Hello, and happy new year to every one of you!
As we kick off 2024, I wanted to take the time to reflect on what a great 2023 we had. We established ourselves in the latter half of this year, and it’s pretty unbelievable that our team was able to create so much to nurture The Society through its infancy.
This entire project began as a small dream I had to create a resource for students like myself. Being a pre-med is so terrifying. I can’t say how many times I’ve panicked, not knowing what I’m supposed to be doing, or where I’m going to end up. Without doctors in my immediate family, I turned to the next best thing—Google. I started collecting a plethora of information, and my career path grew more and more clear by the day. But, I couldn’t pretend that I was the first person in the world to feel the doubts brought up by being a pre-med. There’s so many of us, and this issue is so common. I thought it best to create a center where I could organize and share all my research and findings, sort of like a published report in a journal. But these weren’t academic discoveries, so I couldn’t send these to the Harvard Medicine magazine. Oh, well—why not create my own website? Selecting a team with imaginations that matched the capabilities of the systems at our disposal, I founded this nonprofit.
Our first step forward was our website. Before I continue, I want to take a moment to both thank and congratulate our CFO and CIO, Andre Matevosyan, for his work on setting up our online front. He has shouldered such a large responsibility with our website, and a huge portion of what we’re able to do on here is thanks to his work. As a CompSci student, he’s never been deterred by the fact that we’re an organization for pre-meds. From figuring out WordPress, to learning JavaScript so we could start making our own independent website (which will be coming towards the end of this year), he has never let us down. He’s as much a visionary as anyone else on this team, and is a bedrock on which we rely on daily. Without Andre, we could not push forward in our battle against the lack of information many undergraduates face—and there’s a lot of things to fix there.
Our website has taken a three-pronged approach in creating our remedy: The Pager and The Rounds; scholarships; and The Guides. The first set is the most obvious. Our publication and short-form content house a wealth of diverse topics to stimulate conversation and foster knowledge among pre-meds. I strongly believe that, as future doctors, we need to arm ourselves not only with a familiarity of our jobs, but also of the problems we will face throughout. I don’t think healing should be limited to our patients only, and I know we have the capacity to really do something greater with everything we’re taught. It is my hope that we can become an important part of that process for many fellow students. But to truly allow you all to take advantage of this initiative to drive change, we’ve decided to help lift the burden of higher education. Thus, our list of scholarships lays at each of your fingertips. I handpick them myself, personally reviewing each to ensure that they meet our two simple standards. What exactly are those standards, though? First, they must primarily provide genuine value. But, we also want to cater to as many different pre-meds as possible. So our scholarships are also chosen to either serve a broad base of students, or fill in the gaps among whom we’ve served. Every time we update our list, we seek to expand who can take advantage of them. After all, what use would we be to only support a tiny niche of students? It would defeat the purpose of our mission. The last part of our approach are The Guides. This is where we get into sharing our knowledge about the journey through medicine and surgery.
All of this work lacks one vital component, though—ethos. For as much as we want to help transform undergraduates into successful pre-meds, nobody will hear us out if we don’t have some sort of credibility. So, to legitimize every hour of sleep we’ve lost towards our goal, we decided to begin the process of reaching 501(c)3 status with the federal government. By the time you see my letter for 2025, we’ll have finished at the national level. Anticipation has a great smell, doesn’t it?
Inescapably, though, our greatest achievement in 2023 was bringing all of you together and creating a community of pre-meds who are willing to go above and beyond! Don’t let this part fall on deaf ears (or blind eyes in this case, I suppose)—we wouldn’t be so successful if you all weren’t the amazing students that you are. Sure, The Pre-Surgery Society isn’t a business model any of you pay for, and this website will eternally stay on the records of the internet regardless of how many people visit it; but the inspiration that each and every one of you give us is indescribable. I speak for all of us on the team when I say that, every time we write a post for The Pager, or every time we update our scholarships page, and most definitely every time we plan to take on something bigger, we’re driven by knowing that our efforts won’t be for naught. That is possible entirely because of you—because you chose to scroll through our page; because you subscribed to our newsletter; and, most importantly, because you let it become your responsibility to educate yourself on such a fascinating field. So, whether you are reading this on a short break from work or in a cozy phone session from bed—thank you!
2023 proved to be the year in which our team became pioneers in undergrad pre-med education. With a huge charitable fundraiser, more expansive guides, and the establishment of local chapters as our baseline for growth in 2024, I promise that, by year end, we’ll stand even more prepared to support you all through a marvelous medical journey. Here’s to making the most of the next 365 days!
Sincerely,
Markus Leonardo
CEO and Founder
MedConnect 