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Can you recall a childhood memory when you learned something the hard way? Isaiah Cochran is getting ready to begin his second year of med school at the Wright State University Boonshoft School of Medicine, and as he reflects on his upbringing, he shares a story with us of a harsh childhood lesson his mother taught on Christmas morning. See how it has shaped his values and outlook, not only in everyday life but also in training and as a future physician.

You’ve completed an international elective or global health experience; so, what’s next? Explore how you can maximize the value of that experience and what next steps you should be taking upon your return with Dr. Joseph C. Kolars, Senior Associate Dean for Education and Global Initiatives at the University of Michigan Medical School.

It no longer seems impossible, or even unlikely: What happens if your medical center itself comes under attack? Have you thought about your role? What would you do? What should you do? Would you have time in the moment itself to weigh ethical considerations, personal safety and protocol? Probably not. In this episode, we get an inside look at a training exercise preparing health care providers for an attack on their own institution, and learn about the bioethics of just such a situation.

Do you have a plan to stay in control of your specialty choice, or is debt going to drive your career? No matter what values a student brings with them to medical school, the cost of their training and the weight of their student loans puts a lot of pressure on their specialty choice. Some may even avoid medicine as a career choice because of the costs. But for those who are really committed to primary care and community-oriented medicine, there are options. The National Health Service Corps is one of those options. In addition to awarding scholarships and loan repayment in exchange for commitments to serve in designated underserved areas after residency, the National Health Service Corps’ Students-to-Service program takes applicants in their final year of medical school for up to $120,000 in loan repayment in exchange for three years of service. With the application process for the Students-to-Service program opening in mid-August, we bring you a conversation with Dr. Luis Padilla, director of the National Health Service Corps, about his own experience as a National Health Service Corps scholar, as well as what they are looking for in their applicants.

Do you think your MCAT test day went wrong? Like many of her peers studying for the MCAT, Megan Single spent hundreds of hours over the course of several months preparing for the exam. She woke up on the day of her exam and arrived ready to take on the MCAT head first; however, she couldn’t have anticipated that she was about to walk in on a nightmare. Hear Megan's story of her beeping MCAT, how she overcame defeat--from technological difficulties to illness--and how her experience added a unique perspective to her med school journey today.

Is it possible to maintain a creative life outside of medical training? Is it worth it? When M.D./Ph.D. student Lee Hong found herself drifting away from her poetry amid the grind of training, rather than give in, she wrote a poem about the challenge itself. Here, she reads from and discusses her work and the value it has brought to her in medicine.

Did you spend thousands of dollars on test prep when preparing for medical school? When you prepare for the MCAT exam for entrance to medical school, there's a different standard set from the very beginning. Some students dish out thousands preparing for the exam; but others can't afford such expenses and find themselves without access to test prep materials at all, or possibly buying older materials which leads to outdated studying in comparison to their peers. Hear more from Joey Johnson on admissions barriers and biases.

Even as the definition of a “nontraditional” med student has shifted, there are outliers. Elaine Luther is one such outlier. But medical school isn't just about the medical career that follows. It is itself an accomplishment—and a statement.

Here's Elaine's story about what stood in her way, and the night that refocused her on a dream she'd been denied.

One of the frustrations of medical school is the distance between the student experience and direct patient care. Medical student involvement in care and care research doesn’t have to be strictly clinical. There are many areas outside the clinical realm that affect the patient experience, and offer an opportunity for medical students to become involved in meaningful care and research.

Med student Ramona Mittal found herself working to gather information on a deeply personal practice at many hospitals: the collection, preservation and presentation of mementos from children at the end of life. She has been working to better understand how and why different medical centers manage this delicate but powerful task.

Does the competitive nature of medical school and medical students hold you back? Is there a way to use it to your advantage? Medical training, it seems, begins and ends with competition. All the way from applying to med school to applying to residency, medical students are seemingly pitted against one another. But how can that competitive spirit be tapped for learning in a healthy way? There are a number of people working on this now, generally using games for learning. Earlier this year, we spoke with a group of medical students who were investigating the use of competitive simulation at their own institution.