First of all, it’s not a competitive atmosphere – the overwhelming majority of students are concerned with learning to learn so they can be good doctors. They’re not only interested in honors or trying to jump through whatever hoop is being presented at the time.
One great thing about Pitt was that they made us think right off the bat – “what is medicine?, why are we doing medicine?” Because the very first thing we did as medical students was learn about public health. We went to local communities that haven’t done so well in the last couple decades and we just all matched up with different community members and walked around with them and asked them about their problems and then got together as a group afterwards and came up with potential solutions for those problems and then invited those same community members back to give those presentations. So that was a really great experience.
