Education
Mastering the University of Toronto Medical School Essay – Part 2: Background, Interests, and Experiences
Disclaimer: I will be a University of Toronto medical student starting this fall, but I am not on the admissions committee and never have been. All of the advice I will provide here is based on my own opinion and personal experience with the application process, so please take anything I say with a grain [...]
Why You Should Job Shadow
The other day, someone asked me if I could write an article on shadowing. While I don’t have any real advice for finding mentors to shadow besides “just asking”, I remembered an article I wrote a few years ago about my experience shadowing a physician, and why I thought job shadowing as a whole [...]
Understanding Expectation and Avoiding Being Results Oriented
I have always done well in school my whole life. Throughout both elementary and high school, I had rarely gotten close to a failing grade in anything. And even the few times I did, the weight of those assignments or tests was not that significant, and as you eventually learn, high school marks [...]
The Secret to Consistent Success – Part 3: Adaptation and Innovation
As you learned in the first two parts of this series on success, my first Independent Study Project (ISP) for my gifted program was on the Brain and Nervous System, and I was able to achieve success by mimicking a technique I had observed from older students. However, the following year in Grade 6, [...]
It’s Okay to Look Like an Idiot
When I was in Grade 4, I was identified as “gifted” by my school board. As a result of that, I started going to a separate gifted program at another school for one day a week from Grades 5 to 8. It was a great program that allowed me to explore many neat [...]
How I Aced First Year University Science – Part 2: How to Think
As a chemistry peer tutor for my past two years in university, I have had the opportunity to not only meet and mentor some really interesting students, but I have also been able to hear about how the first year science classes have been going on a regular basis. For one of this semester’s [...]
How I Aced First Year University Science – Part 1: The Jump from High School to University
When it comes to the transition from high school to university, an oft-quoted line is that “student averages tend to drop about 10-15%”. Looking at the basic numbers, this initially seems to be a pretty fair statement. For example, at York University, you need at least a mid to high 70s average [...]
What? You need a 98 average to get into McMaster Health Sciences?
Last night, Eden, a good friend of mine, asked me whether you needed a 98+ average to get into McMaster Health Sciences.
At first, I was like: “lol what? No way!”
So she told me that a friend of hers found this article that suggested it, and that this friend was starting to worry a [...]
The Benefits of Teaching and Mentoring
When people hear the word “teacher”, they often imagine a school teacher standing at the front of the classroom or a professor lecturing in a large university hall. Personally, I have a much broader interpretation of the word “teacher” to also include mentors, coaches, speakers, and so on.
What is a Teacher Really?
I think a teacher [...]
