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Preparing for Your Career in Medicine

Pursuing a career in the medical field is a dream for many people. With all the possibilities and success that are available in a medical career, it is an attractive option that can be rewarding both financially and emotionally. If you have been thinking about pursuing one of the available healthcare careers, here are some things you can do to prepare.

Start as Early as Possible
Ideally, preparing for your medical career should begin in high school. This is where most people learn study habits that will prepare them for college and eventually medical school. It is also important to start preparing in high school so they can get good grades and then get accepted into a reputable school. This will help them get accepted into a recognized college which will look better on an application for medical school.

Find Internships and Volunteer Opportunities
Throughout high school and college, you can find many opportunities for volunteering in various medical areas in your community. Many medical schools offer programs in which high school and college students can intern for the summer in their local clinics, nursing homes and hospitals. Look for these opportunities so you can get an idea of what it is like to work in the medical industry.

Practice Your Interview Skills
If you have interviews set up for jobs in the medical profession, practice your answers to potential questions and research the companies where you have interviews scheduled. This will help you stand out against your competitors for the same position.

These are just a few things to consider when preparing for your career in medicine. If you can master these and other skills, you are sure to have a level of success in your medical career.

Filed Under: Careers Tagged With: Education, Medical school, Medicine

Looking at Both Sides of Studying Far From Home

If the study abroad program has caught your eye, you might do well to think about what you’ll gain out of the experience versus what you might well lose. Tradeoffs abound in life, and the world of education is no exception. To help yourself figure out your most opportune path, you’ll do well to consider both aspects, rather than just the positives that others highlight.

 

Detractions to studying abroad: You’ll give up the life you’ve become accustomed to. While that’s probably great, and for the betterment of your person, it’s important to think about how that might affect you. You may lose touch with close friends, who, although interested in your doings, may lose sight of your friendship when they don’t see you every day. Upon your return from foreign study, you may have far fewer local friends. Also, your views are likely to change to an extent. This also may alienate you from friends and family. Studying far away from the influence of people you’ve known for a long time is very likely to expand your viewpoint on most issues, potentially creating conflict.

 

Positives of study abroad programs: You’ll make new, internationally based friends. The learning methods employed elsewhere will open your eyes to further educational possibilities, such as the Socratic teaching method. You’ll gain a much deeper understanding of current events, world events, and history. And you might just learn things that you never expected, whether that’s about other people’s perception of your country, or their fascination with your culture.

 

Like all things, good and bad can be found in foreign study. You have to decide what’s good for you!

 

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Filed Under: Careers, Education Tagged With: Education, Study abroad in the United States, United States

Avoid a Classic College Mistake

College is a time of self directed learning. Your mentor, a teacher who devotes time to ensuring that you take enough of the right classes to graduate in your field of study, will help you along the way. But ultimately, the decisions you make are your own, and you will find that the number of decisions you face about what classes to take is very confusing. That is partly because so many classes look so interesting, yet aren’t useful towards attaining a particular degree. To avoid coming up short on your four year degree graduation day, you need to pay particular attention to your curriculum starting during your first semester of classes.

 

Some people – usually the ones who end up being crunched during their third or fourth year of college – start their college years off by taking a wide selection of diverse classes. The aim behind this approach is that they want to ‘figure out’ what area of specialty they want to focus on. But that’s something to figure out before one attends college. Figuring out what one is interested in during college can be very expensive, as the classes chosen are often very costly, and often don’t apply towards one’s final area of special focus.

 

You’ll notice that people who change majors often end up being in college for far longer, sometimes three or four years longer, than average! That’s because credits attained towards the field of study of one major don’t fulfill graduation requirements for other majors. Focus on one field of study from the outset to avoid making this classic mistake.

 

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Filed Under: Course of Study, Education Tagged With: Bachelor's degree, College, List of academic disciplines

Developing a Critical Thinking Framework

Studying the Talmud

Image via Wikipedia

One disadvantage of taking an online learning course is that it doesn’t allow for a study abroad style experience. Online learners are fortunate in being able to be located nearly anywhere while they study for their degree. This allows them to keep their jobs, and even their friends, as they work towards earning their degree. This option is quite popular for those who need to work their way through college, since it offers up the flexibility that is so necessary when doing both.

 

But the whole point of studying abroad is to immerse oneself in the local culture, gaining a new perspective on how people around the world live. By gaining this broader perspective, one can make better-educated decisions, both in their own lives, and at the workplace. One’s worldview tends to shift when they’ve lived outside of their own country for some length of time. Not everyone will agree that your country has made the best decisions, nor will the news networks always show your home country in the most favorable light, when you live outside its borders.

 

This alone is eye opening. Living exclusively inside one’s own country’s borders, one will be subject to a fairly positive home bias. It’s only natural, as no one wants to say bad things about the country they come from. But by stepping out of the land of your nationality, you will gain a different perspective. This is often cherished by employers who seek a person with an ability to think more critically than average.

 

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Filed Under: Careers, Course of Study, Education Tagged With: Education, Study abroad in the United States, United States

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