Get ready to read about Franziska, a student at a Midwestern osteopathic med school who blogs about life, school, and fashion on her blog, Franish. Thank you Franziska for sharing your story with us – we wish you loads of luck!
Accepted: We’d like to get to know you! Where are you from? Where and what did you study as an undergrad?
Franziska: I was born in Germany, but moved to the US when I was 5. I grew up in a small, rural Wisconsin town, and eventually moved to Madison to go to the University of Wisconsin for undergrad.
Accepted: Where are you in med school? What year are you? (If you’d like to keep your school private, can you please give us some clues?)
Franziska: I’m a first year medical student attending an osteopathic medical school in the Midwest…near a great lake!
Accepted: Now that your first semester of med school is behind you, can you offer a few tips to our readers who will be starting med school next year? What are some things you learned after surviving your first semester that you wish you’d known before?
Franziska: If possible, take an anatomy course. In our curriculum, we started the school year with 12 weeks of anatomy. It was very overwhelming, coming in with no anatomy experience.
I would also make sure you take some time off before you start! I quit my job 6 weeks before school started and traveled and slept in and enjoyed summer. It was awesome!
Accepted: Your blog suggests that you’re quite the fashionista! Can you tell us about your school’s dress code and how you deal?
Franziska: My school has a relatively strict dress code – the men have to wear a shirt and tie, and the women have to be dressed in similar “professional” clothing. I came from working in a laboratory for two years, where I was required to have full length pants and closed toed shoes, so coming to school where I just have to dress a bit nicer was great!
I have some go-to pieces for days I don’t want to put a lot of effort in (especially on test days, black pants and a sweater is about as complicated as it gets), but I still try to find a way to have fun while being professionally dressed.
Accepted: What’s your favorite class so far?
Franziska: I really enjoyed embryology – it’s crazy how we develop from a little flat bundle of cells and how our body parts contort to form the organs we have now. I was also surprised by how much I liked microbiology – those bugs can be so tricky (and smart!).
Accepted: Looking back at the med school application process, what would you say was your greatest challenge? How did you work to overcome that challenge?
Franziska: I found it really challenging to keep myself motivated to answer secondary after secondary essays. I tried to keep myself motivated by setting goals and then rewarding myself – 3 essays done? Time to go outside for an afternoon and enjoy summer instead of sitting at my computer some more. Plus, in the end, you have to remind yourself that you’re doing this for your future, and that should be motivation enough!
Accepted: Can you tell us about your blog? Who is your target audience? How have you benefited from the blogging experience?
Franziska: I started my blog almost two years ago. I was working for a pharmaceutical development company, and was feeling a bit bored as all of my friends had moved away and my then boyfriend was in the middle of his second year of medical school. It was just something I got to have fun with and make friends online who had similar interests.
Since then, it has evolved to not only talking about what I wear, but also about how I budget my money, how I prepared for my school’s dress code, and just how medical school is going as a whole.
My audience is for the majority women like myself – women who want to dress nice while staying within their budget. Blogging has been wonderful because it allowed me to “take” all of my friends with me when I moved away for school. I also have had some financial benefits, which has helped me slowly pay off all of the medical school application debt I accumulated!
Do you want to be featured in Accepted.com’s blog, Accepted Admissions Blog? If you want to share your med school journey with the world (or at least with our readers), email us at bloggers@accepted.com.
