Are med students extra whiny?

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Several of my classmates like to whine about the courseload, the way classes are run, the lack of time...stuff like that. I've caught myself whining about having a lot to study a couple of times. :oops:

But, like my undergrad biochem teacher told me, "If you studied as much as you whine, you'll get an A".

How about the people at your school.
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"If you studied as much as you whine, you'll get an A."

Yeah, only in undergrad.
 
honestly i'm sick of all the whining. if you ask me med school is a pretty good job. i make my own schedule, usually sleep til 11 or 12, stay up as late as i want, and study maybe a few hours per day. sure it's worse around exam times, but i have alot of free time...and i think a pretty good lifestyle.
 
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Med students LOOOOOOOOVE to whine
 
i was a classgoer this year, and there were a lot of times that i whined about how late i would have to stay up just to go over the day's lectures. still, it was my decision to go to class, so i didn't whine for too long. nothing compares to the crap office job i had for so many years.

a lot of the hardcore whiners i've seen have NEVER held a job, and have no basis for comparison in regards to just how much life can suck when you're a mere cog in the corporate machine. i would much rather be slogging through anatomy any day.
 
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medicomel said:
a lot of the hardcore whiners i've seen have NEVER held a job, and have no basis for comparison in regards to just how much life can suck when you're a mere cog in the corporate machine. i would much rather be slogging through anatomy any day.
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word.
 
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medicomel said:
a lot of the hardcore whiners i've seen have NEVER held a job, and have no basis for comparison in regards to just how much life can suck when you're a mere cog in the corporate machine. i would much rather be slogging through anatomy any day.
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you almost made my buddy list with a single post...

:horns: :thumbup: :bow: :clap: :biglove:
 
ChuckRock said:
Med students LOOOOOOOOVE to whine
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Hell, premeds (like myself) do, too.

Extra whiny with a side of doomsday sauce (radiology getting outsourced, socialized medicine courtesy of Hillary, ...), I swear.
 
peace84 said:
honestly i'm sick of all the whining. if you ask me med school is a pretty good job. i make my own schedule, usually sleep til 11 or 12, stay up as late as i want, and study maybe a few hours per day. sure it's worse around exam times, but i have alot of free time...and i think a pretty good lifestyle.
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i agree that there are too many med school whiners. and i agree that you can pretty much make your own schedule first and second year, which is incredibly cush. but then third year rolls around. i think we all deserve to whine a bit when we have to show up at 4:30am to preround and don't go home til 7pm. not a lot, just a bit.

third year is a whole new ballgame.
 
medicomel said:
a lot of the hardcore whiners i've seen have NEVER held a job, and have no basis for comparison in regards to just how much life can suck when you're a mere cog in the corporate machine. i would much rather be slogging through anatomy any day.
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thank you, this was beautiful... *sniff*
 
pls accept me said:
Several of my classmates like to whine about the courseload, the way classes are run, the lack of time...stuff like that. I've caught myself whining about having a lot to study a couple of times. :oops:

But, like my undergrad biochem teacher told me, "If you studied as much as you whine, you'll get an A".

How about the people at your school.
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stop whining
 
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medicomel said:
i was a classgoer this year, and there were a lot of times that i whined about how late i would have to stay up just to go over the day's lectures. still, it was my decision to go to class, so i didn't whine for too long. nothing compares to the crap office job i had for so many years.

a lot of the hardcore whiners i've seen have NEVER held a job, and have no basis for comparison in regards to just how much life can suck when you're a mere cog in the corporate machine. i would much rather be slogging through anatomy any day.
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Eh, I've never been in a corporate job, but I'd say the jobs I've held (landscaping and ambulance attendant) were much less stressful than being a med student. Besides, you're getting paid. That always makes it easier. Sure, days when it started raining, and I still had to cut grass.....that sucked. But it was usually sunny, warm and fairly relaxing.
 
peace84 said:
honestly i'm sick of all the whining. if you ask me med school is a pretty good job. i make my own schedule, usually sleep til 11 or 12, stay up as late as i want, and study maybe a few hours per day. sure it's worse around exam times, but i have alot of free time...and i think a pretty good lifestyle.
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ever heard the expression "your mileage may vary"? yeah, that applies here.
 
medicomel said:
a lot of the hardcore whiners i've seen have NEVER held a job, and have no basis for comparison in regards to just how much life can suck when you're a mere cog in the corporate machine. i would much rather be slogging through anatomy any day.
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THAT is the answer my friend. And while it may be different for others (see Prowler's post above), my worst day at medical school was better than my best day at work.

These are the same kids who just won't show up one day for a rotation because they need "me time", these are the same kids who whine when they have to work on their birthday, who will whine when they match and find out that their orientation date cuts into their "va-cay" time, and whine to holy heck when they get their first paycheck as a resident and see how much taxes are taken out. :rolleyes:
 
I like red red wine.
Stays in my head,
makes me forget.
 
Syranope2 said:
i agree that there are too many med school whiners. and i agree that you can pretty much make your own schedule first and second year, which is incredibly cush. but then third year rolls around. i think we all deserve to whine a bit when we have to show up at 4:30am to preround and don't go home til 7pm. not a lot, just a bit.

third year is a whole new ballgame.
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Hey,

If we wanted to get real technical, I could sleep in and not study, and it would cost me $30k less a year if I weren't in medical school ;)

My life has honestly been easier in the first two years of medical school in terms of hours worked than it has been since I finished high school. However, this was a very expensive priviledge. I do love to hear my classmates complain about getting up in the morning. I put in nearly 70 hours some weeks (Love OT) in my high school summer job as a warehouse shipping laborer, and I will say that nothing in medical school has been that bad physically. However, I'm not sure that I could survive another round of "professionalism" Atleast at the warehouse, we all just yelled at each other and it was ok.
 
Kimberli Cox said:
These are the same kids who just won't show up one day for a rotation because they need "me time", these are the same kids who whine when they have to work on their birthday, who will whine when they match and find out that their orientation date cuts into their "va-cay" time, and whine to holy heck when they get their first paycheck as a resident and see how much taxes are taken out. :rolleyes:
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This is also usually the kid who was the biggest proponent of single payer health schemes or US foreign Aid to other nations. These things get put in perspective when you actually have to pay taxes.
 
I whine a ton more than I used to. But the thing is though, when I'm around residents it all seems really silly. Sure I'm overworked but it doesn't begin to compare and at least I don't have very much responsibility at the moment in case I just happen to crash.
 
ChuckRock said:
Med students LOOOOOOOOVE to whine
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Ain't that the truth.

All you have to do is look at these boards and see all the whiny complaining threads. I agree with the other posters, even my worst day of third year has been better than my best day working out in the real world.
 
Medikit said:
I whine a ton more than I used to. But the thing is though, when I'm around residents it all seems really silly. Sure I'm overworked but it doesn't begin to compare and at least I don't have very much responsibility at the moment in case I just happen to crash.
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Its all relative isn't it. You can look at some of your unfortunate patients and realize you have a wonderful life, look at your attendings and envy their money and power, but realize the have a huge amount of responsibility, look at your residents and realize that at least you get more sleep and more positive feedback.

Someone always has it worse than you do.
 
Miami_med said:
This is also usually the kid who was the biggest proponent of single payer health schemes or US foreign Aid to other nations. These things get put in perspective when you actually have to pay taxes.
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Not necessarily. I've worked full time, supported myself and paid taxes and still support socialized medicine. Of course, I've also had to shell out of a huge portion of my take home pay and now loans to pay for health insurance, etc... It's pretty dismissive to assume that all supporters of socialized medicine are kids who haven't lived in the "real world" or whatever.

Getting back to the question, yes, med students whine too much.
 
medicomel said:
a lot of the hardcore whiners i've seen have NEVER held a job, and have no basis for comparison in regards to just how much life can suck when you're a mere cog in the corporate machine. i would much rather be slogging through anatomy any day.
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yep...that's why i laugh when i hear people whining about how unfairly they're treated... :D
 
Kimberli Cox said:
THAT is the answer my friend. And while it may be different for others (see Prowler's post above), my worst day at medical school was better than my best day at work.
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I sure hope you are referring to your job previous to med school, and not your work as a surgeon now. Correct?

And my best days at work were far, far, far better than my worst day here (and I'm only one year in). Would I want to work in landscaping/EMT for the rest of my life? Of course not. But I sure enjoyed some of it, occasionally quite a bit. We'd have cool 911 calls with serious automotive carnage (Jaws of Life are awesome), and I really got a huge sense of satisfaction when I did a really good job on someone's lawn. Mowing a crappy lawn with a crappy mower in the rain = bad days. :p I have good days now in med school too - the studying isn't usually too bad (but it sure seems like I have to do more of it than some of you) - but the bad days can be pretty bad. Like getting my block 1 neuro exam back. :thumbdown: Overall, I feel like I've made the right decision, but my complaints aren't without any basis in the work world (just no basis in the "Office Space" world :laugh: ).
 
I've had plenty of full time jobs that didn't suck as much as medschool. Work sucks, but at least you usually don't have to take it home with you. Usually it doesn't leave you completely stressed out, and usually it doesn't take over your life.
 
surebreC said:
I've had plenty of full time jobs that didn't suck as much as medschool. Work sucks, but at least you usually don't have to take it home with you. Usually it doesn't leave you completely stressed out, and usually it doesn't take over your life.
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And it pays you. Paying for med school feels like paying to be a hooker.
 
eh, everyone whines. whinny med studs become whinny residents who become whinny attendings. it's human nature.

as we look back, we all had it worse than those below us.

my motto is something that i learned while it Iraq, "just suck it up and drive on"
 
TheProwler said:
I have almost no doubts that the residents of the 90s had it worse than I will.
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And we had it way worse than todays premed! I forsee me in ten years saying to some sprite young meddies "Back in my day, the MCAT was only twice a year". They will stare on in disbelief.
 
surebreC said:
And we had it way worse than todays premed! I forsee me in ten years saying to some sprite young meddies "Back in my day, the MCAT was only twice a year". They will stare on in disbelief.
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no way. no way. just the average stats and number of applicants increasing substantially indicates that they have it tougher. i wish i had applied last year instead of this year, just because many of my schools indicated an increase in applications by the *thousands* in their rejection letters.
 
Doctor~Detroit said:
i wish i had applied last year instead of this year, just because many of my schools indicated an increase in applications by the *thousands* in their rejection letters.
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An increase in applications to a specific school by the millions wouldn't matter. One of the things that matters is the total applicant pool (i.e. is everyone now applying to 100 medical schools on AMCAS?). The second factor is the quality of the pool. A smaller overall pool could be more competitive. The only way to really guage these things is retrospectively examing the total number who applied and the qualifications of that pool.
 
I love that right now there is another post on this forum titled "I hate crappy pens!"

I think that pretty much answers the OP.
 
Everytime I want to whine, I remind myself: "I volunteered for this"

Therefore, in my eyes, I have no right to complain.
 
PenguinHead said:
Everytime I want to whine, I remind myself: "I volunteered for this"

Therefore, in my eyes, I have no right to complain.
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That's horrible logic. So anything you consented to you can never complain about again? If you go in for a nose job and come out looking like the elephant man you can't complain because you volunteered to have a nose job done? Come on.

Eh. Sometimes med students are unnecessarily whiny and sometimes they're whiny because there are unjust things being perpetuated that they have no response to other than whining (because they're powerless). Medical school administrations often treat their students like pawns whose time is utterly worthless and there's really nothing you can do about it except complain. If you don't like it, there's always earplugs.
 
dilated said:
That's horrible logic. So anything you consented to you can never complain about again? If you go in for a nose job and come out looking like the elephant man you can't complain because you volunteered to have a nose job done? Come on.

Eh. Sometimes med students are unnecessarily whiny and sometimes they're whiny because there are unjust things being perpetuated that they have no response to other than whining (because they're powerless). Medical school administrations often treat their students like pawns whose time is utterly worthless and there's really nothing you can do about it except complain. If you don't like it, there's always earplugs.
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That's a horrible analogy. I knew this would be tough going into it so it would be stupid to now say, "oh my god this is so hard i can't sleep and no one understands etc."

The nose job reference doesn't work because that wasn't what the person signed up for and it wasn't what they expected to happen.

It's fine when people make oberservations about the problems we face, but when it turns into whining I think it's somewhat childish.
 
Doctor Bagel said:
Not necessarily. I've worked full time, supported myself and paid taxes and still support socialized medicine. Of course, I've also had to shell out of a huge portion of my take home pay and now loans to pay for health insurance, etc... It's pretty dismissive to assume that all supporters of socialized medicine are kids who haven't lived in the "real world" or whatever.

Getting back to the question, yes, med students whine too much.
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Just a generalization of personal observations within my own class. I never said it was universal.
 
Miami_med said:
Just a generalization of personal observations within my own class. I never said it was universal.
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Well, considering that the vast majority of your classmates probably haven't really worked or paid much in taxes, it's a pretty worthless observation. The number of nontrads is so statistically insignificant that you can't say anything about working v. nonworking, maturity v. nonmaturity, etc. regarding feelings about socialized medicine based on anything you garner from talking to your classmates.

You're still implying that most supporters of socialized medicine don't get money or financial responsibility, which isn't a fair argument -- the fact that it's also totally irrelevant to the thread makes it even worse.
 
Yes. Yes, they are. Well, not all, but many first and second year med students. I think part of it is that when you tell people you're going to med school, everyone's like, "WOW! That must be SOOOOO HAAAAARD! You're going to work SOOO HAAARD! I could NEVER do that blah blah blah make a big fuss." Something like that. People think med school is as hard as it was maybe 50 years ago, when you actually had to, uh, go to class, and didn't get to use the internet to study and so forth. So when people get to med school and realize that, surprise, the first two years aren't quite all they are hyped to be (you can do most of the work in your PJs, etc), they feel the need to maintain the mythology, both to avoid letting people down and, let's be honest, for the street cred. Ex:
"Hi grandma, sorry I forgot to call you last week. Med school is just really hard, you know? I know you're proud, grandma, I know."
"Sorry I haven't gotten around to paying you back, dude. Just a little preoccupied with all the MED SCHOOL. I guess I should be more worried about my $15 beer debt to you than THE MOST IMPORTANT TEST I'LL EVER TAKE IN MY LIFE."
Etc.
Not that med school is easy -- it's a ton of pressure and a lot of really tough, excellent people struggle through it. I know I've struggled at times these past few years. Commisserating is a big part of keeping sane in any stressful situation, and everyone's entitled to a bitch-fest every once in awhile. But I do think a lot of the students who complain the most are the students that have the least to complain about, whereas those students who I know have incredible hardships in their lives (deaths of family members, single parenthood, etc) tend to complain the least. Go figure.
 
rhornblower said:
People think med school is as hard as it was maybe 50 years ago, when you actually had to, uh, go to class, and didn't get to use the internet to study and so forth.
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Oh yeah, because medicine was so much more difficult back when all they had to worry about was the four humours and treating diseases with "opposites". I'm sure neuroscience was far more complicated a hundred years ago when they thought the brain was simply cushioning for the soul, too.
 
It could always be worse. You could be in Fallujah.
 
rhornblower said:
People think med school is as hard as it was maybe 50 years ago, when you actually had to, uh, go to class, and didn't get to use the internet to study and so forth. So when people get to med school and realize that, surprise, the first two years aren't quite all they are hyped to be (you can do most of the work in your PJs, etc), they feel the need to maintain the mythology, both to avoid letting people down and, let's be honest, for the street cred.
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Are you kidding? Watson & Crick had just discovered, *gasp* that DNA is a double helix!!! Put that on the exam! They had a tiny fraction of the drugs we have now, and much of physiology was still undiscovered. Biochemistry was in its infancy. Just because I can get the information in different ways doesn't make school easier - it just makes it so that we can learn more, so they teach us even more.
 
rhornblower said:
Yes. Yes, they are. Well, not all, but many first and second year med students. I think part of it is that when you tell people you're going to med school, everyone's like, "WOW! That must be SOOOOO HAAAAARD! You're going to work SOOO HAAARD! I could NEVER do that blah blah blah make a big fuss." Something like that. People think med school is as hard as it was maybe 50 years ago, when you actually had to, uh, go to class, and didn't get to use the internet to study and so forth. So when people get to med school and realize that, surprise, the first two years aren't quite all they are hyped to be (you can do most of the work in your PJs, etc), they feel the need to maintain the mythology, both to avoid letting people down and, let's be honest, for the street cred. Ex:
"Hi grandma, sorry I forgot to call you last week. Med school is just really hard, you know? I know you're proud, grandma, I know."
"Sorry I haven't gotten around to paying you back, dude. Just a little preoccupied with all the MED SCHOOL. I guess I should be more worried about my $15 beer debt to you than THE MOST IMPORTANT TEST I'LL EVER TAKE IN MY LIFE."
Etc.
Not that med school is easy -- it's a ton of pressure and a lot of really tough, excellent people struggle through it. I know I've struggled at times these past few years. Commisserating is a big part of keeping sane in any stressful situation, and everyone's entitled to a bitch-fest every once in awhile. But I do think a lot of the students who complain the most are the students that have the least to complain about, whereas those students who I know have incredible hardships in their lives (deaths of family members, single parenthood, etc) tend to complain the least. Go figure.
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TheProwler said:
Are you kidding? Watson & Crick had just discovered, *gasp* that DNA is a double helix!!! Put that on the exam! They had a tiny fraction of the drugs we have now, and much of physiology was still undiscovered. Biochemistry was in its infancy. Just because I can get the information in different ways doesn't make school easier - it just makes it so that we can learn more, so they teach us even more.
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In my completely premedical opinion, I would tend to think that there's a lot of truth in both of these seemingly-conflicting-but-not-really statements.
 
Call me a "youngen who hasnt experienced life" but I think that the complaining that med students do is warranted, for the most part. Medical school sucks, and when something that sucks consumes your life it is natural to complain. What about medical students do you think makes us "extra whiny"? Is that another characteristic of a type A personality? I really doubt it. Just because someone was in the military, or held a desk job for a decade before medical school can just grin and bare it doesnt mean that we are extra whiny.
 
Um, pretty sure the "humours" model of medicine wasn't still in vogue back in the late 50's, guys. Sure, we know more about the molecular basis of medicine now, but do you really think that fifty years ago the professors said after an hour of lecture, "K, take the rest of the day off,guys.. the afternoon has been set aside for when they discover the double helix?" Um, no. There's always been WAY more to teach per day than can actually be taught. They just taught less-modern theories of pathology and probably taught what WAS understood in much more detail -- every year the review books get pared down to the barer and barer essentials to make room for new material. Don't flatter yourselves into thinking that just because new medical discoveries are made every day that your medical education is the most difficult medical education in all history. Jeez, you're not THAT special. :rolleyes:
 
I suspect you're correct, that they taught what they did know in far more detail.

Did you know that med student H&Ps used to run to 10 pages back in the 50's? When I was doing a chart review 1st year, I accidently ran across an old Charity chart from a 1950 hospital admission, and by the time I finished reading the H&P, I could actually picture the patient in my head. Complete with moles and birthmarks.

Daily patient notes discussed exactly what the patient ate at each meal, detailed descriptions of all urine and stool output (i.e. how much, how often, what it looked like), who came to visit the patient and how long they stayed, vivid and detailed descriptions of the state of any surgical incisions or bruises. No abbreviations whatsoever. Also completely legible despite being written entirely in cursive.

Seriously, I felt like I was in the room with that patient.

We are far less attentive today to the details of each patient's hospital stay, and even if we do know such details, we rarely write them down. Sometimes you can read an entire chart and still not really know what happened during that hospitalization. Particularly if it was an adverse event.
 
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