Lately, I've been thinking a lot about "weed out classes" and the entire concept of weeding students out prior to medical school in general. (1/?)

I think there is something to helping students discover that they aren't ready to tussle with something like med school. I know for sure that, if I'd even known I wanted to be a doctor at 22, there's a 0% chance I'd have had the maturity or focus to succeed in #medschool. (2/?)

that said, I can't escape the phrase "weed out". What is the difference between a weed and a flower? Weeds are just the ones we've decided we don't want in our garden. Dandelions bloom brilliant yellow, "weed" or not. (3/?)

So often, we see students - most especially students of color - who are trapped in these weed-out classes and get spat out by the system. The quiet economic privilege to succeed in many of these courses is oft written about and I won't belabor it here, but it's profound. (4/?)

I can't help but wonder why we are building a system to pluck out the dandelions but keep the daisies. (5/?)

I struggled mightily as a 17-18 yo college student in huge ochem and biochem classes at @uoregon. I got C's. I changed majors. Going back to night school to retake these classes showed me my grit, allowed me to grow, allowed me to prove myself wrong. (6/?)

The pre-med advisor at my commuter school told me that I'd weeded myself out with my C's. "A science GPA too low to overcome." He was wrong ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯. But I was able to go back and crush those post-bac classes because my parents were able to help me pay the tuition. (7/?)

All this to say, the flowers that grow in your garden are the ones you water. Do you like dandelions, milkweed, wild violets, and clover? They only have to be pulled out of the soil if you decide they don't belong in your garden. (8/9)

I hate the term "weed out" because it's representative of this system we've built in our garden of privilege, telling ourselves that merit alone differentiates the flowers from the weeds. Our decisions about what makes a weed different from a flower bears enormous weight. (9/9)