Schooling for Success: Becoming a Doctor- Diajah Williams

School is an inevitable part of life as we all know. For anyone who wants to become a doctor, or any medical professional, you had better strap in and get ready for a long ride on the "school bus."

The start of working in the wonderful world of medicine is here, in college. While there are several different majors offered as "premed" you can really do anything you want as long as you're getting the premed classes in there. Even if you aren't exactly trying to be a doctor or go to medical school, a premed track is the first step into becoming a medical professional (unless you do nursing, their track is different). So, in college there are a set selection of classes that will prepare you  for becoming a doctor. Those classes are as follows:

• Cellular Biology
• Anatomy
• Physiology
• General Chemistry with Lab
• Organic Chemistry with Lab or Biochemistry with Lab
• Microbiology with Lab
• Developmental/Lifespan Psychology
• Statistics

While in your undergrad year, it is also highly important to get some form of patient care contact because it looks good on your application. That means... more school during school probably. To get patient care contact you have to have some sort of job that requires a  certificate of some sort that will have to be obtained via some sort of schooling. EMT to CRNA certification, theres gonna be some type of extra schooling during undergrad.

Once you have your degree (and a GPA of 3.5 and up, preferably) you can go to graduate school. Be it medical school or PA school, aspiring medical professionals almost always have to go to some type of schooling after undergrad.

Depending on the job you want to go into and what type of graduate degree you are striving for (GC, MS, PHD, etc), your graduate school life can last anywhere between 2 and 10 years. Then you have that degree and your almost there !

When trying to obtain a job with your graduate degree, it is important to know that there are still classes that will need to be taken to obtain certificates for the hospitals application process. These classes are typically very quick and can even be taken online, so its not too much of a hassle, finally.

Once you're hired, you're in and school still isn't over, because we learn in the medical field everyday!

All information came strictly from the author, due to prior knowledge of the field.