I know I’ve been super quiet the past week or two. Ever since school started, I’ve just been very busy catching back up with things. And although my exam period started last Friday (and I only have one exam this Saturday on the 28th), I’ve been pretty busy preparing for my Queen’s interview tomorrow. I also have my University of Toronto interview in about a week on March 8, and this is actually great timing for me, because both have traditional type interviews, so a lot of the ideas and preparatory work that I’ve been doing will still be fresh in my head for my Toronto interview.

Although I have a fair bit of interview experience from my high school days, I’m still not the greatest interviewer by any means. I still have the occasional goof ups and brain freezes that anyone else might have. And like anyone, my practice sessions always go much more smoothly than the real thing =) I do think my interview experience has made me more comfortable with the overall situation of being evaluated by people I have never met, and that I have developed pretty good insight about approaching interviews based on this experience. That being said, this actually is my very first interview in about three years I believe – I do have some butterflies as I sit here typing it, but nothing major or anything.

A few days ago, I actually did a video conference session to help a friend of mine also preparing for interviews. I have my own personal philosophy on preparing for interviews, which focuses less on doing mock interviews, and more on helping people to better reflect on their experiences and motivations, and how to then use those reflections to best market themselves in the interview. I really enjoyed the experience, and doing some sort of interview consulting in the future is something I’d definitely be interested in.

In terms of how I’ve been preparing, I would say it’s been three-fold. First, I made a document with what I believed to be the most important questions/themes about myself that I could be asked to talk about (e.g. Why medicine?). I reflected on these themes and jotted down my thoughts, and then went through them with my father to make sure they were clear and solid. Then I went through some run through’s of these main ideas, not necessarily trying to memorize my answer, but making sure I was able to remember my main ideas and am able to clearly communicate them most of the time.

The last two days, I have focused on improving my understanding of Canada’s health care system and basic medical ethics. Based on his experience, my brother was pretty adamant that I had to know next to little about health care or medical ethics for the Queen’s and Toronto interviews, but I’d rather be safe than sorry, and also, given that Queen’s is interviewing almost double the number of interviewees than previously, I thought there was a very good chance they would adjust their interview procedure to include more critical thinking questions (possibly focused one ethics or health care).

Learning about the health care system was initially very confusing as some of the information out there is quite confusing and requires prior knowledge, but after a lot of Google searching and looking up anything I didn’t understand, I finally felt I had a decent grasp on the system and some key issues of concern right now. It was quite mentally taxing for me, but I at least feel decently comfortable discussing it.

I’ve been reading a pretty well known medical ethics book called “Doing Right” – unfortunately, as is standard for me, I am not finished it yet =) But I will probably finish it by tonight.

I’m leaving for Kingston in a few hours with my parents and staying over night. My interview is at 11:40am tomorrow, but I need to be there 45 minutes earlier to do a 15 minute written assignment – curious about what that will be, given that it’s the first time Queen’s has done this, so we’ll see.

Will let everyone know how things go when I get back tomorrow. Wish me luck! =)