Four ways for athletes to substantiate their candidacy in their medical school applications

How to stand out as an athlete on your medical school application Whether you are a high school senior trying to decide whether to play sports in college, or a collegiate athlete beginning to fill out your medical school application, this post is for you. When it comes down to it, admissions committees make their selections based off traits that they recognize tend to help students thrive through school and beyond. From the perspective of a four-year collegiate athlete, there are four big ways in which your athletic career will simultaneously help you get into and thrive in medical school, and four ways to apply them to your application. How to stand out as an athlete on your medical school application 1. Ability to handle medical school Briefly, athletes spend up to 20 hours a week honing their craft, and even more time recovering, both physically and mentally, from their exertions! Through all of this, they demonstrate dedication to a cause, hard work, and discipline. Admissions committees understand this, and most adults (myself included after only two years after retirement) marvel at how athletes make time for it all! That is 20 hours that could have been spent, for example, studying to boost one’s GPA. Thus, there is a degree of forgiveness for a bit of a lowered GPA. Additionally, committees can be confident that an athlete possesses the ability not only to handle the demands of intense studying and stressful clinical responsibilities, but to do so in stride. Athletes must have demonstrated resiliency to have weathered the demands of sports on top of school, and that resiliency will prove useful in medical school and as a doctor. Applicant Takeaway: Somewhere in your medical school application, remind med schools of the difficulties you have overcome, and how you are going to apply that in your medical education and career! 2. Team-oriented and communication skills Medicine is increasingly becoming a team â€Å"sport.† The wealth of knowledge in any given field has grown such that many of today’s medical innovations require input from an interdisciplinary team of specialized experts. What kind of skills are needed for a team to function? Interpersonal relations, communication, empathy, and humility. Athletes are trained for this! They are accustomed to learning what makes each of their teammates tick, how to motivate them, and what kinds of support they need. Simultaneously, they know how to receive, interpret, filter, and apply different forms of feedback both from a variety of sources. Doctors and med students need these interpersonal skills to understand and support their patients as well as to synergize with their peers who often have very different outlooks, opinions, or skillsets. Additionally, feedback will become harder and harder to come by as you advance in your medical career, and you will need to take advantage of it w hen you can get it! Applicant Takeaway:In your medical school application, be sure to include examples of instances you had to work as a team, make compromises, or go the extra mile to understand your teammate before you were able to conquer a challenge together. 3. Achievement oriented Aristotle said, â€Å"we are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then is not an act but a habit.† An elite swimmer will have a spectacular flip-turn but will continue to practice them hundreds of times a day in an effort to shave a mere tenth of a second off their race time. They practice excellence, and that is what is expected of medical students and doctors. There is not enough time in the day to perfect a flip turn, or to learn everything in medical textbooks, but that is not to say you are not expected to make your best effort. By their commitment and dedication, athletes show they have the ability, motivation, and passion to achieve. What is left for applicants is to prove that this passion is transferable to healthcare. Applicant Takeaway: Draw a connection between your passion for your sport and your passion to improve your patient’s lives or advance the field of medicine – the more specific, the better. 4. Mental and Physical health Physician burnout (as compared to the general population) is a major, rising concern, and student/physician wellness is a growing priority. Thus, medical schools, residency programs, and hospitals invest a lot into their class or physician workforce and have great incentive to insure a high retention rate. While the ability to make time for regular stress-relieving activities (whether that be exercise or otherwise) is certainly not the only way to maintain mental health in the face of a demanding workload, athletes are accustomed to doing so and may have an easier time building that time into their schedule. Additionally, exercise has been shown to increase mental performance that can only help in medicine. Finally, physicians should be role models for their patients, and maintaining mental and physical status is paramount to anyone’s health! Applicant Takeaway: While it is imperative to demonstrate your passion for learning and for healthcare on your medical school application, it is also important to show how you value making time for yourself to recharge and stay fresh: that you are in it for the long-haul. Are you applying to medical school and feeling lost about your application? Connect with one of our MD/PhDs today to recieve expert guidance through the process! ; Are you interested in learning more about getting your medical school application in shape? Read some of our previous blog posts, below! 3 (Surprising) Reasons Why Social Science Prepares You for Medicine How to Create an Initial List of Medical School Applications Biology on the MCAT: How to Simplify Complex Problems

Gender-Stereotyped Cartoon - the Flintstones - Free Essay Example

Gender-Stereotyped Cartoons 1. What cartoons did you watch or books did you read? I had chosen to assess whether children’s media is gender-stereotyped by watching various episodes of The Flintstones from the ABC televison station. 2. Are male and female characters portrayed in gender-stereotypic roles? â€Å"Flintstones. Meet the Flintstones. † As the song entails, the Flintstones were in fact your modern Stone Age family. This 1960’s American sitcom had placed an emphasis on four leading characters each of which are portrayed in gender-stereotypic roles. Starting with the main character, Fred Flintstone is an accident-prone quarry worker and head of the Flintstone clan. He is quick to anger, but a very loving husband and father. Wilma Flintstone, who is Fred’s fiery, red-haired wife, is portrayed as being the more intelligent of the two as well as more level headed than her husband. The Flintstones best friends and next door neighbors are The Rubbles, Barney and Betty. Both the men and women in The Flintstones were drawn with the same body shape and type of clothing. The two main female characters, Wilma and Betty are both drawn very thin, with tiny waists, thin legs and medium busts. The two women are always dressed in short fitted dresses and accessorized each with a large necklace. The women always wear their hair in the same style and it never appears to be unwashed or disheveled in any way. Being that both the women along with men are emphasized as modern day cave people, they are never shown wearing shoes. This shows that both of the women are drawn with very tiny feet suiting well to the ideal body type of any woman. The two main male characters, Fred and Barney are both seen as somewhat stout, with an insignificant amount of muscle in their chest and upper body areas. Fred and Barney are each characterized by having minimally pronounced waists, in what could be termed a slight beer belly. Both have the same short, conservative haircut which appears to be shaggy and un-groomed. They are dressed in a primitive cloth which is relatively unflattering to their bulky body type. 3. Are males and females equally represented in exciting plot activities? I do not believe that males nd females are equally represented in The Flintstones. Unlike Wilma and Betty, whose sole occupation was raising their two children Pebbles, and the later adopted Bamm Bamm as well as being domesticated housewives, Fred and Barney were employed at the Slate Rock/Gravel Quarry. It is here, where they performed everyday masculine tasks serving as dinosaur operators which entailed them to the lifting and transporting of heavy materials, a job deemed as unsuitable (at the time) for any woman. The two men are also members of the Rock Quarry’s men-only bowling team known as the â€Å"Flintstone Flyer†. On a regular basis, Fred and Barney arrive home after a hard day of work in a stone-age vehicle with stone wheels and a fringe on top. The two women are rarely seen driving the vehicle which puts emphasis on the gender stereotype that women rely on men for transportation amongst many other things at that present time. Barney and Fred were also members of the fictional Loyal Order of Water Buffaloes (Lodge No. 26), a men-only club paralleling real-life fraternities such as the Freemasons. Organizations which allowed women only memberships were minimal and not really emphasized at this time. Both married couples are often depicted as sleeping in separate beds from their spouses which was a popular trend for the majority of television sitcoms during the mid 1960’s. 4. Do the male characters outnumber the female characters? After viewing several episodes of The Flintstones, my results have indicated a definite discrepancy between the numbers of male to female characters portrayed. As with most other 1960’s television sitcoms, men were deemed as more active in society and the women were more passive. An individual with a more minor role, such as Mr. Slate whose was Fred and Barney’s employer, was played by a male along with the rest of their Slate Rock/Stone Quarry coworkers. Organizations in which the men were members such as the Loyal Order of Water Buffaloes and The Flintstone Flyer (Fred’s bowling team) also consisted of men only which is yet another indication that male characters outnumber the females by a fairly large amount. Based on my observation of male to female characters, it appears that there is a ratio of about 4 to 1 with men being more favorable. 5. Are the behaviors, attitudes, and characteristics of male and female characters strongly gender stereotyped? Yes. Starting with the attitudes of both the men and woman characters, it appears that Fred tends to be loud-mouthed, aggressive, and constantly scheming ways to improve his familys working class lot in life, often with unintended results. The women of this cartoon are rarely seen raising their voices to their spouse, or promoting physical or verbal abuse of any kind. Due to his impulsive and short-tempered behavior and stubborn and naive nature, Fred Flintstone seems to be accident-prone. He is able to create the biggest confusion, even with the most innocent and mundane action. Despite his apparently anti-social character, Freds actions are shown to be usually free of any malice. And, although he almost constantly shouts and aggravates the people around himself, Fred proves to be a friendly person; often going out of his way to help someone. Although Fred often annoys Wilma with his immaturity, he proves to be a very caring and loving husband and father. Fred Flintstone is even known to go to great lengths to please his family or apologize when he goes too far. Barney tended to be much more jovial-minded and easygoing than his friend Fred. He would go along with Fred’s get rich quick schemes along with many other absent minded ideas rarely losing his patience because the two were best friends. This is evidence that male characters are portrayed as having a more aggressive role than the women who were more quiet and reserved. Also, it was clear that based on both the attitudes and behaviors of the men, that they were the head of the household and had the overall say in the relationship which is still remains evident in some marriages today. Based on behaviors and attitudes alike, many episodes also depict characteristics which are shown only by the women. Household chores such as vacuuming, cooking, and being the dominant caregiver for the children, were roles in which only the women portrayed. The women also were also known for their love for shopping, and (occasionally) getting to meet the celebrities of their world, including Stony Curtis and Cary Granite as well. 6. Are recent books and cartoons less gender-stereotyped than ones from a decade or more ago? Yes. I believe that both books as well as cart oons are in fact less gender-stereotyped now than from a decade or more ago. Upon given this assignment, I had taken strong consideration into which cartoon I was going to choose. I originally had considered the popular animated children’s cartoon known as Dora the Explorer. Furthering my research into this program, it became evident that this particular cartoon was gender neutral and aimed for both a male and female audience. For example, Dora unlike many other female characters in cartoons today acts out against villains (a role more commonly played by a male). Dora also enjoys playing sports and is a member of a baseball team which was rarely seen in female cartoon characters in the past decade. She is also a musician, skilled at playing a wooden flute which is a hobby that both young boys and girls can relate to. Early cartoons such as The Flintstones, fail to depict any kind of cultural diversity in their characters portrayal. Dora is of the Latina decent and is fluen t in not only the English language but in Spanish as well. This particular cartoon has sparked a revolution for gender neutral television, in more ways than one! I believe that today, more parents and caregivers are aware of gender stereotyping and are stepping out to correct or at least minimize the situation. More books and television series today are directed for both gender types and have the characters portrayed as doing activities which were once seen done only by one gender type. With time, I feel as though all gender stereotypes will be diminished in both the media as well as the literary.