Do you ever feel like you have way too much to do but too little time to get it all done? If you’re trying to juggle classes, work, volunteer activities, and personal and family responsibilities, it’s probably a familiar feeling.

In this episode, Drs. Marina & Zulma offer four major tips to help you learn to better manage your time without feeling completely overwhelmed. These tips include:

Set realistic expectations

Do the most important things first

Learn to say “no”

Allow flexibility for the unexpected

One of the most common questions we hear from students is, “How do you pay for college and medical school?” As you probably already know, getting an education isn’t free. The average medical student comes out of training with $200,000 in debt (which is enough to buy a house in some places!). If you’re letting worries about money hold you back from your dream of becoming a doctor, this episode is for you! We cover the basics about options to finance your education (free money vs. loans) and tips for how to be financially smart during high school, college, medical school, and residency so that you don’t have to worry too much about money in the future.

An important part of your application to medical school will involve writing a one-page essay explaining to the admissions committee WHY you want to become a doctor. Writing a mediocre personal statement can really hurt your chances of getting in, so it’s important to give yourself enough time (at least 3 months) to write and edit your essay. In this episode, we review some general principles and more specific do’s and dont’s of writing a great essay. If you’re planning to apply to medical school during the next cycle (which opens around May/June of each year), or if you’re an early premed student wanting to know more about how to best prepare to apply, this episode is for you!

Also, check out the resources tab of our website (www.futureminoritydoctor.com) for a summary of tips and some sample personal statements.

With so many options for MCAT test prep materials out there, how do you even know where to start? How do you decide how long you need to prepare? How many practice tests should you take? How do you combat the feeling of overwhelm that comes with starting your trek up the MCAT prep mountain? In this episode, Drs. Marina & Zulma give you some tips to help you navigate the MCAT test prep landscape so that you can best prepare to get the score you dream of!

Have you ever gotten totally useless advice about self-care? Does your idea of self-care involve drinking green smoothies, doing yoga, and getting expensive massages? If so, this episode is for you! We offer you three simple ideas to help you learn to take better care of yourself — including getting better sleep, practicing self-compassion, and occasionally making time for things that feed your spirit. They’re simple concepts but not always so simple to implement in real life, so we break them down and offer plenty of examples from our own lives. The best part, though? Anyone can try them and they don’t have to cost a dime!

Have you wanted a career that keeps you close to the games you love? Listen to CJ talk about discovering Sports Medicine late in his med school training, and the importance of good mentors in getting him to where he is now. Whether it's helping 70-year-olds get back to Zumba, or working with the Bruins football team and the LA Lakers, Dr Duffaut brings his own experience as college basketball player to his medical training. Hear him talk about balancing sports, work, and studies as an undergraduate--and the unique challenges of navigating all that as a first generation minority student.

Listen in as Dr. Allison Fernandez shares her story of becoming an anesthesiologist — a specialist who helps patients manage their pain and get through surgery safely. She shares how she happened to learn about the field of anesthesiology because her mom was a housekeeper for a nurse anesthetist who invited her to shadow her at work. She also shares how she was able to adjust to the somewhat intimidating environment of the operating room, the tools she uses on a daily basis to help keep patients stable during surgery, and why she thinks there are not enough underrepresented minorities in her field (and why there should be more!).

Second-year medical student Camila shares all about how she studied to take the MCAT and scored a 509 on her first try, which helped land her in an excellent medical school (UC Berkeley-San Francisco)! She also shares how even though her mom was a doctor, she was not immune from academic struggles and isolation during her premed college years — including having trouble finding a chemistry lab partner, battling test anxiety, and getting some Cs in her science classes. She is passionate about helping to address issues of structural racism within healthcare.

Laurel Hiatt is currently in their third year of a combined MD/PhD program at the University of Utah School of Medicine. Listen as Laurel shares their story of growing up in the South and navigating premed life as a first-generation non-binary college student. They share some of the challenges they faced interacting with healthcare providers, and how these experiences plus a love of science motivated them to pursue a career as a physician-scientist interested in adolescent health and computational genomics. They share some tips on how we can all make healthcare more inclusive for other non-binary individuals.