Every fall, a new application cycle begins. The leaves change, university campuses fill back up, and thousands of pre-medical students assemble themselves into personal statements, activity lists, transcripts, reference requests, and interview prep. Four years ago, I was one of them: applying to medical school in the fall.
This year, I am applying again for residency. The stakes feel different, but the season feels familiar. I am still checking deadlines, revising documents, wondering whether I have done enough, and trying to imagine the next chapter before I have fully finished the one I am in.
Recently, during a stressful day, I was scrubbing into a surgical case alongside a senior resident. She cheerfully asked me to look at the sunset outside the window. “Isn’t it pretty?” she asked. When I turned to look at the window, I gasped. I saw spiders—actual spiders, several of them crawling along the outside of the window.
The spiders may still be there. But so is the sunset.
Neither of us was wrong. We were looking at the same window, but we saw different things. Eventually, my eyes shifted from the spiders and I noticed the sunset too: hues of orange, blue, and purple dancing across the sky.
To the parents of pre-medical students: your child may be surrounded by spiders this season. They may be stressed, discouraged, quiet, irritable, or convinced that one imperfect grade or one unanswered email has defined their future. You cannot always remove those worries for them. Sometimes the most loving thing you can do is help them notice the sunset too.
That might mean reminding them that they are more than a GPA, a CV, or a carefully polished answer to “Why medicine?” as they prepare for interviews. It might mean bringing them food; asking how they are doing without immediately asking whether they have heard back; and encouraging them to see friends, sleep, laugh, and be a person.
Whether they enter medical school this year, next year, or find a different route toward a meaningful life, their life is happening now, and they are still becoming someone. So yes, help them proofread the essay. Practise interview questions with them if you can. Celebrate the acceptance when it comes, and sit with them if it does not.
But also, in the middle of this application cycle, ask them to look up. The spiders may still be there. But so is the sunset.
