 wow two years awesome and I applied and I didn't get in and then I realized oh man this is gonna take a lot longer than I thought. Audio is not too bad recording on my phone as I'm driving down the highway here and I'm uh I'm on my headphones which are actually pretty good surprisingly. I feel like every time I'm on the phone like no one's complaining about uh about like ambient noise and stuff so I think this might actually be a decent recording but if there's too much road noise I'm obviously gonna toss it just maybe record this video some other time but so this is just one of those things that came to my mind and I knew I just had to kind of get on video I might post it I might not I have these things like at least a couple times a week that this happens and then most of the time I end up not posting it either because the quality is so crappy or just because I don't know I think about I don't know saying it a different way or putting it in a more formal video or just not saying it at all but something just came to my mind that I feel like a lot of you need to hear right now a lot of you who follow me are trying to get into grad school primarily PA school and you know how competitive it is that's why you follow a channel like mine you know someone who's been there who's really had to struggle to get in who wasn't a very good student who wasn't a very competitive applicant at first and then had to go through the motions and do the things that were necessary to become competitive and finally get in so something I think a lot of y'all need to hear is that it's going to take as long as it's going to take it's going to take as long as it's going to take and I think the reason I'm saying this is because I had a prepaid counseling not too long ago last week and I looked over her application I read her essay and just wanted to kind of give her a general idea of how she could improve it wasn't really anything specific she wanted to focus on it was just a general look at her application first time applicant her essay basically it was really powerful she had a really interesting life story and it was really powerful she gave some really great reasons for why she wanted to practice medicine and why she wanted to be in medicine but the essay suffered from something a lot of essays unfortunately do and that was that it wasn't specific it wasn't really anything specific about why she wanted to be a PA that essay could have been written about literally anything why she wanted to be a nurse a doctor a pediatricist a dentist and I told her this and so I asked her okay specifically why do you want to be a PA I understand why you want to practice medicine it's wonderful I think you're exactly the kind of person who should be in medicine you're definitely going to be great wherever you land but why PA you know why this very specific route and why are you making life hard on yourself by applying to arguably the most the most competitive field to work in medicine I mean med school is probably more competitive but just by the numbers I think they've done some studies like PA school is the most competitive thing you can do I think med school like by the numbers isn't as competitive but just the quality of the applicants overall is higher so it's harder to get in overall but like just by the sheer numbers PA school is the most competitive and so I asked her like why are you making life hard on yourself why PA why do you want to be a PA so bad if you just want to be in medicine and she told me it just makes sense she said that I can be done in two years and I can you know practice I want to be a provider I don't want to be I don't want to take orders I want to give orders I want to be a provider so basically it's the fastest route to being a provider you know two years instead of 10 whatever med school would take and so I said okay that makes sense on paper why you would want to take kind of the fast track you know to being a provider I think that's what attracts a lot of people to being a PA but unfortunately unless you are just an outstanding applicant unless you've been getting very good grades your whole life and you happen to have an excellent GPA and you happen to also have a way to get patient care hours or you've had patient care hours pretty quickly when you decide that PA is the route for you unless you have all of that it's not going to be a fast it's not going to be instantaneous like okay I'm applying and I'm going to get in and in two three years I'm going to be a PA and I'll be a provider like for the vast majority of people at least for the vast majority of people that come to me that's just not going to be the case because it's very unlikely that you're already competitive for this insanely competitive program maybe you are and maybe you can get in and that's good I'm not trying to discourage anyone but for most people you don't have an excellent GPA you don't have a ton of high quality patient care hours you don't have shadowing this person that I talked to hadn't even shattered she's never worked with a PA she just like did research on medical jobs and said literally said to me like this one made sense and I told her it made sense on paper you've never actually seen a PA at work and like no deep down in your soul like okay this is what I want it just made sense on paper and so that could still be the career for her it could still be the career for you absolute I would never discourage anyone but what I do want to communicate today is that uh sorry it's early I haven't finished my coffee so I'm probably rambling but uh if this is what you want I think that's the main thing if this is what you want deep down in your heart you know this is what you want you know this is the only thing that you'll be happy doing for the rest of your life or at least for the next you know 10 15 20 years or however long your career is going to be if you know that and you're willing to do anything it takes to get that to become competitive enough to get into a PA school which is hard it's very hard then it's going to take as long as it's going to take it might take you a year to get your grades to where they need to be to take the pre-rex that you need to get the hours that you need it might take you a year it might take you two years it might take you three years so that difference of you know two years plus residency obviously but that difference between med school and PA school you might have to do that amount of time just to get competitive enough to be in PA school so it's not necessarily a fast track at least not for everybody so it's going to take as long as it's going to take and if this is what you want you have to be willing to accept that and be willing to just do whatever it's going to take to get in and make kind of think from the end figure out what is it you need to do make that list of things you need to do you need to do the classes you need to take the people you need to talk to the contacts you need to make the the hours you need to get the job that you need to get the shadowing that you need to get the experiences you need to get maybe some volunteering whatever it is you need to do to become competitive that list of things you need to make that list think from the end and then commit to knocking out that list of things no matter what no matter how long it takes no matter what you have to do how many late nights how many early mornings like what you have to do it doesn't matter you just have to commit that that's what it's going to be and it's probably going to take longer than you want it's probably going to take longer than you want it to and you think it does or that you think it should it's not necessarily going to be a fast trip but as someone who has done exactly what I just told you who was thinking that originally like wow two years and I could be a provider awesome and you know have this great lifestyle and you know care for people and do this thing that I want to do and make great money wow two years awesome and I applied and I didn't get it and then I realized oh man this is going to take a lot longer than I thought but I also knew that it was worth it and now being here being done with school looking ahead at my first job as a PA I can tell you it was worth it but it took a lot longer than I thought it would