I'm halfway through my time here at Harvard, and a large part of my academic experience has been defined by one word: “pre-med.”

Being pre-med, for those who may not know, simply means someone who wants to attend medical school, and go on to be a doctor one day too. The label “pre-med”, however, does have some negative stereotypes associated with it—for example, people seem to think we have no social life, are always sleep-deprived, and are fiercely competitive with our grades. 

While the sleep-deprived fact may be true, I think the pre-med track is largely misunderstood. I want to shed some light on what it’s like being pre-med at Harvard and give a personal account of my time here so far. Perhaps I can convince you that it is not all as scary as it may seem. 

(To preface: this blog will not cover the technical aspects of the pre-med track, so if you would prefer to read about that instead, check out Halie’s blog here).  

Though I’m only halfway through college, sophomore year is typically the time when people decide seriously if they’re going to stay on the pre-med track. This is primarily due to two factors: (1) the concentration declaration deadline, and (2) the classes.

Declaring a concentration 

At Harvard, our majors are called “concentrations," and the deadline to declare our concentration is by the end of our first semester of sophomore year. While by no means someone has to concentrate in a life sciences field to be pre-med (you can actually major in whatever you want and still be pre-med!), many students decide at this time whether they want to dedicate the rest of their college career to studying cells, anatomy, brains, and/or DNA. 

As you can see from my upside-down “MCB” sticker, I recently declared my concentration: Molecular and Cellular Biology! Many of my pre-med peers are also MCB, but there’s also a variety of Neuroscience, Chemistry, and even English concentrators. While MCB is objectively the best major, I think every department welcomes its concentrators amazingly. 

Classes

And finally, classes. While the order in which people take classes is never the same, a lot of pre-meds (including me) begin to take our first introductory concentration courses, as well as the infamous Chemistry 17 (AKA organic chemistry). In fact, I am writing this blog the day after midterms were graded, and in case you're looking to know how it went, I failed it. Yes, some tears were shed, and a tub of ice cream may have been eaten, but I'm still here! And so are all my other pre-med friends. At times, and especially during sophomore year, classes feel overwhelming, and med school seems so far away. Will we ever get there? is a question we wonder every day. 

What keeps me going are my peers. Suffering together frantically trying to understand experimental models, E2 mechanisms, and how to dilute cultures in labs, I feel a sense of community. I've messed up countless experiments, forgotten mechanisms and concepts, but I know my p-set groups, my labmates, and my fellow peers in office hours will lend a hand.

I know one day my classmates and I will get to wear our white coats, and help the patients afflicted with diseases we've been studying in textbooks during these four years. It will all be worth it someday, we tell ourselves. Our professors, TAs, CAs, tutors, and advisors tell us the same too.