Wednesday, April 18, 2007

How to Become a Doctor

The usual ways:

Go to medical school, do well, and pass the examinations. Pay for it with savings and gifts.

Do incredibly well in high school, get an enormous number of scholarships, go to medical school, do well, and pass the examinations.

Do pretty well in high school, get loans and scholarships enough to pay for medical school, go to medical school, do well, and pass the examinations.

Other ways:

Sign up for the military, use the GI bill to pay for medical school.

Do poorly in high school or college, take night courses to improve your grades afterwards.

Volunteer at your local free clinic to do whatever needs to be done, use your time to learn everything you can and to do an excellent job, get letters of reference from your employers to get into medical school.

Volunteer at your local veterinarian’s office to get medical training of any sort, use your time to learn everything you can and to do an excellent job, get letters of reference from your employers to get into medical school.

Become a paramedic to get the experience and references.

Become a nurse to get the experience and references.

(I am not knocking paramedics or nurses. They work hard and do valuable things. They do not have it “easier” than doctors. However, they have slightly different requirements for their jobs and schooling, and some people may meet those requirements but not the ones for a doctor.)

Go to a second-rate or third-rate college that will accept your grades as they are, either domestic or foreign.

Find a foreign medical school that will lower their standards to meet a foreign student quota. Also applicable for minority students in America.

Find a place where you don’t need a license to practice medicine. Be a doctor.

Find a place where you can work through a mentoring program to learn how to become a doctor. Find a mentor.

Find a corporation that is need of medical students or in-house doctors. Work out a corporate sponsorship where they pay for your schooling and you work for them for a certain number of years to pay them back. Good companies to try would be ones that have remote sites and have difficulty keeping workers of any kind for a length of time or one with particularly dangerous work not nearby a hospital or clinic.

Find a town in a similar situation.

Find a few towns near each other in a similar situation. Have each of them pay a portion of your schooling and rotate among the towns in accordance with the portion of your schooling they paid. In either of the town situations, it would be a good-faith gesture to move to that town during breaks and volunteer as much as you’re allowed without a license.

Find a few towns that are not near each other and travel a whole lot more than the above suggestion.

You don't have to do things the usual way in order to get what you want. Be creative, and you may get everything you desire.