Junior Year:  A Time for 4.0s, 5Ks, Business Ventures, and Research in the Rainforest

That may seem like a pretty loaded heading. But all that and more occurred during my Junior year. By now I was able to effectively divide my time between school and a social life, making the grades I needed, hanging out with friends, and pursuing other activities. I made a 4.0 in both semesters, finishing my junior year with a 3.714, successfully meeting the goal I set for myself two years prior. The main reason I was able to make a 4.0 both semesters is that I finally figured out how I learn best, partly thanks to the MCAT.

I'd gotten more and more efficient with my study time ever since freshman year, and the massive chunk of time spent studying for the MCAT the previous summer really hammered it home. If I had a test coming up, I knew exactly how much time I needed to do well, and when I’d have to start studying. For me, the key was studying in small consecutive chunks interspersed with little breaks. I mentioned this briefly in the prior section, but what I mean is this: study for about 30 minutes, then take about a short break where you do something totally different, not even thinking about what you just studied. My break time was spent doing totally arbitrary things (staring aimlessly at the wall, practicing juggling, doing pushups, talking to random people at nearby library study tables, whatever). I never actually timed myself to make sure it was exactly 30 minutes on, two minutes off. It was really just more of what felt right. If I felt my mind wandering, I’d take a break. When I felt ready to start again, I would.  That’s all there is to it. This worked perfectly for me, not just in college, but throughout medical school as well.  Although everyone discovers their own study method of choice, if you find yourself struggling, it may help you too.

Besides academics, I helped put on a 5K run in the fall semster through a campus organization I co-founded with a friend in sophomore year. The organization was called Students for Doctors Without Borders, with the goal of raising awareness and funds for the medical non-profit group, Doctors Without Borders. We did a 5K because it's a good event to center a fundraising campaign around. It was also the first time either of us had done something like this, and little did we know what a hectic month we were in for. We advertised the run every day for the full month leading up to it, setting up tables with sign-up sheets outside the TCU library, the bookstore, cafeteria, and in the Rec center. We distributed flyers, made announcements in classes, and went to local businesses asking them to sponsor the run. Ultimately nine businesses agreed to sponsor us, with each pledging a sponsorship donation.  We also made t-shirts for every runner with a custom design on the front and the logo of each business sponsor on the back. By the day of the run, over 100 people showed up to participate. Some were competitive runners vying for prizes for 1st through 3rd place, while others just came out to support us.

In the end it was a huge success, with over $4000 raised for Doctors Without Borders. While organizing the event, it honestly didn’t even cross my mind whether or not this would look good for my med school applications. I did this because I really believe that Doctors Without Borders is one of the best causes out there to support. Their work directly saves lives on a daily basis, and they get no personal monetary reward for their efforts. Looking back, this was a very valuable thing to put on my med school apps. It was brought up during almost all my interviews, with each interviewer wanting to know more about how exactly I got around to doing this and what my motivation was. I guess in the end it was a win-win, with Doctors Without Borders and myself both benefitting from the experience.

In January 2011, during winter break between junior year semesters, three friends and I started an investment company together. This probably sounds super random. I mean, what is a pre-med Biology major doing starting an investment company? What credentials does he even have to do this? Is this still a pre-med advice website?? I’ll provide you with a little back-story. As I said in a section above, I had more than just a passing interest in the business world, especially after the economic collapse of 2007-2008. I loved reading about different corporations, national economies, currency and commodity trading, basically all the stuff that bores the hell out of normal people (what can I say, I guess I’m weird like that). This interest is what got me into trading stocks. After some time, I started making decent money trading. And this only furthered my obsession. To say I watched my stocks regularly would be an understatement. It practically became an addiction; I was checking the markets literally every other minute to see if my picks were doing well. While the average college student was logged into Facebook or listening to iTunes, I had browser windows pointed to finance websites and live updated price charts. The finance apps on my iPhone easily outnumbered all the rest.

I started talking with different friends who also traded, and we expressed a mutual interest to possibly pool our money and start something a little bigger. And so one frigid January evening in Dallas, the four of us met and decided that we were going to do this. We sat with a lawyer, drafted the necessary paperwork, got our company set up as a General Partnership, and filed a tax-ID with the state. Before I go any further I want to emphasize that this was a very small company; after all, we were 21-year-old college students with access to only our own meager sums of money (I wasn’t planning on usurping Wall Street anytime soon). The four of us agreed that our primary goal in this was not to just make money; it was to learn more about investing, understand how a business functions from the inside, and get an actual grasp on what it really takes to turn a profit as a company. I’ll be straight with you, when we first started we had absolutely no idea what we were doing. All of us could do decently well in the market individually. But collectively deciding on investment options as a group is a whole different story. We each brought picks to the table, backed up by oversized egos and naive optimism about our list of stocks. The first few meetings could best be described as trash-talking sessions (as a gentleman, I will refrain from providing any direct quotations).

Naturally, during this initial period we didn't make any money. However we eventually got over this hurdle. We learned to work cohesively as a group, and actually started making a profit. We even got to the point where we brought two more people into the group as Junior Partners. But after about six months, once the initial excitement of having our own company died down, people started slacking off. They’d skip meetings, bring useless picks that they searched on Google just five minutes prior, or simply didn’t contribute at all. Our group essentially became a two-man show, with me and another member the only ones putting forth any effort. This went on for another full year, until we finally decided that enough was enough. It was time to part ways. In the summer of 2012 (just as I prepared to start medical school) we dissolved the company, splitting the assets evenly. It was a very enlightening ride during the year and a half that we had the company, with money made and money lost. But much more important than the cash, I learned many valuable lessons for the future. I learned a lot about creating something from the ground-up, working productively in a group, taking initiative and delegating tasks, being responsible for mine and other peoples’ money, and balancing time between the many obligations of school, this company, extracurriculars, and a social life.

Yet the single biggest lesson I learned is: be wise in choosing future business partners. People say not to go into business with your friends, because often times either the friendship will suffer or the bank account will suffer.  However from my experience, I don’t think having a friend as a business partner is the actual problem. The real problem arises when one person works harder and puts in far more effort than the other(s). At that point it doesn’t even matter whether you were friends or not, because it will always sow bad blood. When contemplating a potential business partner, their status as a friend shouldn’t be the factor. It is infinitely more important that they SHARE THE SAME MINDSET and have the SAME DRIVE as you. If this person (or persons) also happens to be a friend, then all the better. But their energy and ambition should match your own. If you are more driven than they are, or vice versa if they are more motivated than you, it’s a partnership doomed to fail because NO ONE wants to be carrying the workload for someone else. Trust me. If you can’t find someone who can mirror the mentality you bring to the table, it’s best to just do it on your own.

Moving along from the world of stocks, cash accounts, and business lessons, let’s talk about the rain forests of Costa Rica. In my second semester of junior year, I took a class at TCU called Tropical Biology. As the name implies, this course was about plants and wildlife in tropical ecosystems. And it was an absolutely amazing class, taught by very knowledgeable professors, and one of my favorite courses during college. As part of the class, we went to Costa Rica during spring break (how badass is that!?) to do research in the rainforest. There were 14 of us in the class, split into groups of two or three students, each with our own research project.

As an aside, let me just say that I had never done a single day of research before this in my life. When I looked at what many of my classmates were actually doing in their professors' laboratories, it just seemed like they were engaging in tedious and boring free labor in exchange for a line on their resume. Of course I realized the importance of research for advancing science, but I viewed the role of most undergrads as pretty meaningless. Thus I never got involved in research during college. But now, after going through medical school (and being intimately involved in quite a few research projects that I enjoy), it's funny to think back at my mindset at the time. Okay, enough introspection...back to Costa Rica.

During this Tropical Bio course I was preparing to do research for the first time, and in the jungles of Costa Rica. I was extremely excited, more so because of the opportunity to go to such a gorgeous place like Costa Rica. My research partner and I decided to do a project on Leaf Cutter Ants, analyzing several relationships they have with the leaves they forage and their different forest habitats. They are truly amazing creatures, called "Leaf Cutter" ants because they cut leaves from specific trees, carry them back to their colonies (which are enormous subterranean dwellings), and use them to grow a special fungus that they farm on the inside of their colony walls and harvest for food. Pretty smart little critters. So spring break finally arrived (we were all counting down the days), and we happily made our journey to Costa Rica. And man was it an awesome trip! We went snorkeling in crystal clear oceans, dabbled in local “festivities” in several cities, stayed at a field station in the middle of the rainforest, went boating through the mangroves along the Pacific coast, experienced freedom from cell phones and internet connections, took hikes through the montane cloud forest, and had the most amazing guides in the world, both of whom were so experienced that they worked for National Geographic! We also did our research, collecting samples and data, culminating in a research paper at the end of the course. My partner and I also prepared a poster and presented our research at TCU’s annual Michael & Sally McCracken Student Research Symposium, where much to our surprise, we won 1st place for Undergraduate Research in the Department of Biology. Not a bad way to end an already awesome class!

That’s the end of my junior year. I had achieved the GPA goal I set for myself before sophomore year and had gathered numerous invaluable experiences along the way. It was now time for summer, a time to finally apply to medical school!

Back to Summer after Sophomore Year                                                             Continue to Summer after Junior Year