Hi guys,
I want to be a doctor some day and I know it’s important for me to have some extra curricular activities to talk about during interviews. So far I don’t have anything that phenomenal. Competing in state level swimming competitions, some charity work whilst living overseas for a couple years and some drama production roles. I was thinking of maybe volunteering a couple hours every fortnight at my local doctor? How would I go about doing it? I don’t have a job as I want to focus on studying so I’m a bit worried it’ll take up quite a bit of my time. Any suggestions are welcome! Thank you 
Hello!
To be honest, you don't need to do anything phenomenal to be able to talk about extra curricular activities. What you've done already is amazing!! In the interviews, what matters most is your ability to reflect upon your experiences and be able to talk about these/apply these to a given question or scenario. The interviewers already know that you're smart; the whole purpose of the interview is to gain an insight into your personality, skills, qualities and thinking process and whether they are suitable for the specific medical university you're applying at.
Personally, I never did anything spectacular. I didn't do sport, debating, drama, music, etc. But, I did do a few voluntary work at my school (e.g. being a volunteer every year at my school's careers expo), took up leadership positions (e.g. captain of my school's math club/coaching team) and participated in other clubs and competitions offered by my school (e.g. a linguistics competition where I had to work in a team and we had meetings every few days - every week). Each one of these examples I was able to talk about in all of the medical interviews I actually did (James Cook, University of Adelaide and Monash) for at least one of the questions I was asked in each interview.
Work experience in a health setting (e.g. hospital, GP clinic) is another thing I talked about in all my interviews, so if you haven't already I recommend applying for it!
Don't feel forced into doing these extra curriculars, especially if you feel like it's compromising time for your VCE studies. For all the experiences I did, I really enjoyed doing them hence was able to really reflect upon them.
Best of luck for entry into medicine! If you have any other questions, feel free to PM me anytime
Hope that helps!
- cookiedream
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