Written by Sanjana Ahmed
Edited by Jacquelyn Tang
If you’ve ever been on TikTok, you might be familiar with those premed influencers who seem to have everything in their life color-coded, organized, and somehow tailored to their aesthetic. And all while juggling maintaining 4.0 GPA, a paid internship or two, and more often than not studying for the MCAT like it's no big deal. At first glance, it's easy to binge their content in wonderment about how they’re able to maintain such a lifestyle and even feel envious.
But, if you’ve been online often enough, you know everything is not what it seems.
With the rise of social media over the years, we have seen many variations of ways people offer glimpses into their lives. What is essential to understand is that these “candid” pieces of content are curated and very few people show the reality of their day-to-day lives. As TikTok became popular with its extremely short-form content, one might think this would not be the case.
They, of course, would be wrong.
People often edit, cut, filter, and purposefully shoot their videos in ways to make them more aesthetically pleasing and eye-catching to make sure people’s attention stays on the post longer. This is to help increase the number of views the video will get overall and increase the content creator's interactions with their audience. While the video itself may only be 15 seconds long, quite a bit more time probably went into it.
When it comes to student influencers, it can be very easy for people to portray themselves as extremely productive with ease. The issue is that they are likely not portraying the whole truth of what their day-to-day lives are and are giving other students an ideal they think they need to live up to which is simply not feasible for many.
Another major flaw with these new “aesthetic” premed lifestyle content creators is that they often glamorize what being a premed is like. As previously mentioned, not only are many premeds unable to monetarily attain the lofty standards they feel they are up against but also the “realities” shown on their favorite student influencer’s page are often nothing like their own.
As a rule of thumb, most people do not share everything about their lives on social media. In fact, most people are inclined to only highlight the good parts. It is very important to understand that no one’s life is perfect. No matter how good it may be in general, everyone has bad days.
The glamorization of premeds and student lifestyle, in general, is harmful for many reasons. Students are already put up against so many high standards academically. Adding in the idea that they also need to have a picture-perfect, ‘effortlessly’ beautiful daily routine as well only compounds the stress they would feel. The fact that this type of content has become increasingly popular and that the idea of this lifestyle is now normalized can be extremely harmful to students’ mental health in the long run.
Something many people overlook is the amount of money that goes into the lifestyles these influencers portray. For example, their brand-name headphones, newest edition laptop, and matching tablet along with whatever tech accessories they have all add up. Many students need to work while in school. they do this to either help support their families, to help pay off their own loans, or because it's required experience for them. Regardless, usually, students are not able to make enough to maintain such a lavish lifestyle on their own without some kind of support.
For premeds, we often are busy enough juggling our classes, unpaid volunteer work, clinical hours, and other extracurricular activities to put so much effort into maintaining an aesthetic as a student. Most of us simply just strive for the best we are capable of and try to make time for ourselves when we can. A lot of premeds also do not have the time to hold jobs for the sake of extra spending money and only do so out of necessity. So, to splurge on the newest tablet because of its pretty minimalist design isn’t often in the cards.
As students, remember, all you can do is your best. You do not need to jump on every trend or tech product that is meant to maximize your efficiency. If a tablet or something else does help you, invest in that. But, do not feel the need to keep up with the ideals you see on social media. All you have to do is find your own stride and meet your own standards.