weneedtotalkaboutthis - Tumblr blog

[weneedtotalkaboutthis]

A battle between Australian medical schools and its prospective students: a thesis on late-stage capitalism

So this is a bit personal, but another reason why I wanted to start writing more was to refine my skills to communicate in an articulate manner.

You see, I have spent the past 7 years working towards becoming a doctor. To become a doctor, you must complete medical school. To get admitted into postgraduate medical school, you must successfully sit an interview. To be offered an interview you must do well in your studies at the undergraduate level and the medical school entry exam (called the GAMSAT).

I am still stuck on step 1.

And I attribute my situation to late-stage capitalism.

I grew up in a family with four children and ancient parents - a bit abnormal in these times. Nonetheless, my father has worked in manual labour jobs for all of his life and my mother has been a stay-at-home mum for almost 30 years. It's safe to say we come from a lower socioeconomic background - my parents are first generation immigrants, where their parents immigrated to Australia and my parents were born in Australia.

My parents have done the best they can. They saved every single cent they could to send my siblings and I to Catholic schools (private school-like education for lower prices) and still struggled to get by despite receiving monetary benefits, fee remissions and their children relying on second-hand uniforms and textbooks. Yet they still cannot afford to retire with my father aged 71.

You get the picture - we're kinda poor.

Being the only child to set their sights on something as prestigious as medicine, I was never aware of the bureaucracy behind the process of getting into medical school - and even beyond that. So as a result, I attended an under-represented school in a rural area, where the sole focus was not on education but also on extra-cirricular activities.

This was never an issue for me until I attended university. It turns out going to an under-represented school allowed me to still get into my desired course with lower scores through a Special Consideration Scheme. It was then that I came to learn that I did not fit into my cohort.

Surrounded by those who attended the best (and most expensive) schools in Victoria, Australia or even the world, everybody had a better understanding of scientific concepts than me - because they were taught these in detail in secondary school. I then came to realise just how disadvantaged I was in this cohort. I struggled during my course, scraping passes and even receiving half-decent scores - just not ones that looked stellar enough for medical schools.

Therefore, I was already disadvantaged for not being wealthy enough to attend a secondary school where education was the prime focus when I began my undergraduate course. This was one part of the equation where capitalism let me down.

The second part was the GAMSAT.

The Graduate Medical School Admissions Test (GAMSAT) is a six-hour long exam divided into three sections - a social sciences/comprehension section, a writing section and a biological sciences section. Sounds disgusting, right?

I have sat this exam 5 times. Each sitting cost $518 (or $618, if you incurred the late fee like me one time). This amounts to $2,590 ($2,690 for me and my stupid late fee). I have had to pay this amount because I have not received competitive enough scores for medical school admission. This is because I also refuse to pay for additional study resources sold by external "GAMSAT companies" because I think it's disgustingly overpriced and overrated. I mean, why would I want to spend $2,500 on an 8-week intensive course??

So here I am left with my own brain, my own study techniques and friends who are kind enough to help with my studies for free. And thus I face another obstacle because I don't have the means to spend money on external GAMSAT courses that *could* benefit me.

The second part to the GAMSAT is that the company who hosts it is not transparent about the content on the exam. There are limited practice exams and questions from the company itself, which funnels prospective medical students to pay GAMSAT companies for extra resources to study. This also makes it incredibly frustrating for trying to improve - you are given no information on what will be on the exam, no feedback on how you went or what questions you got wrong and extremely limited materials from the official company. What a desirable combination for doing well on an exam.

While I sit here, scratching my head for how to improve on the GAMSAT, my friends from university who went to the reputable private schools and were taught critical ways of thinking that are perfect for these types of exams, and able to afford to purchase additional GAMSAT resources, receive highly competitive scores and are given a higher chance of being accepted into medical school.

For a discipline that places value in high morals, ethics and integrity, the system for medical admissions is built entirely on the unethical desire to profit. Like a jewel thief, it steals the money right out of our pockets under the guise of "prestige" and "it's supposed to be a hard journey to get into medicine!". And sadly, it only greatly benefits the ones who were wealthy to begin with, creating a malicious cycle of generational wealth and a larger gap between the rich and poor.

[weneedtotalkaboutthis]

The beginning

Hello? Is this thing on?

It is currently 10:31pm and I need to get up for work early tomorrow. But I came across a TikTok where the creator (@velvteenrabbit) discussed a topic about girls Instagrammifying their boyfriends at the expense of the boyfriends' personal style (or lack thereof, according to said girlfriends). The creator then went on to highlight that they have a blog which details this topic further and it got me thinking - I enjoy writing, I enjoy expressing my opinion and further discussing things, I like pretty looking websites - why don't I start up a blog-type brain dump?

I then googled "free blog sites" and lo and behold, Tumblr was one of the first suggestions to pop up. I have not visited this site since 2017, where my first and only blog was titled "aesthetic trash" (really aligns with the 2017 vibe).

Honestly, I was never really an avid user of Tumblr, so I'm not really sure how this works. I just wanted a place I could write about the relatively niche topics I'm interested in with an aesthetic interface.

I also tend to get really excited about starting things up and then never staying consistent at it, so let's hope this is different.