Hello. I am seriously considering med school but I am looking for advice and others in a similar situation. I currently work at NASA, I have an aerospace engineering degree from the University of Texas. My GPA was not the best, 3.1.
The day before I was to go to college in 2009 I found out that I had trigeminal schwannoma. I withdrew from college, had two surgeries to remove the tumor, and returned to college the next semester. The tumor left me with severe strabismus, asymetrical facial muscles, complete neuropathy due to trigeminal nerve damage, severe scars, and neurotrophic keratopathy to the left eye which left me with 20/400 vision. This left me depressed and I did not preform as well in school as I should have.
I had the strabismus corrected in college and things started to look up around my junior year. My last two years of college took my GPA from around 2.5 to 3.1. It was a clear upward trend and took a lot of work. I did well in all of my science courses. I had 3 internships at college at the same company, but I did not really enjoy the work.
I got a job at NASA coming out of college, which is surprising with the GPA that I had. I am very good at interviews and marketing myself. I worked as a ISS flight controller for two years. In this job training never ceased. I had to learn how to truly study, something which I never quite knew how to do in college. There were several tests, all of which were purely verbal in front of review boards. I had to learn to communicate, adapt, and maintain absolute situational awareness in high stress, team-based environments. Over my flight control career I had to partake in 50-60 intense 8 hour simulations. Within these simulations I was placed in situations that could have meant life or death to 6 astronauts, and/or the destruction of the most expensive piece of equipment ever built by man. Needless to say I learned several valuable skills that you cannot learn in many other places. Most importantly I learned how to prioritize and make choices that could have the ultimate consequence.
I was not that happy at this job. In the end it ended up being mostly paperwork. Not as glamorous as it sounded. I could see that I did not want to do this forever, and I honestly would not know what to do when the ISS reached its end of life. I felt as if there was no more room for learning. Some of it was interesting work, but it tied me to one geographic area and the pay was not great. I decided to change departments and transferred out of flight control to engineering. Again I found myself unhappy. Its a good paying job, but I cannot see myself working here forever. It is just not rewarding. I don't feel like I am helping anyone. I feel stagnant, and I desire to continue learning. I made the decision to go to some sort of graduate school. Currently I am planning on getting a masters degree in computer science, which I think I would like, but I am not sure.
I got married last year and just started building a house. I am only 26, so I do not feel like time is running out to go back to school. I have the financial resources to quit work and focus on medical school If I could get in. Throughout my experience with trigeminal schwannoma I was in and out of doctors offices, optometrists, plastic surgeons (I had facial implants to correct the asymmetrical facial muscles) etc. I found myself deeply interested in the eye. In fact I probably put my ophthalmologist's kids through school because I was in there so often. I believe I would be happy as an optometrist or ophthalmologist. I just do not know if I could get into med-school. I would need to go back to school to take pre-recs anyways. Assuming I did this and did well, say 3.8-4.0 GPA, what do you think my chances are at getting into med-school? The kicker is that I cannot leave Texas. My wife and I love Texas and our families are close. Neither of us are willing to leave. Fortunately there are multiple med-schools and even an optometry school within driving distance of where I live. I can take the pre-recs and continue to work, so in the event I did not get into any of these schools, I would only be out a few thousand dollars. I am willing to take this risk, but I just needed someone to talk to that knows more about med-school than I. I figure that there are other engineers out there who decided to become doctors. I feel like I have a unique experience that would appeal to any admissions board assuming I had a good enough post-bac GPA and MCAT. Thanks in advance.
The day before I was to go to college in 2009 I found out that I had trigeminal schwannoma. I withdrew from college, had two surgeries to remove the tumor, and returned to college the next semester. The tumor left me with severe strabismus, asymetrical facial muscles, complete neuropathy due to trigeminal nerve damage, severe scars, and neurotrophic keratopathy to the left eye which left me with 20/400 vision. This left me depressed and I did not preform as well in school as I should have.
I had the strabismus corrected in college and things started to look up around my junior year. My last two years of college took my GPA from around 2.5 to 3.1. It was a clear upward trend and took a lot of work. I did well in all of my science courses. I had 3 internships at college at the same company, but I did not really enjoy the work.
I got a job at NASA coming out of college, which is surprising with the GPA that I had. I am very good at interviews and marketing myself. I worked as a ISS flight controller for two years. In this job training never ceased. I had to learn how to truly study, something which I never quite knew how to do in college. There were several tests, all of which were purely verbal in front of review boards. I had to learn to communicate, adapt, and maintain absolute situational awareness in high stress, team-based environments. Over my flight control career I had to partake in 50-60 intense 8 hour simulations. Within these simulations I was placed in situations that could have meant life or death to 6 astronauts, and/or the destruction of the most expensive piece of equipment ever built by man. Needless to say I learned several valuable skills that you cannot learn in many other places. Most importantly I learned how to prioritize and make choices that could have the ultimate consequence.
I was not that happy at this job. In the end it ended up being mostly paperwork. Not as glamorous as it sounded. I could see that I did not want to do this forever, and I honestly would not know what to do when the ISS reached its end of life. I felt as if there was no more room for learning. Some of it was interesting work, but it tied me to one geographic area and the pay was not great. I decided to change departments and transferred out of flight control to engineering. Again I found myself unhappy. Its a good paying job, but I cannot see myself working here forever. It is just not rewarding. I don't feel like I am helping anyone. I feel stagnant, and I desire to continue learning. I made the decision to go to some sort of graduate school. Currently I am planning on getting a masters degree in computer science, which I think I would like, but I am not sure.
I got married last year and just started building a house. I am only 26, so I do not feel like time is running out to go back to school. I have the financial resources to quit work and focus on medical school If I could get in. Throughout my experience with trigeminal schwannoma I was in and out of doctors offices, optometrists, plastic surgeons (I had facial implants to correct the asymmetrical facial muscles) etc. I found myself deeply interested in the eye. In fact I probably put my ophthalmologist's kids through school because I was in there so often. I believe I would be happy as an optometrist or ophthalmologist. I just do not know if I could get into med-school. I would need to go back to school to take pre-recs anyways. Assuming I did this and did well, say 3.8-4.0 GPA, what do you think my chances are at getting into med-school? The kicker is that I cannot leave Texas. My wife and I love Texas and our families are close. Neither of us are willing to leave. Fortunately there are multiple med-schools and even an optometry school within driving distance of where I live. I can take the pre-recs and continue to work, so in the event I did not get into any of these schools, I would only be out a few thousand dollars. I am willing to take this risk, but I just needed someone to talk to that knows more about med-school than I. I figure that there are other engineers out there who decided to become doctors. I feel like I have a unique experience that would appeal to any admissions board assuming I had a good enough post-bac GPA and MCAT. Thanks in advance.
Last edited:
