Second Year Student Blog: Zahra Rangwala
Everyone says not to compare yourself to others, but it’s hard when you feel behind everyone else. I felt far behind my peers a couple of years out of college; I didn’t know what I wanted to do, and it seemed like they all did. I graduated in 2021 with a degree in biology and a certification to teach high school science, but I realized that wasn’t what I wanted to do. The PA path crossed my mind, but a Google search of PA school acceptance rates psyched me out. So, I spent a year in AmeriCorps, a program that allowed me to work with different nonprofits around the country. I loved the experience, but still, none felt like what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I felt stuck, as if I was wasting time while people around me were getting on with their lives.
By Thanksgiving 2022, I figured out that the PA path was the one I wanted to pursue, and to make sure I couldn’t chicken out of it, I told my whole family that I was going to apply for the next cycle. In January, I got a job as a medical assistant and started working on my application. I worked 6 days a week to get myself up to 1,000 hours before I applied and enrolled in prerequisites at a local community college. I was busy, but it finally felt like my life was headed in a direction instead of just wandering.
Then came the time to actually submit my applications. To say I was nervous was an understatement; there’s a certain level of application review that’s normal, and then there’s tweaking the punctuation in your essay for two weeks before pushing the “send” button. I started receiving rejections in August and had almost given up hope when I received an email from Duke stating that I had been invited for an interview. A few hours before I logged on to my interview, I got an email stating that I had been placed on the waitlist at the only other school that had offered me an interview, so I went in feeling like I needed to perform well. I came out of it a nervous wreck and spent the next week checking my email at least 10 times a day.
I got my acceptance two days before Thanksgiving and immediately started crying—it felt like validation that I could do what I set my mind to, despite the self-doubt and catastrophic Reddit threads. I spent the next year working and spending time with friends and family, and in August, I moved to Durham. The didactic year challenged me in a way I’d never been challenged before; the sheer amount of information made me wonder if the admissions committee had made a mistake letting me in.
The start of the clinical year brought along its own set of challenges, but it was also when I felt like I found my footing. Not only have I been able to apply clinical knowledge and physical exam skills I learned in the didactic year, but the experiences I had over my gap years have helped me build relationships with patients and my future colleagues at my rotation sites. For any currently stressed pre-PA or PA students, I promise it’s worth it. Trust the process, and know you’ll find incredibly supportive friends, faculty, and preceptors along the way.
Zahra Rangwala is a second-year student with the Duke Physician Assistant Program. Email zahra.rangwala@duke.edu with questions.
Editor’s note: Duke Physician Assistant Program students blog monthly. Blogs represent the opinion of the author, not the Duke Physician Assistant Program, the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health, or Duke University.