As I get ready to begin my third year at the American University of the Caribbean, I find myself reflecting back on the last two years of my life in wonder. I am amazed not only at how much I have grown as a person, but also at the vast amount of knowledge I still have to master before finishing school. Now that I have experienced half the education required to become a physician, my respect for the profession and the dedication required to accomplish it has grown tremendously. I did not understand the true meaning of discipline, determination, and drive until I started medical school. Based on my experiences, I feel it is imperative that students certify for themselves that this profession is a good match for them before diving in.

Throughout the undergraduate years, many students tend to get so caught up in the notion of being a doctor or in parental indoctrination that they forget to assess their real motivation for becoming physicians. If one’s motivation to be a physician is driven by money or parental pressure, he or she may have difficulty with the rigors of school. I can say from experience that the challenges as an undergradutae pale in comparison to what one faces in medical school. One week after failing my first medical school exam, I found myself surrounded by books and notes at 3 AM after a full day of classes and another exam waiting for me in five hours. The only thing that carried me through to the next day was the faint certainty that medicine really was what I wanted to do with my life.

As the semesters passed, I eventually adjusted my study habits to fit the particular demands of classes, and my once faint certainty grew into a passion for the medical profession. This fervor was fueled by professors that challenged me, classmates that experienced the same difficult challenges alongside me, physicians that reminded me there was light at the end of the tunnel, and patients that put a human face to a Latin salad of diseases.

The price you pay while being a medical student is not only paid in money but also in personal terms. As unpleasant as it may sound, my studies have taken their toll on some personal relationships. Currently, my whole world revolves around school, and it took a while to accept that a utopian balance between family and medical school was just not possible. For the time being, I have come to terms with my family and friends being “number two” in my life. Based on what I have observed from my classmates, those who have the most difficult time in school are the ones who either can not accept this kind of priority shift or the ones that confided they were driven into medicine by parental pressure and expectations.

Time is a precious commodity in medical school, and its scarcity makes it difficult to maintain what I once remembered as a “normal” schedule. Throughout the last twenty months, I have typically had class from 8-11:30AM two days a week, and class from 8AM to 5PM or 7PM the remainder of the week, depending on the semester and lab schedules. This left an hour for lunch and dinner before my ritual arrival in study hall. I would study for six to eight hours every weekday and ten hours on both Saturday and Sunday. This draconian amount of studying was necessary because the amount of material lunged at me daily was sufficient both in quantity and difficulty to keep me busy well into the early hours of the morning. The exam schedule was also unrelenting and rather unforgiving.

The harsh reality is that medical school is tough, and one needs to overcome both academic and personal hurdles. From the moment students walk into anatomy lab, they are confronted with the sights and smells of medicine: the unshakable smell of formaldehyde, the lost sense of control, the satisfaction of honoring an exam and the two- day depression that accompanies a failed one, etc. One’s personal life may also become just a memory after losing contact with friends, forgetting birthdays, and the names of people and places. However, how students choose to handle these difficulties may make a great difference in their lives.

People find ways to handle stress differently. Some cope by going to parties, while others take up hobbies such as scuba diving. I found myself retreating to the beach or the movies to find a break from school. I think that the best way to deal with all these changes is to set a rigid study schedule, stick to it, and always leave time to remind yourself that there is a world outside your microcosm. If students are lucky, all the challenges and hurdles they face will only strengthen their resolve to become a physician and reaffirm that this professional career was the correct one for them.

I encourage anyone wishing to pursue a medical education abroad to research the schools carefully. Many students have gone and returned with enormous debts and no means to pay for them. Some important factors I recommend thinking about are: length of operation, approval by the Department of Education for Stafford Loans, the number of unrestricted licensed graduates, if there are any graduates in “tough” practicing states (CA, FL, NY, KS, CO, TX, MO), the USMLE first-time pass rate, what percentage of the entering class graduates on time, and where the country’s charter is located. For example, a school may have a charter in Africa but hold classes in England. This may cause licensure problems in some states.

Overall, I feel that American University of the Caribbean has given me a solid education. The faculty is comprised of mostly American PhDs and MDs, and the school has a curriculum designed to focus on the licensing exam. I chose this school because they have over 3,500 licensed doctors in the United States and are approved by the Department of Education for Stafford Loans. The other two universities nearby with similar statistics are St.George University in Grenada and Ross University in Dominica.

I look forward to the next couple hurdle-filled years, and I am glad I found a career that challenges me to be a better person each day and places me in a position to help others. I now truly understand the meaning of the cliché “hard work only scratches the surface of what it takes to survive a game.” One must also have the discipline, determination, and the drive that makes the schedule and financial debt bearable, places the relentless testing in perspective, and makes one’s clinical training rewarding.