@hmania recently started residency. She does not post here often (although when she does it is appreciated).
Check out her other thread here:
This pretty much chronicles her entire experience, start to finish, and shows what a determined student can do. It's also chock full of a lot of other very good information, including the unpacking and refuting of a lot of false information that is still regurgitated to this day, and even on this very thread.
Other than that, Ross has gone through a lot of changes in the past year secondary to Hurricane Maria which devastated the island of Dominica. As a result, Ross is moving their campus permanently to the island of Barbados.
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That said... These are general comments. Observations that haven't changed - and won't change - since well before even I attended Ross and personally decided to "go Caribbean". Certain posters like to engage in all kinds of rom the "it's different now" to the "you're a Ross shill" variety. Poppycock. These are universally true. Always have been. Always will be.
1) It's hard. Much harder than you can now realize. There is more than a fair chance that you won't make it.
2) You have to deal with all manner of idiocy and bias (as is, for example, illustrated on this very thread) that will never be openly stated to your face. It doesn't mean that you necessarily can't and won't achieve. It just means there are people out there who blanket themselves in their comfortable delusions because what they believe "just makes sense" and they, as has been demonstrated even here, aren't really interested in being challenged.
3) Be careful because you might get what you wished for. That statement holds true from the moment you get your acceptance through getting your board-certification in your specialty. It's a very, very hard job full of people that, frankly, range from being continuously jealous of your accomplishments and trying to tear you down to those who could care less that you're a "doctor" (no matter where you went) and are going to tell you how you should do your job. It will be full of bureaucrats and opinion leaders and mid-level managers making you do stupid and pointless training, telling you what you can and can't prescribe, and continually threatening you that you will lose your privileges if you don't meet certain benchmarks.
This is what medicine has come to. I often joke and apologize with patients as I roll up to them with a computer, "Sorry, you know nowadays I have to treat you ... and the computer. And, it takes 5 minutes for me to actually do the job and 20 minutes to write about it."
So, before you start this journey
anywhere ask yourself this: "
Do I really want to be a doctor?" You can't possibly know that now. But, if it is simply to achieve some perceived cachet and all the accoutrements that come along with that, you're going to be sorely disappointed. Your life is going to be filled with nurse managers and "mid-level" practitioners and
@Goro types. It will be spent kissing a lot of ass, not having yours kissed.
You have been warned.
-Skip