About Us

It's a long road. But you don't have to travel it alone.

The Long Haul is a platform where students can hear directly from physicians about their careers, specialties, experiences, challenges, and the realities of practicing medicine — built by a medical student who was once exactly where you are now.

Sheehan Parvez

Founder, The Long Haul

Third-Year Medical Student
University of Louisville School of Medicine
Originally from Orlando, Florida

Hi there! My name is Jihan Parvez.

I’m a third-year medical student at the University of Louisville School of Medicine, originally from Orlando, Florida.

The Long Haul started several years ago, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, when my friends and I were undergraduate students at the University of Florida.

Like so many pre-medical students at the time, we suddenly lost much of our connection to medicine. Hospitals restricted shadowing, clinical opportunities disappeared, and it became harder to remind ourselves what all those long nights studying were actually for.

So, we started talking to physicians.

What began as a way for a few students to reconnect with medicine turned into The Long Haul—a platform where students can hear directly from physicians about their careers, specialties, experiences, challenges, and the realities of practicing medicine. And the name is intentional.

Medicine is a long journey.

From college to medical school, residency, fellowship, and eventually independent practice, becoming a physician can take the better part of a decade—or longer.

Along the way, there will be sacrifices. There will be Friday nights when your friends are going out and you’re sitting at a desk studying. There will be exams that don’t go the way you hoped, applications that don’t work out, and moments when the finish line feels incredibly far away.

That’s why it’s so important to remember why you started and to keep sight of the light at the end of the tunnel. The Long Haul exists to help you do that.

Real medicine isn't Grey's Anatomy.

A lot of people grow up watching Grey’s Anatomy or other medical shows and thinking, that’s what being a doctor is like. I hate to break it to you, but it isn’t.

Not every day is dramatic. Not every patient is a once-in-a-lifetime case. Every specialty has its bread-and-butter cases. Some days are incredibly exciting; others are routine. Some outcomes are wonderful, and others are heartbreaking.

That’s exactly why I encourage students to experience medicine before committing their lives to it. Shadow physicians. Volunteer. Work in a clinical setting if you can. Talk to doctors in different specialties. And take the time to ask yourself some difficult questions:

Do I actually enjoy medicine?

Do I care about taking care of people?

Am I interested in understanding disease, diagnosing problems, and helping patients navigate some of the most difficult moments of their lives?

And perhaps most importantly: am I willing to make the sacrifices this path requires? Because if the answer is yes, medicine can be an incredibly meaningful career.

“I want to make people feel better.”

I’ve always thought that captures medicine better than almost anything else.

Toward the end of college, I worked alongside a neurologist. We might see 25 patients in a day, and because it was neurology, the outcomes weren’t always what patients or their families hoped for.

But I remember thinking about what it must feel like for that physician to drive home every evening knowing that, for every person who walked into his office that day, he genuinely did everything he could to help them.

Maybe he couldn’t cure every disease. Maybe he couldn’t make every patient better. But he could listen. He could diagnose. He could treat. He could explain. He could reassure. And he could know that he had done everything within his ability to improve someone’s life.

I remember thinking: that must be a pretty incredible feeling to go home with every day. At its core, that’s what medicine means to me. It’s about caring for people.

One piece of practical advice.

If you’re reading this early in your journey, I want to give you one piece of practical advice that I wish every pre-med student understood:

Protect your academics.

Work extremely hard in your classes and aim for the strongest GPA and MCAT score you are capable of achieving.

Medical schools absolutely care about research, clinical experience, volunteering, leadership, shadowing, and the rest of your application. Those experiences matter tremendously. But extracurricular experiences can be added.

If you graduate and realize you need more research, you can spend a gap year doing research. If you need clinical experience, you can spend a year working in a clinical setting. If you haven’t shadowed enough, you can find additional opportunities. Your undergraduate academic record is much harder to change.

That doesn’t mean one bad semester ends your dream. It doesn’t. Medical schools consider academic trends, and there are opportunities such as post-baccalaureate programs for students who need to strengthen their academic records.

But if you’re a freshman or sophomore wondering whether you should add your fifth extracurricular activity while struggling in your classes, focus on your classes first. Build the strongest academic foundation you can, and then build meaningful experiences around it.

Becoming a physician isn't about being the smartest person in every room.

It’s about dedication, consistency, sacrifice, curiosity, and perseverance.

Nobody is going to hand you the path. You have to seek out opportunities. You have to ask questions. You have to find mentors. You have to study when you don’t feel like studying. And sometimes you have to keep going when things don’t work out exactly as you planned.

But if becoming a physician is truly your dream—if you genuinely want to care for people and you’re willing to dedicate yourself to getting there—you can absolutely do it.

That’s why we called this The Long Haul. It’s a long road. But you don’t have to travel it alone.

Best of luck. We’re rooting for you, and we’re here whenever you need us.

FREE 1-ON-1 PRE-MED MENTORSHIP — MD students paying it forward!!