Medicine in research [Perspectives on Graduate Life]

The author gives his personal views on his transition from medical school to graduate school. He notes that it has been relatively smooth and, overall, extremely positive. One major problem during his undergraduate research experience was that he never fully understood why he was doing what he was doing, i.e., the big picture was missing. This made him substantially less excited about his research and about research in general. Though initially intending to apply to M.D.-Ph.D. programs right out of college, this problem eventually led him to apply to M.D.-only programs because he could not answer the question of whether he was disinterested in his current research due to lack of understanding or disinterested in research in general. It is difficult to commit to an eight-year (or longer) program without fully knowing the answer to that question. Two and a half years later he feels the two preclinical years of medical school inadvertently provided that big picture view. Now when he picks up a random journal article, he has a much better sense of the importance of study and why the particular study was conducted, which has allowed him to focus on the scientific merit of an article rather than getting stuck on trying to figure out the introduction and background information.