Justin was a freshman in college when a friend’s embarrassing geography gap turned into a TikTok video that got 100,000 views overnight. By the time he applied to medical school, he had millions of followers across platforms. He also submitted his application two months late, rescheduled his MCAT four or five times, and took a gap year he never planned on taking. In this conversation, Justin walks through the full arc of his premed path — from a hospital shadowing program in high school that flipped his negative view of medicine, to navigating an immigrant family’s expectations, to figuring out that checking off every premed activity was producing experiences he could barely recall when it came time to write about them. He talks honestly about imposter syndrome in his first year of medical school, the time management shift that made studying feel less like punishment, and how he handled the very real pressure from people on both sides — doctors warning him that social media would hurt his career, and followers telling him to drop medicine entirely. His answer to both was the same: stay true to what you actually want.
What You’ll Learn:
– Why rescheduling the MCAT repeatedly is not a strategy, and what finally made Justin commit to a test date
– How a smaller undergraduate institution can sharpen focus rather than limit opportunity
– Why submitting a medical school application late has real consequences, even when things ultimately work out
– How to hold a social media presence and a premed identity at the same time without letting either one define you completely
– Why a gap year you did not plan for can become one of the most valuable parts of the path to medical school
Full show notes coming soon!
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