Post-Graduation Blues: What Did You Do?

In which I use the Substack to answer a question posed by a current student

Photo by Rosalind Chang on Unsplash

I’m in the middle of conferences. I got the bright idea to split them into two, so this week I did Medical Narratives, and next week I’ll be grilling Travel Writing.

Did you enjoy our conferences? I sure did. But they can be tiring. Little things help, like a very sweet note I got from a former student who said, of the 56 instructors he had during his time at UCLA, I was the one who gave him tools he’s still using most often. Something like that. It was nice. He’s going to UCSF for medical school.

So I have a current student who wants to know:

• What are you doing after graduation? Or what did you do? (Bonus if you are aiming to or will or are already attending medical school next year or the year after, which is this student’s plan.)

What I can recall some of you did:

• Go home and make money scribing, assisting

• Hitchhike through Central and South America, emailing me to say you’ll never come back and now you’re a writer, then change your mind and go to medical school

• That Columbia MPH I think it’s called?

What I want to know:

• If I wrote you a letter or even if I didn’t, where did you get accepted if you applied for more schooling?

It occurs to me I should make a list. Off the top of my head, students I’ve taught got into:

Medical Schools:

• USC

• UCLA

• Brown

• Harvard

• Stanford

• UCSF

• UC-Irvine

Law Schools:

• Havard

• Yale

• Penn

Other graduate programs:

• Columbia

• Yale

I know there are tons more. Hit me up by email or in the comments. Or maybe I should make a spreadsheet???