Alex Bryan's Blog

When I registered for this class, it was with the notion in mind that, as a premed student, I would get a more structured approach to the volunteering which is expected by most medical schools. I hate cold-calling, and was lucky in my assumption that this class would in fact make approaching volunteering organizations much easier.
So when I was given the list of possible organizations, the Children's Hospital immediately stood above the rest in my mind as it is directly related to health care, and is actually in a hospital setting. And, as the representatives from Children's were saying, this would make it valuable not only in terms of volunteering experience, but being in a hospital around other healthcare professionals would also help me network for future internships or research opportunities. There were also one or two other choices under the 'health' category in terms of organizations I could volunteer for, but in both cases is was more about offering aid to those with health issues as opposed to working in a clinical setting.
Although my referral has been approved, the application process is fairly lengthy and it will be a while yet before I can actually be sure that I can volunteer at Children's Hospital. I've only just gotten someone to write a relavent recommendation (most of the recommendations I have are academic or musical), and I have yet to look into the required tuberculosis screening/x-rays, not to mention the required interview which will come even later. But I'm still really hoping to volunteer at Children's since, as I said, it would be an important step for me as a premed student, although unfortunately it does seem like the application process is the most rigorous of all the volunteering organizations.