Pre-Med Motivation: How to Avoid Burnout
The path to becoming a practicing healthcare professional is a long one. The process requires a great deal of dedication, hard work, and ambition. Eventually, this extensive span of time can bring even the hardest-working people to feel burnt out and unmotivated. This week, NPHC CEO and pre-med, Alexia (Lexi) Childress, and NPHC COO and pre-PA, Sarah Edmunds, discuss how to stay motivated on your pre-health journey with help from special guest Jonathan Sussman, a 4th-year MD-PhD student at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. To listen to the full episode on the Pre-Health Pod podcast, click here!
How do you deal with pre-med anxiety?
Give Yourself Permission to Chill
According to Jonathan, Lexi, and Sarah, one of the best ways to avoid feeling overwhelmed as a pre-med is to dedicate a portion of your time to something completely different than science or medicine. Jonathan discusses how having two completely opposite majors, biomedical engineering and music, was essential to keeping things exciting and interesting for him during his pre-med years, while also allowing him to take a break from various anxieties and stressors.
“Staring at math homework all day, that gets boring really quick. And also, playing music all day, to me at least, gets boring as well… being able to go back and forth between the music… and then go back to engineering and work on homework… that was actually one of the major factors that kept me motivated,” he explains. So, his social outlet of playing music with his friends allowed him to recharge and prevent overworking himself.
Sarah corroborates this by discussing her French minor, adding, “I loved getting to put down my OChem homework and switch to French. It was relaxing. It was so nice and I made friends with so many different people that had nothing to do with science.”
However, this doesn’t mean you need to study another subject to feel motivated as a pre-med. Do premeds have a social life? They absolutely do! According to Lexi, simply having a diverse group of friends to spend time with outside of class could make all the difference in pre-med motivation. Being able to take a step back and talk about normal day-to-day things, such as pets or family, was an amazing way to take a breather from all the hard work she was doing as an undergraduate.
Time Management
One of the most important lessons that pre-health students must learn over the course of their undergraduate years is time management. Jonathan admits that is was challenging trying to balance two majors, extracurriculars, and pre-med activities at the same time. Lexi cites how her undergraduate years revolved around a Google Calendar. This can be a great way to ensure you are not over-booking too many obligations into your schedule. It can be helpful to lay out all of your pre-health obligations, such as class, volunteering, studying, scribing, etc., on the calendar. She also recommends that pre-med students analyze their priorities and allot time to relaxation, hobbies, and sleep. Stay healthy! Set aside time for things that you love. This may mean making hard decisions, like delaying the MCAT or volunteering less frequently. But in the end, this is imperative to preventing burnout and increasing motivation.
Sarah’s biggest piece of time management advice: Learn how to say NO. Many pre-health students are “chronic overachievers,” and tend to load their schedules with as many opportunities as they can without giving thought to their own mental health. It is important to learn when to say no to an opportunity that presents itself if you know you will not be able to fully commit to it. It is much better to do fewer things with all of your effort than to do a lot of things without significant effort. “Someday, when you are sitting in an interview, the person will be able to tell you did it halfway,” she warns. So, not only will it benefit your pre-health journey, but you will save yourself a lot of stress in the process by allowing you to dive deeply into doing things you are truly passionate about. Ask yourself, “What do I care about tremendously?”
Go Back to Your Why
Why do you want to study pre-med? If you really understand your answer to this question, you will recognize which activities you should be focusing more time and energy on. Jonathan emphasizes this, stating that simply showing up to things isn’t enough. This is what leads to burnout. He advises pre-health students, “Less meeting, more doing.” If an activity doesn’t have any real impact on you or the community, you should dedicate less time to it. Doing things of value, rather than doing things for a resume, is what will actually help you in the end.
Sarah also recommends to stop looking at activities in terms of gathering “hours,” and to instead look at them in terms of your accomplishments, feelings, completed projects, friendships made, and passions. You will enjoy what you do much more when you stop criticizing yourself and stressing over hours!
You Can’t Always Be Motivated
How can a pre-med student avoid stress? Well, you can’t. Everyone feels stressed from time to time. But, as long as you know how to deal with it in a healthy, productive manner, you will get through it! Jonathan recommends continuing to shift your mindset as new opportunities open up and avoid getting stuck in an endless routine that you find monotonous.
Understand that, no matter what you do in life, there will be times when you feel unmotivated. That is okay! If you need motivation to study, think about your long-term goals. Consider, what motivates people to go into medicine? One day, you will be helping people and making the world a better place! Dedicate more of your time to things that are important to you and activities of substance. But, don’t forget to also dedicate time to your social life, as well as your health, relaxation, and hobbies.
Again, the path to becoming a healthcare professional is long and challenging. But, if you have confidence in yourself and stay dedicated to your passions, the motivation will follow. As Jonathan says, “It doesn’t matter how long the path is when you love what you do.”
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