this month is essentially focused on those of you who didn't match with genetic counseling programs [Music] awareness channel with katie lee all the best resources you'll ever need a genetic counselling awareness channel hi everyone it's me katie lee cgc and welcome back to my channel if you haven't already please like this video subscribe and hit the notification bell so you can be notified when i release more videos on today's episode of wannabe wednesday i'm going to be interviewing laura who is a three-timer applicant to genetic counseling programs if you haven't already checked last week's wannabe
wednesday out check it out i interviewed a current student at kane university named rebecca who was also a reapplicant so this month is essentially focused on those of you who didn't match with genetic counseling programs i'm really hoping to give you all some tangible advice about how to move on what you can think about for next steps and over the course of this series i'm interviewing two women who reapplied until they got into a genetic counseling program and two women who moved on to different career paths let's get into the interview with laura laura is
a first year genetic counseling student at sarah lawrence college she shared about her experience applying to genetic counseling programs three times through blogs videos and through twitter she's super excited to start her first rotation in pediatrics at maimonides medical center she's currently working on her thesis which is going to be investigating the relationship between genetics healthcare and the child welfare community she currently lives in new york city with her partner and her beloved cat santa laura thanks for being here i'd love to hear about your journey to genetic counseling graduate school i started being interested
in genetic counseling at the beginning of college i was a genetics major and i heard about it in our careers class and i was immediately interested um but i didn't do very well in my freshman year of college so it was kind of a big uphill battle to even like get qualified with like a gpa enough and to get good enough grades to even apply um but i did end up applying my senior year i interviewed at two places my first cycle and i did not get in i interviewed up four places my second cycle
and did not get in and i actually only interviewed at three in my third cycle but i did match to sarah lawrence so it was a long time coming um i went from undergrad to working at a cancer center to working clinical trials and finally found the right fit eventually after both your first and your second time applying did you know right away that you were going to reapply to school or is it something that you had to think about for a couple of weeks or months yeah so the first time i kind of figured
i wouldn't get in the first time so i was like immediately knew i was gonna go for a second but after the second i actually didn't decide to reapply until september i took a couple yeah i took a couple of prereqs to go to nursing school and decided it probably wasn't i mean i was open to it in the future but i decided to go for one more genetic counseling cycle it just seemed like that i don't know getting into a whole different field might take a while anyway so i decided to try one more
time with genetic counseling and i ended up getting in that was it so besides nursing school well tell me more about how you came to nursing school as a possible plan b and if there were other career options you were considering yeah pretty much just that was my plan it wasn't really a plan b i guess after i had gone on match i was thinking about trying a third time but um some of my feedback was kind of like this field might not be right for you it may not match with your strengths so i
kind of took that to heart and decided to try to play my strengths somewhere else um so i took anatomy and i think microbiology over that summer which works in school prereqs and um i had all the class prereqs to apply but there were some labs that i was missing and it was a little bit hard to do labs from like home or like while i was a full-time student or not a full-time student but a full-time employee um so i i was like this might take a whole another year to even get ready to
do this and i'm still really interested in genetic counseling so i'm glad that i took those courses it did give me um some kind of option and give me like insight that i would be interested to take you know the same skills that i had somewhere else but ultimately kind of decided let's just give genetic counseling one more try third time isn't so bad that feedback that you mentioned is rough that is like makes my heart hurt hearing it i in grad school for example like we were just talking about you're about to start your
first clinical rotation you do get a lot of feedback and my kind of belief on feedback is you take a moment to sit with it you throw out the feedback you don't agree with you take in the feedback that you do agree with or you can at least see part of it how was it getting feedback like that i honestly it's hard for me to imagine someone telling me that about a career i've been working towards for a number of years yeah um it was it was difficult for sure i i kind of i understood
where they were coming from because i was working for crisis text line and i was doing a lot of text-based counseling and i talked about how much i liked that and i liked working with teenagers and she basically was like we just thought that you know that isn't exactly what we do we don't we don't use text and we don't really you know counsel teams and things like that and i was like well i see where they got that from and that's totally fair um i think that i just like said i just thought with
that for a while and thought yeah yes i do have other strengths that may be applicable to other fields and i should think about it um but ultimately i decided that those were still important skills to bring to genetic counseling and that it was okay i just didn't i just didn't apply to that program again and it was important skills to bring to genetic counseling we're all different patients different needs and all of us are needed in this field yeah absolutely i can think of so many things like just at my last job i was
working on developing a chat bot and what our responses would be for people who reach out with questions which is essentially like like texting and some of it was counseling based not just answering you know informational questions so i feel like that's totally relevant and of course there's teenagers with diagnoses that need to be counseled all the time what other did you get any feedback that was like easier to apply things that you could concretely you know develop a skill or take another class um redo a pre-prerequisite if your grade wasn't high enough anything like
that that was actually useful for the next cycle the most helpful things for me um was basically it it comes down to interview skills i think it's about like having confidence and knowing that you are worthwhile to accept into the program and i kind of had a hard time conveying that i also have adhd so it could be hard for me to stay focused in a long form one-on-one conversation and i totally understand why that's a concern for genetic counseling so a lot of the feedback that was most useful was just to think about my
confidence and think about improving my internal self-esteem so that i could really sell myself to programs and i think that's what made the difference really in the third cycle even though i did you know add other volunteering and you know take uc's cardiogen class or whatever what really made the difference is like just believing that i was worthwhile and being able to present that to a program yeah i agree those interviews skills are so important to develop and it's really hard especially if you are a more like fresh out of undergrad type of applicant or
you haven't had that much experience applying to different jobs yet so you're just not that comfortable with interviewing it's one of those things that can be a little bit hard to get practice with too because it's awkward to do with family and friends oftentimes and not quite the same as a real interview situation i'll share how i practiced interviewing my undergrad campus had practice interviews all the time and i was always encouraged to do them so i just did a bunch and got a lot of feedback and really gained confidence there so that was the
main way i improved on interviewing and then besides that i just had had a few jobs since being out of undergrad that i got to practice in what were the ways that you were able to work on interviewing for that last cycle where you got in yeah um i did that too i did use my undergrad center and i actually did that after my first cycle i went and used them because i think you have to be graduated in the past year to use them um after that i think it was more like i went
to therapy for my adhd and just like talked about how i have trouble connecting with people on a personal level and just like talk through like the actual internal things that were holding me back from presenting myself confidently so i really think that it was about taking care of my mental health because a lot of times i would practice interview and they would go like yeah you did fine like you did well but i think it was more internal things that i was holding on to like not truly believing that i was worth accepting that
made it difficult for me to interview well that's a great point and it's awesome to get that going before grad school because there isn't always that much time for therapy during grad school and it definitely can shake your confidence sometimes um when you don't do as well in a class as you thought you should have or don't do as well in a rotation or with a specific patient as you thought you should have i know you've mentioned a few things here like working on confidence um taking a few courses is there anything else you haven't
mentioned that you specifically did to improve applications or have you mentioned about everything that you kind of went through and obviously you're gaining work experience it sounds like too and switched jobs a couple of times yeah so i started in a cancer lab and they did about a year and a half of um like specimen assassinating which was a good job for first out of school and i think one of my major improvements for the third time was that i got a job where i was more patient facing and could talk speak more to like
how i interact with the general public and how i handle challenging interactions and how i give bad news so i was working in clinical trials i did recruitment and i worked on a lot of mental health studies and i ultimately ended up working on the covid vaccine study for moderna oh cool yeah so it was a lot of patient interaction and it was sometimes like giving people the news like i'm sorry you're not going to be able to qualify for this um and sometimes when they were you know in a really desperate situation with their
mental health and we're going all the way to like a trial um it's hard to give them that news so i could speak more to like how i provided them empathy and resources when they're you know at the end of what they know how to do for their mental health yeah that sounds like a very translatable job how did you find that one linkedin um it was is interesting because it was down in arizona and i had been living in salt lake so after my second cycle i was very tired of living in the same
area where i went to school and i was ready for something new so i just kind of spontaneously decided to move down to arizona and i set up a few job interviews down there and just kind of went down there and found something and it was very helpful for my mental health to just like kind of move on with my life and not feel like i was waiting that's a big thing i always tell people like not to put your life on hold like if you want to do something if you want to change the
way your life is you know just do it and that was a super helpful thing for me to ultimately get in because i was following what i felt like i needed to do to get to the next step in my life i was just waiting yep yeah i feel like that's good advice for so many mental struggles or big hurdles in anyone's life that's kind of how i feel about fertility too is i i have infertility but i'm not putting my life on hold for it anymore because you just you don't know when something a
good or bad is gonna happen but it's not worth just waiting around but what else is there that you did to just cope with the mental toll of not getting in because it is just it's a knock to the confidence and you know what you've all the time and efforts you've put in yeah i mean it took time i was not you know i was not accepting of it for the first day or week it was it took time and i think that it took deciding to carry on with my life and do the things
that i wanted to do and just think of myself more as like young and untethered rather than like unwanted like i'm free to do whatever i want over this next year young and untethered i like that yeah also another thing i did was start volunteering at a humane society which i'd always wanted to do but i was like that's so irrelevant but i ended up talking about it in interviews like you can always apply what you're doing to genetic counseling like don't let don't like trying to fit into the box or trying to fill out
your application decide what you want to do with your life just like do what feels good to you you know and i think it's actually really advantageous to have some of those experiences that are a little bit outside of the box and also tie into your own personal interest like you obviously must be a big animal lover if you wanted to take that type of volunteer position and it helps you stand out from the crowd a little bit because you know everyone's doing crisis text line and all of those common advocacy experiences so i think
that's good advice too yeah i loved it i got to like kind of introduce dogs to the public sometimes and i was like wow this actually is really relevant i get to like advocate for this dog and be like have you thought about this animal right here really needs a home so like true advocacy um what about i've got some questions from my viewers about like dealing with family and friends and sometimes even partners who don't understand how big of a deal this is how much work went into it and truly how hard it is
to match with a program and that you can really be completely set up for success and a great applicant and not get into a program yeah at first for sure that's kind of why i started writing like blog posts is like i just wanted to make it i got so much um confusion from the people in my life that i just wanted to like make everything public and out there so that's one reason i am very fortunate that i have a very understanding partner who who really gets the process um so that's been super helpful
if you have just even one person who gets it that's a big thing so like my partner and the people on discord that really understand have been really helpful throughout the process um i found that i had more fear about telling people that i didn't get in than actually was like merited when i told my recommenders like for the second time i didn't get in there like wow i'm so sorry to hear that i'm fully behind you for the next time like you think that they're going to react like oh i can't believe it you're
such a waste of my time they're not they've been through rejection too they know how it is right exactly well is there any other insight you can offer and share with my audience for those applicants who didn't match the cycle and are trying to decide what their next step should be yeah you don't have to rush it like i said i didn't decide to reapply for a third time for a couple of months i thought about other career paths i even started preparing for some so it's totally okay if you take the time to think
about it and just kind of feel it out over time it felt like i wanted to take some nursing school prereqs and see how it was so i did it and i wanted to get a patient-facing job so i did it and eventually you'll kind of find yourself on the right path even if it leads you back to genetic counseling or somewhere else like just kind of follow what feels right in the moment and what will make you feel like you're progressing and how are you feeling now as a first year almost about to transition
into a second year genetic counseling student about the program you matched at and how things are going does it feel like you're in the right place yes i love sarah lawrence i feel like ultimately it was down to finding the right fit for me finding some place that was looking for what i offer and it took a while but it turned out okay and i'm i'm so glad for the experiences that i had between my first cycle and finally getting in because they've been really advantageous in the program like i volunteered as a nicu cuddler
and that's yeah i love that um i was in a cute cuddler for a while and that's been like really insightful experience going into my pediatric rotation because i do nicu consults so i'm like yeah i know how the nicu functions and i know some of the common needs of the babies there so whatever kind of experience you build even if it's not the thing that gets you in will be something that contributes to your ultimate career so no regrets of anything that i did to during those cycles well thank you so much for your
time today laura i really appreciate it i really hope you all enjoyed that interview with laura i thought that she was so insightful when she shared about not getting stuck in the fact that you're reapplying and you're in limbo if you will for another year but rather of thinking of yourself as being free and being able to do whatever you want and kind of to reverse the narrative that might be in your head i also liked her tip about going to therapy if you're struggling with interview confidence and you've already done a bunch of practice
interviews and you find that you're not really improving much there i think therapy could be a great way to kind of explore what's going on within yourself and it's not a bad practice to get in and see a therapist anyways because not matching with the genetic counseling program is a big life event anyways thanks for watching you guys take care
