Tufts Blogs

Ever since high school, I knew I wanted to go into medicine and become a doctor. Being able to spend time with patients and listen to their stories in addition to being able to treat their illnesses was something that attracted me into medicine. I think the hard part about being premed is not only the classes but also choosing a major. 

My first year, I was given the opportunity to be a research assistant in a Biopsychology lab where I worked with mice and rats. I already had a connection to my principal investigator and it was considered a good “premed” major. I thought to myself, of course I would be a biopsychology major right? …Wrong. 

It was the end of my sophomore fall and many of my friends were talking about declaring their major. Coincidentally, we were all registering for classes and when I looked at the major requirement checklist for bio psych, I felt overwhelmed and not motivated whatsoever by any of the classes I was required to take. Also, I was less interested in learning at a molecular level and more at a population level. This was the first sign that I was not meant to be a biopsychology major. 

Later on that day, I met up with my grand-big from my sorority and I vented about how stressed I was in picking my classes for the next semester. She told me to look at the Community Health (CH) department mainly because she is a Community Health major (perhaps a little biased). I recalled thinking about majoring in Community Health after taking an Intro to CH class my first year but stopped thinking about it since it had no overlap with biopsych. 

Now I usually am not a spontaneous person and rarely do I change decisions, but when I glanced at the Community Health major requirements my heart started racing. Well that may be an exaggeration but you get what I mean. For the first time in a while, I felt excited to take Healthcare in America, Global Health and more. For example, I never learned about how healthcare works or the disparities that other people living in other states face. I have lived in Massachusetts my whole life and was in a bubble because we have one of the best hospitals and public insurance in the country. I can say for sure that Community Health has made me want to become a physician even more because of the healthcare disparities that people face and my urge to treat those in need. 

Another reason that I am glad I chose CH is because the professors are the kindest and most caring individuals I have met. They are the fairest graders and they truly care about the wellbeing of their students. It’s also a majority female faculty, which is also amazing seeing so many strong and passionate women leading the field of public health. 

My overall advice would be to take an intro class in that major and maybe another class and see how you feel. I also want to say that everything will work out and most people major in something they love :) Everything will fall into place and it will be okay!