Achieving balance: A resident's advice for succeeding in medical school without sacrificing your personal life [Show summary]

Dr. Wendell Cole, a Morehouse graduate and orthopedic surgical resident at Tulane, shares the personal experiences and med school survival strategies that led him to write The Med School Survival Kit.

How planning and time management pave the way towards greater academic success and personal fulfillment [Show notes]

Have you been accepted to medical school this cycle? Congratulations! Are you still hoping to be accepted this cycle? Are you planning ahead for next cycle? Today's guest is going to discuss his path in med school, as well as how you can excel in medical school while enjoying the experience.

Dr. Wendell Cole graduated with a degree in biology and medical virology from Georgia State University in 2014. He attended Morehouse School of Medicine and graduated in 2018, at the age of 24. He has been an orthopedic surgical resident at Tulane University School of Medicine and will complete his residency in 2023. He published The Med School Survival Kit: How To Breeze Through Med School While Crushing Your Exams in 2018 as he graduated med school. 

Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your background? [2:03]

I am a first generation son of immigrants. My mom and my father are both from the Caribbean. They immigrated here in the '90s or '80s and had me. I was born in New York, and I moved around a lot, and I ended up spending most of my time in Georgia. Marietta, Georgia is where I spent most of my time. Then Atlanta, Georgia is where I spent the majority of undergrad and med school. Most of my life has been in Georgia.

Growing up, nobody really did medicine before me. There weren't any other doctors or anything else like that in the family. I liked sports a lot growing up, and I started playing sports in high school. I played football, and I ran track. Another thing that I started enjoying in high school was actually a TV show called House. They have a lot of different seasons, but it's an intriguing show on medicine. That combination of the two piqued my interest in medicine. I always liked science stuff, and I always liked sports. I thought, well, what's something I can do to combine the two? So I went through undergrad thinking I was going to do something sciency, but again, I watched House all the time, so I can say that heavily influenced me going towards the field of medicine, like sports. That brought me towards orthopedics. I kind of knew it was something I wanted to do.

I also injured myself and had to have surgery when I was in college as well, so it wasn't just House. I had personal injuries. When I was in college, I actually tore my ACL just horsing around, not even doing a professional sport. The thing that took me with that is that beforehand, I expressed my emotions by working out. I wasn't able to work out, so I felt a part of me was missing, I guess, for a lack of better terms. Long story short, I ended up getting an ACL reconstructed, being able to run again, do sports. That kind of birthed my interest and gave me that form of self-expression back. That's one of the reasons why I wanted to do orthopedics.

What was the hardest part of the medical school application process for you? [4:42]