MappedCon presented by Blueprint Test Prep 2024 is this Friday, October 26, 925 Eastern. I'm starting the day in my track, the pre-med track, planting the seed of your personal statement. We have three tracks going all day long and a couple hours of amazing exhibitors where you can learn more about their programs. Again, MappedCon presented by Blueprint Test Prep, October 26, register for free. It's a virtual event and all the sessions will be up after. So even if you can't make it live, go register and get access to the sessions. Go to MappedCon.com right now, register. That's M-A-P-P-D-C-O-N.com. If you're applying to medical school in 2022 to start medical school in 2023, join me Wednesday or Thursday, Wednesday night at 9.30 p.m. Eastern or Thursday at 11 a.m. Eastern at premedworkshop.com. Go register today. I'm going to show you how to tell your story in your application. Again, that's premedworkshop.com. If you are applying to medical school in 2022, be there or B-square. The Medical School HQ podcast, session number 54. Welcome back to the Medical School HQ podcast. This is the podcast to learn how to excel as a premed student, learn what it takes to survive medical school, and turn your dreams of becoming a physician into reality. My name is Ryan Gray, and as always, I'm bringing you the most unbiased, honest, and accurate information available online today. So as I'm recording this, it is the end of the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, and I just want to take a moment to thank you, the listener, for taking some time every week to actually listen to what I have to say and listen to what Alison has to say and listen to what our guests come on and share their stories and hear what they have to say. I know it takes a little bit of time to listen to us, and whether you listen to us in the car or while you're exercising, or if you use us as a sleep aid, however you listen to us, I truly do appreciate all of you that take the time, and our numbers grow, our audience, and all the listeners in our community keeps growing, and so I'm greatly humbled by that. And with that, I just want to thank the six people that left five-star reviews. It's been a week or so since I listed all these people because I actually recorded a bunch of these podcasts beforehand. If you left a review in the last couple weeks, I might not have mentioned your name when you thought I would have, but I'll mention it here. So we had six five-star reviews. We had Aco Surplus 17, says an easy listen. Thank you very much. I had Moram 26 say that we are very helpful. NC Thomas, I must listen to every pre-med trying to figure it all out. That's a great review there. Ninth grade high schooler from the United States. That's a very long username, but he says awesome help in writing a personal essay. Thank you. I love that we have high schoolers listening to this. If you know any high school students that are interested in going to medical school, point them in our direction. I think the more they learn early on, the better off they'll be. Rob left us a great review saying by far the best pre-med podcast out there. Thank you, Rob. He left a very long and in-depth and a great review as well. And then we have Eric Halvey saying Marvelloso. Thank you, Eric. So those were six five-star reviews. I truly appreciate it. Again, something else I'm thankful for on this Thanksgiving holiday weekend. If you want to take a couple minutes of your time and leave us a rating and review, I would greatly appreciate it. You can do so at medicalschoolhq.net/itunes. And I know if you're not on an IOS device or on iTunes, you can't really leave a rating and review. If you listen to us in Stitcher, you can actually leave a review in there as well. So another option for you. I want to introduce today's guest. He was suggested and requested by several people. And so I reached out to him and he kindly agreed to jumping on and doing an interview with us and sharing his story and what he's all about. And it was a great interview and he's got a ton of great information for anybody out there, wherever they are on their path to becoming a physician. So today I am talking to Sujay Kansagra. He's the author of Everything I Learned in Medical School, a memoir about his medical school experiences at Duke, and author of Why Medicine, an interview prep book with 500 of the most asked questions for med school and residency interviews. He's also currently working on his third book, which will be a comprehensive medical school advice manual for anyone in high school, college, or even in medical school. He's an attending pediatric neurologist at Duke Medical Center and has mastered the use of Twitter under his Twitter handle @medschooladvice. And for today's episode, I want you to listen all the way through. And at the end, I will tell you how you can win a copy of Dr. Kansagra's books or a copy of Dr. Kansagra's books. He kindly sent me a couple and we will take a couple comments and choose some winners. So listen all the way through and I'll tell you more about that on the other side of the interview. To start the interview, I asked Sujay when he first knew he wanted to be a physician. Yeah, well, it must have been some time in early high school. That's around I started exploring the hospital scene. I was a volunteer at the hospital. I was really getting into my science classes. I was taking biology, chemistry, and felt that science was kind of my calling. And I spent some time volunteering at the hospital, got to have some patient interaction, and felt like medicine was a great way to apply the science that I loved and move that forward into a career. So that's kind of what drew me to medicine. Prior to deciding on medicine, I had lots of other aspirations. I was thinking of being an astronomer. And it was my pediatrician who told me that there's there's really astronomy is just number crunching is what he told me. And so I decided to do what he does, which is going to medicine. I thought I'd be an archaeologist for a while. That didn't pan out either. But medicine, I'm glad I settled on that. It's been a fun road. Had you prior to that, had you had any exposure to medicine, any physicians in the family? Neither of my parents were physicians. My older sister actually went into medicine. And she is the first physician of the family. So not much medicine. Okay. So in high school, you say, okay, I want to be a doctor. And you have these huge aspirations, probably like many out there. I know myself. That's when I knew I wanted to be a physician. I knew the end goal, but I had no clue what was in between. How did you first start figuring out what you needed to do? Or was your sister that far ahead of you? No, she was just two years ahead. And I'll tell you that I was very oblivious to the medicine process. I think everybody that starts out thinking about becoming a doctor. It seems like a fun goal. You hear that doctor, it's a great profession. And you get to help people. And it seems like just a great thing to do. But nobody, I feel like really has a good sense of what the road really entails until you start doing it. Which I think is probably a good thing. Because if we knew it and the road actually tailed, I don't think anybody would go into medicine. So you're saying my podcast is bad? No, no. I think it's a great road. I'm extremely, extremely happy that I took this path. I actually think it's a good idea to be a little bit oblivious. You know, it's great to know what the next step is. I sometimes advise people not to worry about the next 1000 steps. If you know this is what you want to do, worry about the next step, and everything will slowly fall into place. Yeah. I heard a great analogy recently that kind of tells that story. And it talks about if you're on the middle of a pitch black street that's a mile long, but you know it's straight, you just don't know what obstacles are in the way. But you're holding a flashlight, and the flashlight is lighting each step of the way. And you move a step and that flashlight moves with you and will light the next step. And that's exactly what you need to do. And I think as pre-meds in general, we're all kind of type A personalities for the most part. And we need to know everything and we need to know what's the right thing to do. And it gets overwhelming. And I think exactly what you said, just one step at a time, learn what you need to do, once you tackle that, then move on to the next one. That's right. Absolutely. And as the obstacles come up, we are the type of people that are usually pretty good about preparing ourselves and handling these obstacles. And so I agree one out of time, and just being persistent and dedicated, and eventually all the obstacles, I know they continue. There's no real end obstacles in medicine. But as long as you have the attitude, take them one at a time and stay in the tournament or system, I think you'll succeed. That's life in general too. That's right. That's great advice for life. Okay. So what was your pre-med path like? You knew you wanted to be a doctor in high school. Did that affect your undergraduate school choice? Or did you know where you wanted to go? And tell us about your undergrad life. Sure. Well, I ended up going to UNC Chapel Hill. And the fact that I wanted to go into medicine didn't really affect my undergrad choice too much. I knew that the undergrad, as long as you're going to a place where you're going to do well, it doesn't really matter where you go. And oftentimes people have the perception that I should shoot for the best undergraduate institution, the best one that's ranked by who knows what magazine and go for that school. But the reality is you can get into medical school no matter where you go for undergrad, as long as you do well in what you plan on doing, and you complete your prerequisites. So I chose to go UNC Chapel Hill. It's just a fan starting in high school. I love the institution, love the basketball team. New is a nice balance between a rigorous academic institution and one where I knew I was going to actually enjoy my four years of college. And so that's where I ended up going. I decided to be a biology and psychology pre-med track, a double major. And it really was the two subjects that I had the most interest in. It wasn't because I thought, "Oh, this is going to help me for medical school." I chose those majors just because I felt like I'd do well and I'd actually enjoy the classes. And that's another thing I try to recommend is to choose a major for pre-meds that you're actually going to enjoy and do well. And not a major major that you feel is going to look best for your application. Because if you choose something you grade in, that's the most important part, not what you actually majored in. I think about 50% of folks are in my medical school actually had non-science majors. So another important point to keep in mind. Wow. So go to UNC. You major in two great majors that obviously set you up well for medical school. It obviously helps that you like doing biology and psychology. Two things that I personally can't stand. Well, it's kind of weird because biology is a little bit more of that hard science, but psychology is definitely not. So it's an interesting mix that you chose. Along your undergrad years, how did you kind of guide yourself? Did you have good pre-med advising or were you just out there navigating the waters? And then your sister being two years ahead of you probably helped a little too. Absolutely it did. Pre-med advising, I think it was nice for me in that it set up my academic kind of pathway. What courses I needed to take along my four years to make sure that core was in place. But when it comes to pre-med advising for the personal choices, like how to go about writing your essays and personal statements, where to apply things of that nature, I think I relied more on peers and of course my sister's experience. And that really gave me a better sense of how to go about things. Having those personal connections with people that have been through the process was the most helpful. Pre-med advisors, I think they're a great resource, but they're also usually somewhat distant from the process. I think even been through the process. And so having folks that are close to what it entails and knowing each step I think is very important. So it was a combination, but I got to say I mostly apply relied on my peers and my older sister. Yeah, thank you sister. I think you made a good point there that although pre-med advisors are very knowledgeable, they're obviously experts in their field, they haven't been through it themselves, the majority of them. And it helps to talk to somebody that has been through it because they can tell you firsthand how bad it sucks. And what you're in store for. Sure. And they also know the type of person you are. How much time are you really going to spend through pre-med advisors? It's nice to have a peer that knows your personality, knows where you might be a good fit, whether your medicine is right for you or not. They'll probably give you avenues to explore medicine as well, which pre-med advisors I think are good for, again, the courses, the nuts and bolts of getting there. But opportunities such as extra curriculars you're going to do, the volunteer activities you're going to do, I think all of that really come from a lot of peer advising. Yeah. Just a quick point, something that we heard a couple sessions ago on the podcast, the fact that what you just mentioned that the core classes, the pre-med advisors, perfect for, because every school is going to be a little bit different with the classes that are offered, what specifically is taught. And this came up with the new MCAT 2015 changes with the psychology and sociology portions that are going to be on there and how every school's core classes might not cover exactly what the MCAT is expecting you to know. So that's where the pre-med advisor comes in handy because they'll know those specifics. Absolutely. So obviously you're a practicing physician now, so you must have been perfect through undergrad. And I'm hoping you can tell us a story of maybe a little bit of a stumble that you had and how you corrected that. Absolutely. I think one of the major stumbles that I had in my experience is coming out of high school, going to college. I'll admit I came into it with probably a slightly arrogant attitude. I thought to myself that, you know, high school went really well. I'm sure college is going to go equally as well. And I will tell you that first semester, I think no matter where you go for college, I think it's a bit of a shock. I think that the grading is much more difficult. All of your peers are really at kind of at your level. And I start off with not that strong of a GPA, which was a nice kick in the rear that told me I need to really kind of get on the ball and do better the next semester. But, you know, the main thing that I always recommend to folks come into college is really starting out strong, because that's someplace that I really stumbled. And after that, really, I kind of got into gear and made sure that every single semester after that, I kind of buckled down and paid attention to my grades. Because once you get behind, when it comes to GPA, it becomes really, really difficult to pull things up. Ask anybody that's kind of gotten behind for a few semesters. And there's often that misperception that, hey, I can just pull things up during my junior and senior year, but it becomes very, very difficult. Yeah. What can you attribute any one thing to why you struggled a little bit, or was it just a mix of all the new experiences? Yeah, it's probably a mix of multiple things. Again, you're on your own for the first time in college. You have a bit more independence, life is in as structured. You have lots of friends that are living with you in your dormitory. And so it's a little bit hard to balance everything when you first get started. And so time management is important managing the social life and academic life, and making sure that everything is a nice even keel balance. Yeah. Awesome. So you survive your undergrad. You take the MCAT, and I don't want to talk too much about the MCAT, because the MCAT's the MCAT. We all know the beast that it is. How did you decide where to go to medical school and where to apply? Sure. Yeah. I think that the process of choosing medical school is much like a process of choosing a residency. You go to these different places. You get a feel for the institution. You get a feel for the students there. And usually most folks that are interviewing end up getting a sense of, yeah, this is the place for me. This is where I fit in. This is a good match for the type of person I am. And that's really what happened with me. And there were actually multiple schools that I felt that I could enjoy being there. I could, the students, they enjoyed themselves. And they definitely all had a great curriculum. But I ended up going to do medical school. And I truly felt, when I visited there, that this was the place for me. This was a place I felt like I could thrive, not just survive. And it also helped that my older sister again actually had gone to do medical school as well, and had wonderful things to say and had a great experience. And so I knew folks that are kind of a few levels ahead of me, and kind of got a lot of their input. But it just felt right. And I think that gut feeling is important to listen to. Some places you go, your interview, you get to know the people there. It just feels right. Yeah. What did you think about the medical school interview process? It was rigorous. The medical school, they have to be selective. And by the time we get to the interview, I think your applications are even embedded in the folks that are there are on pretty equal footing when it comes to their academic background and the academic merits. And so the interview is really the time where I feel like applicants need to kind of shine, put their best foot forward and show that they are personable. They will be good doctors, they'll have good bedside manner, and that they're normal people. And medical schools, depending on where you go, try to push you to figure out who are going to be the ones that are, meet those characteristics. And Duke, they had two different interviews. One was more of an academic background type of interview. And one was actually an ethical type interview where they tried to get a sense of what kind of morals you have. They gave you tough situations to kind of walk through. And it was an interesting way to kind of get to the core of who we were as people. And I think a lot of medical schools do that. They try to push in a different way. It's not that we have the multiple, you know, mini interview kind of format. They're really trying to get a better sense of who you are and how quick you think on your feet. I think all that is important when it comes to being a good doctor, being able to communicate and then quickly. Yeah, that's all great information. So you get into Duke and you start medical school. Now, starting medical school was that as big of a shock as it was for you for starting undergrad with that jump in intensity. I'll tell you the nice thing about my medical school is that the classes were on a pass honors pass fail system. And I will tell you that the honors pass fail system for me, it was actually much less stressful than the undergrad setup. I think being the type of personalities that most pre-med majors are when we have that increased level of, you know, stratified grading scale, you're always going to shoot for the very, very top. In medical school, as long as you put your work in, you knew you were going to pass. And for me, getting honors was icing on the cake, you know, working extra hard to get the honors. But I always knew that I always had, I was going to be able to pass because I was a hard worker and I was going to put my time in. And so it wasn't as much of a shock because I felt a little bit more comfortable. The workload, of course, is more intense than an undergrad. And you do spend more hours just pouring through lots and lots of work, but that was expected. And I think I was prepped for that. At the same time, I still felt like there was time to balance life and work. There was time to enjoy outside of medical school. So it was, I think, undergrad prepared me for that transition and it wasn't as much of a shock. I think given the combination of the training system that we had and being well prepared from undergrad years. Did you know going in, obviously with your sister going to school there, but did you look at school specifically for those kind of grading systems or was it more location and school name and other stuff that you were looking at? No, it really, at the end of the day, it came down to where I felt, again, where I felt it was going to be a good fit for me. And I try not to worry too much about all the details. I think you could end up going crazy by venting out every single tiny detail about the places we're interested in. I kind of went by kind of my gut feel. At the same time, if there's something that personally people feel like is going to make or break their experience there, like living in a big city or a sort of type of grading system, obviously you want to pay attention to that. But if you're a little bit more go with the flow and feel that you'll be able to kind of adapt or whatever you end up facing as long as you're in a place that you enjoy, then the details aren't as important. Yeah. And that's good because there are so many details that you can get bogged down in and get what we call analysis paralysis where there's just absolutely so many choices that you end up making no choice and make me a wrong choice. I think overthinking often leads us to probably the wrong path more than the right. Yeah. All right. So medical schools, breezing by, you're getting your passes and a couple honors sprinkled in there. What was the biggest thing that surprised you during your non-clinical years of medical school the first couple of years typically? Yeah. Yeah. I think the biggest surprise, which probably shouldn't have been a surprise, which is how smart everybody was. I mean, it was incredible. People were really, really just bright people. And I think sometimes that can be a bit of a shock to folks that have gone through high school and college and have done really well and have felt like they were doing a better than their peers. And now all of a sudden you're just one of the group and you don't really stand out all that much. And so that can be a bit of a shock to some people. And I guess that was a little bit of a surprise. I guess I shouldn't have been too surprised since everybody that gets to med school is pretty much like you super motivated, super persistent and determined. Yeah. You hear that a lot. It's very similar stories to professional athletes. They're the best athlete in their hometown growing up, the best athlete in their high school, the best athlete in their college. They get to the pros and then they're not the best anymore. That's right. And I usually encourage folks that when it comes to competitive sports, that's the nature is supposed to be competing. And a medical school often tell folks to take a little bit of a different approach. When you're a medical school, hey, you've made it. You're going to be a doctor. You don't need to have that competitive attitude. You should have a teamwork attitude because that's what's most important going forward in medicine. You've got to learn to work as a team. And so not to focus so much on all the other racers, just focus on yourself and worry about bettering yourself at the end of the day. And you're going to come out on top. So I think you just answered probably the next question I just came up with. Your view on the gunner philosophy in medical school. Sure. Well, I think everybody takes a different approach. And any medical school you go to, you're going to have people that kind of take the slack approach and say, hey, as long as I pass, I'm going to get my MD. And then you have those folks that really are sitting in the front of class, trying to answer every single question. And that's just their personality. But they are fully driven and always achieving as much as possible. And hey, that's great. And I think it's healthy to, if you're not going to be a gunner, to not take that to heart and not worry so much about what everybody else is doing. Again, just kind of relax, go to flow, know what your goals are and worry about achieving your goals. Don't worry about other people as they go through achieving their goals. Perfect. That's the first two years. What surprised you the most about going through your clinical years and actually being in the hospital for the first time? Sure. I think the time demands are probably the most surprising. And there are a few rotations in particular surgery in medicine where you are just consumed by the clinical work that's going on. You're getting there super early when it's dark outside. You're leaving super late and it's dark again outside. And you are essentially living and breathing medicine. And it's a very interesting time in a young physician's life because you are now in this new world, this new language. You have gone from a comfortable learning environment in the lecture hall to now being thrown into those medical storms where the language is completely new and you have to kind of stay afloat. I think that the time demands and being in a place where a completely new language and really feeling like you didn't know much and you were surrounded by people that knew everything. I think this was a bit of shock when you first started clinical medicine, having to round on patients that present them to residents and attendings who seem like they know all the information about every single patient and every single disease process. It can be a bit intimidating, a bit shocking. One of the things that I remember when I first started my clinical rotations was how the residents seemed to know every medication that I didn't know. And they knew the medication, they knew the exact dose, they knew exactly how and when to take it. I'm like, how did you learn all this? And then it's like three weeks later, I'm like, oh, I know all this, too. That's right. It's amazing what happens when you practice anything, especially clinical medicine, a lot of problems start becoming very routine and you get a sense of what the important medications are. You know how to use them because you do it again and again and this repetition really makes these clinical algorithms stick. Yeah, that's awesome. So the time that you spent on your clinical rotations and your experience with seeming like everybody knew everything, how did you handle that? It was their time where you kind of said, oh, maybe they don't know everything and it's just intimidating and I'll get it through this. Yeah, well, you know, in the beginning, I think we are again, that type A personality, we feel pressured to know everything. And we get these questions during rounds, which again is kind of commonly called pimping where the attending the residents ask you questions as you're writing on patients, clinical questions. And it's tough, it's very intimidating. But the way I got over it is I became very comfortable with my knowledge base and I became very comfortable saying, I don't know. And that was a turning point. When I began feeling comfortable saying, hey, listen, I don't know, but at the same time being able to answer at least some clinical questions, I think that made me very comfortable on rounds. That was always my fallback, my honest answer, which is, you know, I don't know the answer to that question. And I also learned over time that even though it appears that residents and attendings know everything, that's very much not the case. And I also learned that when attendings are asking you questions, they don't really expect you to know everything. Oftentimes they're asking you just to figure out what the holes in your knowledge are so they can teach you. When I moved on to being a resident, I look back and when I asked my medical students questions, I don't expect them to really know anything, even though of course they know a lot, I don't expect them to know everything. Whereas when I was a medical student, I felt pressured to know everything. And so again, one of the things that if I could go back and do med school again, I wouldn't put so much pressure on myself during that clinical time to feel like I had all the answers. Yeah, that's good. So obviously, I can't get everything out of you that you learned in medical school, but you wrote a book, everything I learned in medical school. That's right. Why did you write a book? What gave you the inspiration for writing a book? Yeah. So really, it started off, it's kind of my memoir. It kind of goes through all my interesting stories and interesting patients and the kind of struggles and the surprises and all kind of fun stories. In the beginning, it really was kind of a project that I felt like I could go back to. It was going to be essentially a journal for myself, where I could write about how I was doing going through this medical experience, such that 40 years down the road, when I was old and gray and about to retire, I could look back and say, "Hey, this is how medicine looked when I was completely naive to the medical world." And really didn't have all that years of building up and becoming jaded to the medical scene. And so it was going to be my way of kind of looking back. And then as I started writing it, I realized some of these stories are, I feel kind of interesting. I think people can learn a lot of lessons that I learned, and a lot of these lessons apply not just to medicine, but to life in general. And so actually, when I first wrote the book, I intended it for a very general audience. I didn't really even intend it for the pre-med medical audience. Of course, I think it's found a big following amongst the pre-med folks for obvious reasons in medical school folks, but it was meant to be just a set of fun, interesting stories with lessons to be learned. Start off as a journal became a book. So you did, during your med school time, you kept a journal and... I did, but that wasn't as detailed as I was hoping to be given the time constraints, but I definitely would write down some of the main experiences, the main highlights of my medical school time. And that's awesome advice for people that don't write things down in journal, even for pre-meds, journal everything that you're seeing, because when it comes time to write your personal statements and your extracurricular activities for your applications, knowing our mind forgets a lot of stuff. And so when you can go back and read the experiences that you had and relive those emotions that you had, it'll show in your application and personal statements and stuff. I think it's a powerful thing. I think it's a powerful thing to relive those emotions and what you kind of go through in the medical process, because it's something that gets lost, I think, after years and years of, you know, when you go through residency and become attending and years of doing clinical work, you sometimes lose that sense of all, that sense of wonder that you came into medicine with. And so I think it's important to kind of remind yourself if I felt when you're getting a little bit jaded. That's awesome. It has a good response, it seems like, from people reading it. I'm looking on Amazon right now. You have 80 reviews on here with like four and a half stars out of five. So that's pretty good. I've been pleasantly surprised by the response. That's awesome. Well, hopefully some more people will take a look at it after listening to the interview here. One of the things that I was reading in it, just prior to hitting record with you, you were talking about the hierarchy in medicine. And that's not something that I've really talked a lot about, or at all, I think, in any of the podcasts. Can you talk about some of the hierarchy now that you're in attending, looking back through your years and seeing that hierarchy and what that means? Sure. Well, it's medicine is one of those places where you know where everybody stands in medicine. And there are lots of things that signal where people stand. We have the length of the white coat. So medical students tend to wear short white coats, whereas the residents and attendings were longer coats. You have your name tattooed on your white coat and the white underneath it. It has your title and the department of the vision of where you were. And so everybody's status is known. And everybody knows kind of where they fall into that hierarchy, the totem pole of medicine. And so medical students, unfortunately, many people perceive them as starting out very bottom, because again, they haven't really learned much the way of clinical medicine. They're starting off at the very beginning. Next on the list comes the intern, the first year of residency. After that are this junior and senior residents, and then it's the attendings. And the hierarchy, it's a very interesting thing. It's in one sense, it helps kind of keep order. Everybody knows their roles, but it can be abused by those that feel that the hierarchy is important. So you often have the residents that are barking at interns, or maybe have an attitude and barking at medical students, which I think is unfair. There's no place for that sort of hierarchy in medicine. Again, sometimes it's important. Everybody knows their roles, but it shouldn't be used to abuse and kind of belittle those that are lower down on the hierarchy. So for me now that I'm attending, I try to keep things as even as possible. I think it's important to listen to everybody's views during rounds, it's important to let everybody's voice be heard. And it's important to show everybody that they are a part of the team, and that nobody's role is too big or too small. And that's what I try to do. And I encourage folks that we're medical students and then I become residents to remember how it felt to be a medical student, to remember how it felt to come into this new world and be seen as quote unquote the bottom of the totem pole, and really take that to heart. And when you become a resident, make sure you are not putting students in making them feel in any way that they don't belong, that they're not worthy of being where they are. And then same thing when you become attending to be respectful and mindful of the residents and what they go through. Yeah, that's great advice. And not just respecting the kind of hierarchy with the medical as far as medical student resident attending, but also the ancillary staff, I think gets left out a lot, the nurses and everybody else that you're working with. And I can't emphasize team and not everybody works as a team. And, you know, the nurses will make or break you when it comes to really every step of the way you have to really think of them as teammates. There should be no hierarchy when it comes to all the ancillary staff. Everybody has a huge important member of the team, and everybody should be treated as a part of the team. So right now you're working as a pediatric neurologist. How did you get to decide what you wanted to do for the rest of your life? Yeah, well, we had some exposure, obviously going through medical school. Even during the first few years, we had a couple of rotations through hospital clinics, and we had to work side by side, more of a shadowing role rather than having clinical responsibilities. So that gave us a taste of whether different, some of the different subspecialties are like. For me, I always knew, especially with my psychology background, I always knew that the brain was a fascinating, was a fascinating organ. There were lots of mysteries, lots of things that we just did not know. And that kind of drew me to neuroscience and neurology. And then I chose pediatric neurology because I felt like some of the, I thought kids were just more fun to work with in general. And I also felt that some of the disorders that we see in pediatrics, to me, were a bit more interesting and a bit more treatable. And that's what led me to decide on the pediatric neurology. And then I went on to subspecialize in pediatric sleep disorders and sleep medicine, which is again, it's a very new feel that we don't know much about. And there's a lot of work to be done, a lot of research to be done. And so it seemed like a good fit for me. Very interesting. Well, do you have any parting words of wisdom for listeners out there? Sure. Well, the main thing I would tell people is to enjoy every step of their road to becoming a physician. And by that, I mean, make sure you're taking the time to enjoy life, because we always get into this mindset of, as soon as I'm done with my MCAT, I get into medical school, things are going to be easier. And then when you're in medical school, as soon as I get a residency, things are going to be easier. You get in residency and so you're even busier and then you're like, okay, as soon as I become attending, it's going to be easier. And then you become attending and you have all this research to do, it's clinical responsibilities, you're raising a family as the way step of the way level every step of the way it's gotten busier and busier, right? So there's no real end to this road. And as a physician, your lifelong learner, you're always, always learning new things. And so important that as you go along, make sure you're taking the time to enjoy yourself. You don't want to look back and regret that you spend all this time and you wasted your youth just in a book. It's important to learn obviously, but it's important to enjoy every step as you go along. And the other thing to keep mind is just because you end up at someplace different than what you expected, even if you're starting off college on a pre-med track, a lot of people do, it's okay to come to the conclusion that medicine is not for you. It should not be considered as a failure. It's just a change of course. And that is completely okay. All right, folks, that was Dr. Sujay Khansagra. Awesome information. Awesome guy is always sharing great information on his Twitter feed. So go say hello to him. Again, he's at med school advice. Let him know you heard the interview here at the medical school HQ. So I mentioned that we have some books to give away that Sujay kindly sent to me to send to you guys. And what I want you to do is go to the show notes. And for this episode's episode 54, go to the show notes medical school HQ.net/54 as in the numbers 5 and 4. And go leave a comment and tell us where you are on your journey and what you hope to do in the future and why you want to be a physician. Give us a short little story, take a minute, and we'll pick some winners from those comments. So I hope we get some great information. And remember, we always want this conversation to continue. There's a couple ways to continue the conversation and leave us feedback. The show notes is one of them. I just mentioned medical school HQ.net/54. You can send us a tweet or on Twitter @medicalschoolHQ or you can go to our feedback page and actually send us in an audio question or feedback that we can play here on the podcast. You can do that at medicalschoolHQ.net/feedback. As always, I hope the information provided today will help better guide you on your path to becoming a physician. And just as importantly, I hope you join us next time here at the medical school headquarters. [Music]
