Q (from ask.fm): What inspired you to start your blog? Also how did you start it?

A: I’ve never considered myself a person who liked to write. I took AP literature and composition in high school but I’m still not sure why I decided to do so. Writing lab reports and papers for class was a long process and was not one of my favorites. Otherwise, I didn’t take a writing course until senior year of college.

Two summers ago, I was working on my medical school application and writing like crazy to make my personal statements the best they could be. As this process wore on, I could really see my story come alive in my writing, and it was a great feeling to express myself in that way. When it was done, I wanted to keep writing.

During that summer, I also made the twitter account that you now know as ‎@MDPhDToBe (though at the time it was anonymous and went by ‎@PreMDPhDLife). As I followed many medical students and pre-meds, I noticed some of the medical students had blogs and I thought that would be a great idea to share my experience, help others who aspire to go to medical school and give myself more opportunity to write!

To make my blog, I simply did a Google search for blog hosts. I looked into a few and ultimately decided that WordPress was my favorite. The rest was simple – I used the website’s templates and customization features to make the design look how I wanted, I began writing, and I promoted my work to my twitter community. My first blog went by premdphdlife.wordpress.com, but after being accepted to my MD/PhD program, I created mdphdtobe.com to better fit my perspective. This blog was created in March 2013.

Now, after a 16 months of blogging at mdphdtobe.com, I’m ecstatic to have over 100 followers and nearly 20,000 views coming from 100 different countries! I never expected to get much traffic to the site, so I am deeply humbled by the attention it has received. A big THANK YOU to everyone who takes the time to check out my writing, especially those who have gone above and beyond to actually follow my blog! You make blogging that much more enjoyable. 🙂