Do people over exaggerate the difficulty of medical school? Overthinking vs. act

This forum made possible through the generous support of SDN members, donors, and sponsors. Thank you.

Grizzle

Full Member
10+ Year Member
Joined
Sep 5, 2010
Messages
14
Reaction score
3
Do people over exaggerate the difficulty of medical school?

There seems to be a tendency for people to exaggerate when they speak of difficult things. It's sort of an ego or pride thing, trying to boost the significance of it all, or it can come from just letting lose, and writing it all out in a cleansing effort. There's nothing wrong with any of this, but it can and does happen.

It's not always the writer's fault either. The reader can interpret it in too much of a serious or literal way. And with no perspective on the topic itself, except for imagination, it can really be interpreted in an inaccurate way.

I've done this before myself, when either writing about something, or interpreting something written by someone else, so that's why I am looking into this question.

I want to go to medical school, and as I do my research, it gets exhausting. There are days when I feel really confident about my plan to embark on this journey, and then there are days when "reality" hits, or I read too much negative stuff, and I start to question myself.

And then I think maybe I am just thinking too much and taking everything too seriously.

Sometimes it's good to be prepared, and sometimes it's good just to jump into something and react as you go along.

Too much reading, too much thinking, too much preparing can cause anxiety, self doubt, and even avoidance of doing the thing that you wanted to do, which can result in doing nothing at all in the end.

So sometimes it may be best to maintain your original "dreams" and inspiration from them, and just go for it. Let the chips fall where they may.

Maybe some of you can give me your thoughts on this, in a general sense, and also as it related to medical school etc.

Members don't see this ad.
 
  • Like
Reactions: 1 users
i somewhat agree with you. i have always thought, "what is the point of those 'would you do it again' threads. no matter what people say and how bad it is, each one of us is not going to listen and is going to later on say it's not worth it." that's how it is. people disregard so they can find out for themselves. and i plan on doing just that.

now i am not in medical school so i can't fully answer but i don't think people exagerate the difficulty. maybe a little. but i am going into it thinking i will study all day and all night. will i? probably not. but then again when i do get there and my family asks if it is hard, i will probably exagerate.
 
It's pretty damn hard. I felt similarly to you two before I started, but yeah, it sucks up a lot of time. I am still adjusting 4 weeks in. It's take a lot more time and effort than a 40 hr./wk. job like the one I had before entering med school. Additionally, it takes a lot more effort than any semester I spent in college (including my post-bac where I was taking o chem, o chem lab, biology, biology lab, physics, and physics lab all at once). It also takes more work than any semester in graduate school when I was getting my Master's in statistics. It's hard.

I still think it's worth it though. But, then again, I'm 4 weeks in...
 
Members don't see this ad :)
It's pretty damn hard. I felt similarly to you two before I started, but yeah, it sucks up a lot of time. I am still adjusting 4 weeks in. It's take a lot more time and effort than a 40 hr./wk. job like the one I had before entering med school. Additionally, it takes a lot more effort than any semester I spent in college (including my post-bac where I was taking o chem, o chem lab, biology, biology lab, physics, and physics lab all at once). It also takes more work than any semester in graduate school when I was getting my Master's in statistics. It's hard.

I still think it's worth it though. But, then again, I'm 4 weeks in...

Agree. Basically go into it thinking you are going to get up, go to class, then have an hour or two to relax, exercise, whatever, and then back to the books until you are overtaken with sleep, every day. And plan to use most weekends to catch up and organize the week's material. So no, it's not impossible, just very time consuming. You need to treat it like a full time, 60+ hour/week job, and you will be fine. When I was a law grad, I worked long hours at a law firm and had to work at least part of most weekend days. Basically the hours didn't change much. That's the pattern a lot of people find works for the first two years. Now there are some folks who don't put in the time and still get by, and some who put in that much time and still flounder, but I think it's not an unrealistic estimate of what's involved.

Then you get to the clinical years, and the game is stepped up a bit. Depending on your med school, you may have overnight call for some rotations every 4th night. You probably will only have off 4 weekend days per month (standard for most interns BTW). There will be easier rotations (eg psych) where you might see daylight, and harder rotations (surgery, OB) where you might not. And despite the long hours you need to use your "spare time" to prepare for the shelf exams after each rotation.

Fourth year gets a bit lighter in terms of workload. You will have some sub-I's that will still be the equivalent of 3rd year, but you will also have some elective time and some vacation time. But you will be applying for and interviewing for residency, and probably will be taking the two parts of Step 2, so it can be intense depending on how you are scheduling things.

So yeah, I would say it's no exaggeration that many people work harder than they ever have in med school. To do well, some find it necessary to treat it as a long-houred intense job, and allot their time accordingly. That doesn't mean you won't have your 1 hour/day to work out and it doesn't mean that if you put in a solid day of studying on Saturday you can't go out to dinner and a movie Saturday night. Just not during exam weeks.
 
My MIT turned MD friend still parties 3 days a week and is doing great. I think if you went to a rigorous undergrad, didn't take easy classes to pad the GPA, and have the study skills to efficiently manage one's time, you'll do fine.

Now, if you were the type of person to take your classes at an easy school, took GPA fillers, cheated on tests to get by, and can't parse your time when you have multiple tests on the same day, then its another story.
 
  • Like
Reactions: 1 user
My MIT turned MD friend still parties 3 days a week and is doing great. I think if you went to a rigorous undergrad, didn't take easy classes to pad the GPA, and have the study skills to efficiently manage one's time, you'll do fine.

Now, if you were the type of person to take your classes at an easy school, took GPA fillers, cheated on tests to get by, and can't parse your time when you have multiple tests on the same day, then its another story.
I dunno, man. Some people are naturally talented. Those people are also usually the ones at MIT, Cal Tech, and other rigorous schools.
 
Med school *is* challenging, although I think different people are challenged by different aspects. Personally, I didn't think the classroom part of it was inherently challenging (and for the record, I am not an MIT grad!). The main issue people have is that there is a lot of material to learn, and some people aren't very efficient at studying to begin with. So for the first two years, time management is one of the biggest challenges that many people face, especially if you also have a family/mortgage/other outside obligations. There are also some people who have personal issues come up, and that makes it harder too, because the med school schedule doesn't slow down just because your parent died or you got pregnant. That being said, these kinds of things aren't insurmountable. For example, some people work it out by taking an extra year to graduate.

Third year is the most challenging time-wise, and it's also a lot more emotionally challenging for many people. I don't think most people find their former jobs nearly as emotionally draining as medicine is, unless they're already coming from a similarly charged career like nursing or EMS. Coming from a chemistry lab, I can tell you that I did not work more hours third year (and actually, probably fewer hours, since I often didn't take any days off as a chemist!). But third year of med school was way more emotionally exhausting. Third year is also hard because you never quite figure out what you're supposed to do. As soon as you do start figuring it out, bam, that rotation is done and you go back to being clueless again on your next rotation. Plus, every attending wants things done differently, even on the same rotation. Eventually, you have to learn to just go with the flow and accept that a lot of things are tradition and personal preference, and objective science just doesn't enter into it all that much.

It's hard for me to give an unequivocal answer to the question of whether I think going to med school was "worth it." Part of me wishes I had gone to pharmacy school instead, because drug stuff is the academic part of medicine that I like the most. Unlike many of you folks, I have never been all that "fascinated by the human body." I was probably the only premed in my intro bio class who was more into the ecology part versus the comparative anatomy part. But at the same time, I also enjoy taking care of patients, and that would not really be possible as a pharmacist. Maybe the best way to think of it is that there are pros and cons to doing anything, including medical school. If you can find a specialty that you love--and that is harder for some people than others--then I think the cons of a career in medicine become easier to put up with. I also think that the people who are the least happy in medicine are the ones who view it as "just a job." My personal opinion, for whatever you think it's worth.
 
I was at my first medical school interview the other day. The dean came in and spoke to us and echoed what I have heard countless medical students and residents say on these forums. That is that medical school is very difficult. Not because the material is hard to learn in and of itself but that it comes to you so fast and in such great volumes you have to devote yourself completely to staying on task. She even used the whole "drinking from a fire hose" analogy which I chuckled at (and she looked at me with a smirk when I did so) because I've heard that same analogy used on here millions of times.
 
... I also think that the people who are the least happy in medicine are the ones who view it as "just a job." My personal opinion, for whatever you think it's worth.

There is no question this is absolutely the case. If you look at it as simply a job, then you cannot help but compare it to the dozens of other more pleasant, less emotionally trying things you could be doing that don't require a lot of the crap doctors have to put up with. There will be numerous awful tasks that you have to gladly roll up your sleeves and do on this path, and there will be patients and families that won't do well and once you are in residency, you end up the point person having to break lousy news to folks whose close family members aren't going to make it, or have taken a turn for the worse, or didn't survive the procedure you just got their consent to perform, etc.

Every time you get woken up in the middle of the night, to go into a room to manually disimpact some rectally obstructed dude who asks you for a ton of narcotics beforehand (which likely is the root of his constipation in the first place), you are going to wonder whether it would have been wiser to just become an accountant, and earn a bit less money for nicer hours, nicer surroundings and fewer handfuls of feces. If you went into medicine for reasons other than it simply being a well paying job at the end, you probably can get past these indignities. Otherwise, you are going to start realizing that there are other jobs with a better lifestyle, that make you put up with a lot less after 4 years of professional training.
 
Last edited:
There is no question this is absolutely the case. If you look at it as simply a job, then you cannot help but compare it to the dozens of other more pleasant, less emotionally trying things you could be doing that don't require a lot of the crap doctors have to put up with. There will be numerous awful tasks that you have to gladly roll up your sleeves and do on this path, and there will be patients and families that won't do well and once you are in residency, you end up the point person having to break lousy news to folks whose close family members aren't going to make it, or have taken a turn for the worse, or didn't survive the procedure you just got their consent to perform, etc.

Every time you get woken up in the middle of the night, to go into a room to manually disimpact some rectally obstructed dude who asks you for a ton of narcotics beforehand (which likely is the root of his constipation in the first place), you are going to wonder whether it would have been wiser to just become an accountant, and earn a bit less money for nicer hours, nicer surroundings and fewer handfuls of feces. If you went into medicine for reasons other than it simply being a well paying job at the end, you probably can get past these indignities. Otherwise, you are going to start realizing that there are other jobs with a better lifestyle, that make you put up with a lot less after 4 years of professional training.

I've assisted with one of those decompactions... WHOA the smell!
 
I've assisted with one of those decompactions... WHOA the smell!

Does anyone care to explain to me why it has to be manual? Isn't there some sort of stick that can be manufactured? I mean, I really have to stick my finger in some guy's ******* and dig his **** out? Really?! No curved stick or anything?! We're sending satellites to distant galaxies and I have to put my index finger in someone else's butthole to remove something. That makes no sense whatsoever.
 
I'm nasrudin, PFC. Nothing wise to say. Other than this is pretty hard. To do well I'd have to uptick my effort to 60 + hours of bookslingin. Problem is. It's one thing to work a clock for 60 hours and then skate. Here in med school your are the board of directors of your own operation. And some of mine want to sell and take the last parachute. That wastes time right there.

It's hard to organize yourself around studying for that long. Long enough to soak up all of the trivia in a given week. And it keeps coming.

If you run a dictatorship in your head. And grub for points as easily as taking a wiz. Then sure this is right up your alley.

Me. I miss my buddy. You know. The guy who doesn't mind if you puke in his car cause you had f-funn last night mf'er.

I miss that guy. Here it's butt-clenching nerd games from go. Go all day. Then sleep. No one leans over and says...this is some b@ll**** in a southern accent just to make that meeting go by funnier. They're all too busy scribbling. Picking up the phd dribble like madmen mining for gold.

I kind of wonder if I'm on the wrong boat. But too far to swim back now.

So hard is what kind of hard to you mean?


The material. No. The adaptation to the fastness of the game. And the game itself. For me atleast. Muy dificil.
 
  • Like
Reactions: 1 user
I'm nasrudin, PFC. Nothing wise to say. Other than this is pretty hard. To do well I'd have to uptick my effort to 60 + hours of bookslingin. Problem is. It's one thing to work a clock for 60 hours and then skate. Here in med school your are the board of directors of your own operation. And some of mine want to sell and take the last parachute. That wastes time right there.

It's hard to organize yourself around studying for that long. Long enough to soak up all of the trivia in a given week. And it keeps coming.

If you run a dictatorship in your head. And grub for points as easily as taking a wiz. Then sure this is right up your alley.

Me. I miss my buddy. You know. The guy who doesn't mind if you puke in his car cause you had f-funn last night mf'er.

I miss that guy. Here it's butt-clenching nerd games from go. Go all day. Then sleep. No one leans over and says...this is some b@ll**** in a southern accent just to make that meeting go by funnier. They're all too busy scribbling. Picking up the phd dribble like madmen mining for gold.

I kind of wonder if I'm on the wrong boat. But too far to swim back now.

So hard is what kind of hard to you mean?


The material. No. The adaptation to the fastness of the game. And the game itself. For me atleast. Muy dificil.

^poetry.

That's the battle. It's a mind and energy battle. Some people love nothing more than snuggling up with boring ass **** and memorizing it. And for many hours.

For the rest of us, it's a nightmare. Like Nasrudin, I'm going through this wondering WTF am I doing here? I don't love this ****. In fact, I hate it. But every morning I wake up to the obligation to learn it. Not just learn it, but learn it in volumes. And it's not like a solid effort ensures success. No. You can really try and still come short. It's a different ballgame. I hate it and I often think I picked the wrong profession. But as Nasrudin pointed out, there really is no turning back. I'm already 6 figures in debt.

Moral of the story: if you're pursuing this career because you're absolutely fascinated by science and the human body, you'll probably enjoy the process. If you're like me and chose this career for practical reasons, you're in for many days of absolute hell. No exaggeration.
 
  • Like
Reactions: 1 user
Members don't see this ad :)
Moral of the story: if you're pursuing this career because you're absolutely fascinated by science and the human body, you'll probably enjoy the process. If you're like me and chose this career for practical reasons, you're in for many days of absolute hell. No exaggeration.
Dude, if this is how you're feeling while in medical school... how on earth are you planning to get through residency?
 
Dude, if this is how you're feeling while in medical school... how on earth are you planning to get through residency?

Honestly? It's a fear of mine. That said, I have a genuine interest in psychiatry. I'm crossing my fingers that it doesn't become my generation's derm.
 
Honestly? It's a fear of mine. That said, I have a genuine interest in psychiatry. I'm crossing my fingers that it doesn't become my generation's derm.

Unless they up the reimbursements for pysch, I think you're in the clear. I've read that's the single best predictor for specialty competitiveness.
 
Dude, if this is how you're feeling while in medical school... how on earth are you planning to get through residency?
Assuming sideways is a preclinical student and you are a resident, then you know better than most anyone posting in this thread how little resemblance there is between the first two years of med school and being on the wards.

I've already told Nas this, but sideways, what you're doing now is nothing like what you'll be doing come third year or beyond. If you can, go spend some time in the hospital, volunteer in a clinic, something where you're around patients. It will remind you why you're going through what you're doing now. Maybe see if you can round with an inpatient psychiatrist.

As for why the manual disimpaction, I can't answer that. Up to this point, I've only used fleet enemas. If it doesn't work the first time, you do it a second or third time, and it works. :shrug:
 
I've already told Nas this, but sideways, what you're doing now is nothing like what you'll be doing come third year or beyond. If you can, go spend some time in the hospital, volunteer in a clinic, something where you're around patients. It will remind you why you're going through what you're doing now. Maybe see if you can round with an inpatient psychiatrist.

How would you (and other M3's and beyond) characterize this difference? I already know that the first two years of medical school would be hell for me, although I do genuinely enjoy being in the hospital setting -- and if my learning is taking place in the context of this setting I feel it would be much more enjoyable.

On a related note... in residency, how much studying needs to be done on one's own?

Thanks for any thoughts.
 
How would you (and other M3's and beyond) characterize this difference?
I would characterize it as the difference between taking a middle school sex ed class versus having an actual intimate relationship.

On a related note... in residency, how much studying needs to be done on one's own?
With the caveat that I'm only applying now and have not yet started residency, it appears that this varies widely based on my reading of several dozen websites. Some programs have a very structured didactics curriculum, including regular lectures, board prep, journal clubs, M & M, etc. built in, along with weekly assigned readings. I've even seen at least one program that assigns weekly homework! Other programs seem to leave the residents more to their own devices, although every program has some kind of didactics. Those people probably need to do more self-study. I would also guess that it depends on the resident. Some people need to study more in med school than others do, and I don't see why that would be any different in residency.
 
...
As for why the manual disimpaction, I can't answer that. Up to this point, I've only used fleet enemas. If it doesn't work the first time, you do it a second or third time, and it works. :shrug:

Um no, it doesn't. It's a very wimpy obstruction that can be cleared by a mere enema. Many obstructions won't be so easy. I know few medicine residents who haven't come across at least one of these at least every couple of months. It's very common.
 
Last edited:
Does anyone care to explain to me why it has to be manual? Isn't there some sort of stick that can be manufactured? I mean, I really have to stick my finger in some guy's ******* and dig his **** out? Really?! ...

Um, you aren't going to be able to stop at just the finger to get this accomplished. A finger is fine for a DRE (digital rectal exam -- something that is part of every admission physical exam at many places), but to actually manually disimpact, you had better remove your watch.
 
^poetry.

That's the battle. It's a mind and energy battle. Some people love nothing more than snuggling up with boring ass **** and memorizing it. And for many hours.

For the rest of us, it's a nightmare. Like Nasrudin, I'm going through this wondering WTF am I doing here? I don't love this ****. In fact, I hate it. But every morning I wake up to the obligation to learn it. Not just learn it, but learn it in volumes. And it's not like a solid effort ensures success. No. You can really try and still come short. It's a different ballgame. I hate it and I often think I picked the wrong profession. But as Nasrudin pointed out, there really is no turning back. I'm already 6 figures in debt.

Moral of the story: if you're pursuing this career because you're absolutely fascinated by science and the human body, you'll probably enjoy the process. If you're like me and chose this career for practical reasons, you're in for many days of absolute hell. No exaggeration.


$H*T Guys! I'm going on interviews soon, you're killing me yo!
 
I would characterize it as the difference between taking a middle school sex ed class versus having an actual intimate relationship.

Phew! Language a man can understand.
 
Last edited:
Medicine is not in itself "hard" to learn but the volume of information is the difficulty. I think the problem for medical students is in college you pretty much learn and dump most of the information you are taught, this happens in med school as well except you really need to know a much larger breadth of information to be competent.

As far as time commitment, as one of my mentors says... "it is not that we don't live lives, it is just a different kind of life than most people". Bingo, medicine is sort of an altered reality. The process from medical school to attending is one where you essentially lose your previous life and undergo basically the grieving process, you know all the stages with the last stage being ..... acceptance. By the time you are a resident you find that most of your friends are residents, your whole life is consumed by your specialty, you have to read at night (which is hard because your exhausted), you don't mind being at work because you have succumbed to being a physician. Your friends who are not in medicine don't really have any idea about what it is to be a physician.

The consolation is that there is acceptance and at that point life doesn't seem so bad, I am currently at this point. I function well in my role, have fun, like my cohorts, my wife and family still love me but it is not like my previous life or how my friends outside of medicine live but it is ok. I get to do incredible operations, make some real changes in peoples lives (for better or worse), and sometimes truly get to save a life and even sometimes the patient will say thank you....


Then hopefully you finish residency and it gets a little better.:laugh:

skialta
 
Do people over exaggerate the difficulty of medical school?
I can only comment on M1 and M2. But yes, I think quite a few people do over-exaggerate. Don't get me wrong, it's a lot of work, but some of the stuff I hear my classmates say and read on SDN I think is BS, or a lot of people need to work on time management.

I think part of it is that a large portion of med students have never had a truly busy schedule, which makes med school seem like the worst thing ever. I had a pretty packed schedule the three years before starting med school and my lifestyle is pretty similar (somewhat self-inflicted by side activities like research projects). For me it's gone: Exam weeks suck, and the rest of the time is enjoyable.

Um, you aren't going to be able to stop at just the finger to get this accomplished. A finger is fine for a DRE (digital rectal exam -- something that is part of every admission physical exam at many places), but to actually manually disimpact, you had better remove your watch.
:barf:
 
Um, you aren't going to be able to stop at just the finger to get this accomplished. A finger is fine for a DRE (digital rectal exam -- something that is part of every admission physical exam at many places), but to actually manually disimpact, you had better remove your watch.

:laugh:
 
Assuming sideways is a preclinical student and you are a resident, then you know better than most anyone posting in this thread how little resemblance there is between the first two years of med school and being on the wards.

I've already told Nas this, but sideways, what you're doing now is nothing like what you'll be doing come third year or beyond. If you can, go spend some time in the hospital, volunteer in a clinic, something where you're around patients. It will remind you why you're going through what you're doing now. Maybe see if you can round with an inpatient psychiatrist.

As for why the manual disimpaction, I can't answer that. Up to this point, I've only used fleet enemas. If it doesn't work the first time, you do it a second or third time, and it works. :shrug:

It's definitely the classroom setting that I'm just OVER. I anticipate the hospital setting will be much more enjoyable for me. That's the hope at least.
 
Um, you aren't going to be able to stop at just the finger to get this accomplished. A finger is fine for a DRE (digital rectal exam -- something that is part of every admission physical exam at many places), but to actually manually disimpact, you had better remove your watch.

If I come into the clinic with constipation, and you start taking off your watch with the intention of getting your forearm into my rectum, you've got another thing coming, chief :ninja:
 
If I come into the clinic with constipation, and you start taking off your watch with the intention of getting your forearm into my rectum, you've got another thing coming, chief :ninja:


And if I start taking off my watch and the patient DOESN'T try to stop me, I'm even more concerned
 
Um no, it doesn't. It's a very wimpy obstruction that can be cleared by a mere enema. Many obstructions won't be so easy. I know few medicine residents who haven't come across at least one of these at least every couple of months. It's very common.
I once had someone in bilateral renal failure in the MICU because the fecal impaction was so severe. It was a brutal manual job.
 
I once had someone in bilateral renal failure in the MICU because the fecal impaction was so severe. It was a brutal manual job.
I'm gonna guess that this was post-renal failure, correct? :idea:
 
I'm gonna guess that this was post-renal failure, correct? :idea:

Not necessarily. If the impaction led to bowl perf or translocation of intestinal bacteria, the ensuing sepsis/MODS would wreck the kidneys.
 
Um no, it doesn't. It's a very wimpy obstruction that can be cleared by a mere enema. Many obstructions won't be so easy. I know few medicine residents who haven't come across at least one of these at least every couple of months. It's very common.
Hmm, evidently I've been a lot luckier than you have up to this point. But when and if my luck changes, I'll for sure be thinking of you. ;)
 
Hmm, evidently I've been a lot luckier than you have up to this point. But when and if my luck changes, I'll for sure be thinking of you. ;)

It's not pleasant, but makes for great family dinner conversation... "so, what did you do today?" :D

Guys, when you go down the medical path, you have got to leave a lot of mores and notions of taboo at the door. Nothing will embarrass you after a year of internship. You are going to ask the elderly if they are promiscuous. You are going to examine every orifice of your patients. You are going to stick lines, catheters and tubes into people in a variety of uncomfortable directions, often in the middle of the night, your eyes glazed over from lack of sleep. You will be unflappable, able to think calmly in a #$%# storm. Many of you will become cynics, jaded -- will chuckle at gallows humor, will find a way to combine caring with cold stoicism. There will be days when you feel like you ought to hose yourself off before heading home, but each day brings it's own surprises -- it's not dull, that's for sure.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: 1 user
That's the battle. It's a mind and energy battle. Some people love nothing more than snuggling up with boring ass **** and memorizing it. And for many hours.

For the rest of us, it's a nightmare. Like Nasrudin, I'm going through this wondering WTF am I doing here? I don't love this ****. In fact, I hate it. But every morning I wake up to the obligation to learn it. Not just learn it, but learn it in volumes. And it's not like a solid effort ensures success. No. You can really try and still come short. It's a different ballgame. I hate it and I often think I picked the wrong profession. But as Nasrudin pointed out, there really is no turning back. I'm already 6 figures in debt.

Moral of the story: if you're pursuing this career because you're absolutely fascinated by science and the human body, you'll probably enjoy the process. If you're like me and chose this career for practical reasons, you're in for many days of absolute hell. No exaggeration.

Ditto.

As far as your question about the difficulty, the material isn't difficult, but there's a lot of it. I spend about the same amount of time studying as I did in undergrad, but now instead of getting 100's, I get high C's/low B's. It takes a lot more work to maintain similar grades. There's just so much **** to memorize.
 
... I spend about the same amount of time studying as I did in undergrad, but now instead of getting 100's, I get high C's/low B's. ...

Some might argue that this means you really ought to step it up a bit. You are SUPPOSED to be working harder in med school than undergrad -- that's the norm. To answer your thread on the allo board, yes, you are potentially "shooting yourself in the foot". While you may think high C's are adequate now (especially if you are in a P/F system), the additional effort pays dividends when you have to prepare for Step 1. When you get to 3rd year and fall in love with a more competitive specialty you didn't realize you were going to like, you are going to be upset with yourself that you didn't push a bit harder. Or if anesthesia (what I think you said you were interested in in the other thread) goes back to being a bit more competitive (it's sort of a roller coaster year to year), you might find yourself coming up short. I'm just saying.

At any rate, when you are posting threads asking if you are "shooting yourself in the foot", and a lot of people are responding "yes", then maybe you aren't the one who should be giving advice on a thread such as this one, no?
 
Last edited:
Some might argue that this means you really ought to step it up a bit. You are SUPPOSED to be working harder in med school than undergrad -- that's the norm. To answer your thread on the allo board, yes, you are potentially "shooting yourself in the foot". While you may think high C's are adequate now (especially if you are in a P/F system), the additional effort pays dividends when you have to prepare for Step 1. When you get to 3rd year and fall in love with a more competitive specialty you didn't realize you were going to like, you are going to be upset with yourself that you didn't push a bit harder. Or if anesthesia (what I think you said you were interested in in the other thread) goes back to being a bit more competitive (it's sort of a roller coaster year to year), you might find yourself coming up short. I'm just saying.

At any rate, when you are posting threads asking if you are "shooting yourself in the foot", and a lot of people are responding "yes", then maybe you aren't the one who should be giving advice on a thread such as this one, no?

If tehdude is anything like me, he's not even sure how to push harder. I don't know how to study for 12 hours a day. I don't really know how not to procrastinate. I don't know how to not makes these buckets of facts stick in my head and not just leave my body with my after-exam diarrhea. Etcetera.
 
He's not like you -- his other thread suggests he's choosing not to put in more effort to do better.

I have a feeling it's not much of a choice. I'll let him confirm or deny.
 
I have a feeling it's not much of a choice. I'll let him confirm or deny.

Well in his other thread he said,
"I don't much like studying. I never really have. And things haven't changed much since starting medical school. I often skip class, and I usually wait until 3-4 days before exams before downloading PowerPoint lectures to read/study. ... I'm enjoying life. I figure since preclinical grades aren't really that important anyway, I only need to pass. ... I enjoy my free time."

Sounds like someone making a choice to me.
 
Well in his other thread he said,
"I don't much like studying. I never really have. And things haven't changed much since starting medical school. I often skip class, and I usually wait until 3-4 days before exams before downloading PowerPoint lectures to read/study. ... I'm enjoying life. I figure since preclinical grades aren't really that important anyway, I only need to pass. ... I enjoy my free time."

Sounds like someone making a choice to me.

You're being too literal for my taste.
 

There is only one way to really describe it . . .

It is just like programming in assembly. You gotta think like an ape but work real hard.

The material is a joke in terms of difficulty, but the sheer quantity of it is just outstanding. It is also the way they add so much superfluous stuff in school that makes it that much more difficult. But don't let anyone ever scare you away, the stuff is a lot of hard work but seriously a joke. The way I see it, I could be out there digging a ditch all day or in an air conditioned fluorescent lit building reading all day. I chose the reading but to each his own.

:D good luck and I hope you love it when you get to it.
 
  • Like
Reactions: 1 user
I think the biggest difficulty is GETTING IN! :laugh::laugh::laugh: Once you're in, the course load is rigorous, but seems like it's much more interesting than undergrad course work. Hard work, but fun work at that point, so to speak. :)
 
I think the biggest difficulty is GETTING IN! :laugh::laugh::laugh: Once you're in, the course load is rigorous, but seems like it's much more interesting than undergrad course work. Hard work, but fun work at that point, so to speak. :)

You'd be dead wrong.
 
You'd be dead wrong.
It's not interesting? How come? You guys are mostly getting more specific and studying the human body and whatnot at that point, rather than doing general chem. and a bunch of stuff not even remotely related to medicine lol. I even know residents who say they enjoy med school much more than undergrad.
 
It's not interesting? How come? You guys are mostly getting more specific and studying the human body and whatnot at that point, rather than doing general chem. and a bunch of stuff not even remotely related to medicine lol. I even know residents who say they enjoy med school much more than undergrad.

You can't understand it 'till you try it. It's occasionally interesting, usually not. But NOTHING is interesting in the doses you're expected to ingest it in in medical school. Add a heaping helping of stress (it's easy to get kicked out, easy to relegate yourself to a crappy specialty), and you've got the recipe for a nightmare.

The residents probably don't remember the pre-clinical years very accurately. We tend to look at things in a better light as time passes. There's no way in hell med school is better than undergrad. The sheer stress difference alone isn't even in the same galaxy.
 
You can't understand it 'till you try it. It's occasionally interesting, usually not. But NOTHING is interesting in the doses you're expected to ingest it in in medical school. Add a heaping helping of stress (it's easy to get kicked out, easy to relegate yourself to a crappy specialty), and you've got the recipe for a nightmare.

The residents probably don't remember the pre-clinical years very accurately. We tend to look at things in a better light as time passes. There's no way in hell med school is better than undergrad. The sheer stress difference alone isn't even in the same galaxy.

Yes. Imagine the 5 smartest people in your organic chemistry class. Now multiply by 30. That's your medical school class. And these people want to get it on.

Let's say you just made it in. And you want to put behind you a dependency on a stressful mindset to perform. You want to focus on what attracted you to the job itself.

Sike.

You're right back in the pit. But this time the atomosphere is more serious. People around are peaking. Some aren't doing so well. Some are worried they'll get voted off the island. Some are gunning for control of the top spots.

It's easy to loose your head.

That's the difficulty for me. How to make it fun and interesting. How to make it about getting the job I want. And how not to stress about the point shagging game. It's not easy. After starting well it's taken me a couple of near fails and some serious not givin a f@ck just to recoup. To rethink my whole mental game.

Now I'm feeling better. Ready to work. So. Undergrad just doesn't pull that deeply at your ability to deal with a whole new ballgame. Med school will.

You might acclimate with ease. You might not. You won't know till you try it. But not to worry. There's enough work there to keep us all busy until were dead and the next generation carries it on.
 
At any rate, when you are posting threads asking if you are "shooting yourself in the foot", and a lot of people are responding "yes", then maybe you aren't the one who should be giving advice on a thread such as this one, no?

He asked how difficult medical school was. I gave him my opinion of the difficulty. I think I am perfectly qualified to give my opinion of how difficult I think med school is to me.

Regarding the other thread, whatever. People can say I'm shooting myself in the foot, but I'm still doing better than 1/2 the class. Maybe I won't get into a very competitive residencies. Or maybe I'll start studying before boards and blow everyone away. :laugh:

I have a feeling it's not much of a choice. I'll let him confirm or deny.

I don't really know what my problem is. Sometimes I think academics have always come more easily to me, so I never really learned how to study. Or maybe it's ADD. Whatever it is, I just can't sit down and study for very long. But he is right that I do enjoy my free time. I can't imagine people studying for 3 hours every night. :scared:
 
I don't really know what my problem is. Sometimes I think academics have always come more easily to me, so I never really learned how to study. Or maybe it's ADD. Whatever it is, I just can't sit down and study for very long. But he is right that I do enjoy my free time. I can't imagine people studying for 3 hours every night. :scared:

People use the word "can't" strangely. A paralyzed person can't walk. A man with a certain kind of stroke can't talk. An autistic child can't interact with his peers.

But a student who "can't" study for more than 3 hours. Hmmm. That's a strange use of the word.

Ok, I'm not a medical student yet and have no right to an opinion
 
I am gonna have to stand on a soap box for a bit and just say that a lot of this medical school is so hard stuff is just a bunch of drama queeness. People love to tell others of how much harder they have it than others. Truth be told, we are in medical school not Iraq or some other god forsaken place. How bad can it really be? Whats the worst case scenario, you get a bunch of C's and in the end people call you doctor? Oooh the agony. Best case scenario, you get all A's and in the end people call you guess what?

Take it easy guys, don't stress have fun and gun the bleep out of it.

EDIT: To all the guys that like to march with the mantra of you can't even imagine. Bull****, you can imagine anything. I am sure many of the premeds on here do have a realistic view of what medical school is like. I know I did. How hard can it be to imagine reading for a good portion of the day?
 
Top