far as classes to take, places to tour, general advice, etc. while going through high school?
- Take all the science classes you can, but not so many that you can’t also take art or theatre or literature.
- Get a job even if your parents are wealthy. Work in retail or food or hospitality. Feel anger burn in your chest when a woman in a fur coat sneers at you because she thinks she is above you, and pain sink your chest when you realize your sweet coworker who is a single mom of 3 working 2 jobs at 80 hours a week and sleeps 3 hours a night so her kids can go to a better school.
- Drive a shitty car. Why? Because you are a terrible driver and can’t have nice things yet. Back into a few fire hydrants first.
- Volunteer somewhere that is not a hospital. Read to cats at the animal shelter and walk the dogs. If you have any musical or entertainment skills go to nursing homes and entertain the residents. Help take care of local parks. Tutor children and teenagers for free.
- Get a journal and some pretty pens. Write all your feelings and hopes and dreams. Never look at that journal again, and years later worry someone will find it.
- Read for pleasure. Read old books and new books and start writing 100 novels of your own that you never finish. Read fiction and nonfiction, essays, and poetry. Reading is the closest thing to getting in another person’s head that the future offers.
- Get out of town as often as you can. See the ocean and mountains and sidewalks flowing with people. Wear something that makes you feel dangerous when you travel- you’ll probably never see any of these people again, so why not?
- Fall in love. Maybe it will be for the first time. Maybe not. But the love of teenagers is something else. Your heart will probably be broken, probably multiple times. You will live, I promise.
- Get your hands on some cheap shitty wine and stay up all night in someone’s basement playing board games and laughing till you cry at everyone’s red teeth, learn what a hangover feels like, learn your limits.
- Pay for things out of money you earned. Working a minimum wage job, suddenly you realize that dollars earned cost hours of your life. Is that trendy for the season shirt that everyone else has really worth two or three shifts? Is it really?
- Start saving money if you can. Because having a couple thousand dollar cushion for shit life throws at you is the smart thing to do.
- Work on things like humility, self confidence, bravery, selflessness, kindness, forgiveness. You are a work in progress. You are not who you will be yet. You are growing, evolving. It’s ok.
- Learn to say you are sorry and learn to say it soon.
- Start controlling your temper and your tongue, you will never be finished.
- Have something that depends on you- a plant, a goldfish, a cat. That thing is not disposable when you are tired of it. That thing is alive, it needs you. You better take care of it even when you don’t feel like it.
- Have safe consensual sex, regardless of who you have sex with. You are not ready for a baby, and no one wants an STD. Don’t let anyone pressure you into doing what you are not ready for or dislike. Sex can be love, but sex is not love, and does not make someone love you or you to love someone.
There is so much more but this is a good start, I think.