Im going into first year life sci and im aiming for med school...
I wanna get a job on campus in order to improve my resume and experience, but in addition to school work, i also want to join clubs and volunteer. I want to noe if working on campus is too stressful on top of my schoolwork and other stuff, especially for a 1st year life sci student. I would like to noe how ppl who worked on campus during their first yr felt.
help would be appreciated

Work or be a meaningful contribution to a club, can't have both and have enough study time to do 'medschool well' in school. I'm sure people would disagree, but I'm just going on your general attitude and spelling capability... there are people who work, do club stuff, and get 11s, but thats not that common.

Originally Posted by peace

Im going into first year life sci and im aiming for med school...
I wanna get a job on campus in order to improve my resume and experience, but in addition to school work, i also want to join clubs and volunteer. I want to noe if working on campus is too stressful on top of my schoolwork and other stuff, especially for a 1st year life sci student. I would like to noe how ppl who worked on campus during their first yr felt.
help would be appreciated

1. Job on campus - totally not recommended. If you want to have a competitive GPA for medical school, and plan on doing a job on campus, you should at least hold that thought until you get settled in at the school. Most people screw up their first year hoping that it doesn't matter in the end, but that is a misconception. First year is as important as every other year, and it's good to have a good start.
If you want to work to beef up your campus, work during the summer in a lab under a prof. Campus jobs you can have during the year (esp in first year) are work in campus hospitality services (food), which will not really do much for you besides immediate spending money.

2. School work, volunteering, and clubs - A life science student in first year realizes two things:
(1) As soon as you hit the first midterm season, you will have no spare time.
(2) Health sciences students complain about the chem lab / midterms while you have to worry about all your other labs / midterms on top of the chem stuff.

As for the first one, if you want to pull off a grade in the A range, you will have to dedicate certain portions of your day studying in the library without social contact. If you can't do that, then you will have to settle for whatever you can get. You will definitely not have spare time in first year if you are studying the right way, especially in midterm season. After the first midterm season, there are projects and assignments left and right, then as soon as you finish those, it's second midterm season.

If that was tl;dr, just know that the first month of every term is the most slack time that you will ever have during the year.

The second one is a more touchy subject. You will meet Health Sciences students in your time in Chemistry 1A03 / 1AA3. This is because it's a required science course. I have no problems with them, but there are many who think that they're full of themselves.
In any case, these guys will start preparing for chem midterms weeks ahead, because they have the time to do so. You will not have the luxury of preparing for chem as long as they do.
Budget your time well, don't study for chem as long as they do, because your midterms will be crammed into one or two weeks.

If you sign up for clubs, you will either end up not being a part of it after, or become extremely involved to the point where you neglect academics. Do so at your own peril, unless you know you can handle everything.

As for volunteer work, those are less time consuming, and if you are willing to take away leisure time (2 h per day) you can surely manage. They even have weekend volunteering at hospitals like St. Joseph's.

I'm not trying to discourage you, but this is how it usually turns out.
If you think you can handle it, then good on you, and good luck with that.

It is doable, just probably not in your first year. You should really just focus on academics in your first year. Once you have a grasp of what university workload and life is after 1st year, maybe then consider a job or extracurriculars in volunteering and clubs.

Personally, I find that the busier I am the more I am able to effectively manage my time for studying, work and extracurriculars. For this year I was lucky enough to have had held onto a workstudy job at the SAS (formerly CSD) working with cognitive learning disabilities, will be volunteering for the Student Success Centre, be the president of a student society, and a TA among other things. My GPA stayed competitive enough for me to get accepted into an MA program (for the 2012 session) at the end of my 3rd year.

Granted, I'm not in Life Science or aiming for Medical School, but I have taken my fair share of labs and courses in the arts and sciences while maintaining a workstudy position and extracurriculars.

Anyways, I would not recommend working or getting to heavily involved in a club etc in your first year. Focus on your academics and then decide if you will be able to maintain your GPA while contributing to a job or extracurriculars in your second year and up.

Yeah I think in first year focus on your studies and adjusting to university life. To be honest I think most employers won't hire first year students as well because work-study positions are so competitive.