Pre-Medical Club - Vice President
As a pre-medical student at MSU, I quickly learned about the Pre-Medical Club here on campus. Throughout my first semester here, this was one of my favorite times of the week; I got to go and interact with other pre-meds who shared common goals and work ethics, along with being able to learn so much about the pre-med track and how to be successful.
I applied to be the Vice President of the club when I returned to campus for my second year in the fall of 2019. I was emailed by the club's faculty director over winter break of 2019-2020 stating that I had earned the position. Shortly after returning to campus for the Spring 2020 semester, the two other board members (President and Historian/Secretary) and I met up to chat about what our expectations were for the club, and how we were going to make those happen.
We had some trouble in the beginning with some of the logistical things, such as reserving a room to host in and gaining access to the club's email and Facebook page. However, these obstacles brought us closer together as board members and ultimately showcased our leadership skills, such as keeping our club members well informed, captivated, and still offering opportunities to participate in club activities that we could host.
Before the spring 2020 semester was cut short due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we were able to host a handful of in person meetings, including an introductory meeting, give a presentation on what pre-medical students can be doing at each point in their undergraduate education to give them a good chance at being accepted to medical school someday, and also giving a presentation on the MCAT (Medical College Admissions Test). All of the fall 2020 meetings were held online via zoom. I have linked the MCAT presentation that we gave below as an artifact.
As the Vice President, a large portion of my responsibilities included creating, printing, and hanging fliers up around campus to showcase our club meetings, help host the meetings, and write and send emails or posts on our Facebook page. I have linked the sample fliers and Facebook page below.
This experience allowed me to achieve level 4 in both the 'values' and 'teams' categories of the leadership competency. I was able to use my own personal theories of leadership within this campus organization, such as my strong public speaking skills, planning/futuristic skills, and creative mind to successfully fulfill my planning and public speaking duties as VP. I was able to articulate a general leadership philosophy in order to guide future endeavors. This included things like making sure the entire group is communicating in ways that work best for them: some people prefer different modes of communication, and it’s important to note that. We also assigned roles and stuck to them (for the most part) in order to make sure all of our duties were being fulfilled. And, most importantly, I felt it important to highlight everyone’s strengths and weaknesses in order to utilize them to our best abilities; someone’s weaknesses become another person’s strengths. Team planning is essential.
Many of these skills will also be required in my professional life. I will work with many teams in the future: nurses, other physicians, and a multitude of other hospital staff. Learning about how my Pre-Med club group functioned pretty successfully taught me that each team I’m a part of will be different and that it’s important to have team meetings to articulate strengths, weaknesses, and plans for fulfilling goals and different jobs.