The Teaching Company
The Teaching Company provides what looks to be solid academic lectures on several university level subjects.
Other organizations including universities provide similar educational resources (e.g. MIT’s OpenCourseWare).
Of course, there’s always local public or university libraries. Depending on the university, non-university students may be able to receive a library card from a local university if they’re willing to pay a certain annual fee or the like.
Why pay thousands of dollars on education when there are so many other resources available these days? I suppose common responses would be because a university degree confers distinct socioeconomic and other advantages (e.g. an undergraduate degree is usually a prerequisite to a degree like an MD or JD or PhD) and because one wants to live the college experience. Fair enough. However, if one cares solely about receiving an undergraduate level education, then one doesn’t necessarily need to go to college or university. As mentioned above, there are other options which are far less expensive.
How underdogs can win
Here is an article from Malcolm Gladwell about how “effort can trump ability” (among other things).
Anecdotally, the best med students I know aren’t the brightest or most intellectually capable or otherwise naturally talented, per se. Although almost everyone in med school seems to have at least a slightly above average intelligence. Rather, the best ones seem to be the most consistently self-disciplined and hardest working.
Of course, on the (unfortunately) rare occasions I see both tremendous brainpower and tremendous disciplined diligence in one person, they’re pretty much superstars.
I’m sure other factors come into play too, but these seem to be predominant.
Perhaps medicine is one of those fields where one’s knowledge correlates almost exactly with one’s amount of work. Unlike, say, mathematics or music, it’s hard to successfully make it through with sheer innate aptitude and naught else in medicine. Or so it seems to me.
Surgery might be a slightly different beast since it would involve a fair amount of manual dexterity as well.
On the other hand:
