1st year tends to be rah rah fun. A few students freak out because of work load or other things they weren't expecting, but this is transient and uncommon. But the grades don't really matter (often ungraded), you're still stoked to be there, and the workload isn't that bad yet.
2nd year is mixed. It depends a lot on school and personality.
By this point you are ~$100k in debt, spent years being a pre-med and in med school, and feel you can't leave.
3rd year is hell for most med students. The hours are brutal and the competition can be extreme.
4th year is decent for most med students and in a lot of ways it can be rewarding and interesting. Grades stop mattering and hours relax again. You get to pick which rotations you want and generally get whatever locations you want as opposed to being sent to bumble**** to stare into fat middle aged vaginas. Maybe you get what you want in the match and maybe you don't. Those who do well are happy, those who get screwed or feel like they got screwed are very unhappy.
When you talk to a med student, it just depends who you talk to and when decides what response you'll get. I do find it amazing some of the most unhappy 3rd years become chipper 4th years. Some of the most chipper 1st years become bitter 4th years. This is because we all want to be happy, and most of us will try hard to forget the pain to convince ourselves we've made the right choice. Because if you know inside you've made the wrong choice, now you have to suffer through the hell of internship. There's no backing out now. Maybe you didn't match or had to scramble into the most malignant surgical internship in the country for nobody knows what reason except you just had bad luck.
Despite what you may think from SDN, most people will not speak out about their unhappiness. It's very frowned upon in the real world. Hence why in admissions you will pretty much only meet 1st years and maybe a few chipper 4th years who are happy with their matches. I call them cheerleaders. RAH RAH RAH. If anything, I think SDN tends to reflect what senior medical students really think, as opposed to biased towards the negative. Pre-allo just wants to be really happy, as sideways pointed out, to justify the pre-med decision.
In the end you're happy because you convince yourself you're happy. Maybe you can do that in med school, maybe you can't.
Yours,
A very chipper 1st year turned very unhappy 3rd year now reasonably content 4th year. Ask me again how I feel about this whole process after match.
I can't speak to everything in your post, in part because the experience at each school is different, and in part because I have to openly admit that everything I'm saying in regards to the clinical portion of the curriculum comes second-hand. And I want to make it clear that I don't presume that my experience is exactly what every med student everywhere, or even in my class, has had. Furthermore, as you say, in a few years I may have a very different outlook on the experience.
But I do think the two bolded statements are true. You can get some very different opinions from people about med school based on when you ask them, depending on if they're a 1st year or a 4th year--or even depending on whether they're on surgery vs., say, peds. And I also think that people, to a large extent, make their own happiness/satisfaction. At every step along the way, I believe there is some time for making a life outside of medical school, whether it be a couple of nights a week as a first year, or maybe one night every couple of weeks when you're on the harder rotations. Whether or not you're happy enough savoring those moments while you see some of your other college friends making money and moving on with their lives, that's entirely dependent on each individual person and what they really want out of life.
I will also say, though, that it's not like every moment you spend studying or working really feels like "work." Obviously, yes it's work, but it's also interesting, and learning can be enjoyable in and of itself.
At my school you have no time on clinicals to have a life outside of school if you plan on getting decent grades. Either your school isn't this competitive or the students aren't trying to match into competitive residencies.
I don't think either of your statements are true although I'm sure spurs can address it. I recently hung out with a md/phd from that school that's on her phd now though and she said the clinicals besides surgery were much better than the preclinicals fwiw.
At my school it's a pretty mixed bag, ob/surgery suck, med/psych are ok. primary care and peds are chill.
My point is the bar to get clinical honors here is extremely high. If students have time during clerkships, either the bar there isn't as high or the students don't care to get over that bar.
Well, that or they don't sleep. But I lost a lot of sleep and still had no life outside of medical school and still was a pretty mediocre student here.
The school in question has a 18 mo preclinical curriculum, so i think that might spread things out a bit. At our school grades range from easy to do well to very hard. I think surgery gives ~15% honors while some rotations give 50+% so it just depends.
Again, everything I'm saying is second-hand, and there's certainly a drop in the amount of free time that students have between the pre-clinical and clinical years and yes it's also rotation dependent. But the impression that I have gotten is that on most clinicals you can make some time to spend with friends, at least on most weekends and maybe an odd week night. Whether or not everyone would be happy with this, again, is person-dependent.
Med students often study in front of their laptops and are easily distracted. I didn't study with a laptop because of that, but I still wandered to the computer lab to browse SDN. Residents and attendings are actually working all day.
I actually had to download an app for Firefx to lock me out of certain time-wasting websites when I want to study. I did that for all of last block, and my grades improved SUBSTANTIALLY
But again, that's what I'm saying about being more efficient with your time--having a life in med school is a lot about cutting out "wasted" time.
For the most part I've really enjoyed medschool. My favorite year so far is 3rd year. 1st and 2nd years my schedule was far more under my own control but sitting and memorizing for countless hours was tedious. Unless an event fell in the two weeks before exams (versus the few days before in undergrad) I could usually adjust my schedule and make it, though I had to be picky about which social events to do each block moreso than in undergrad. Third year I feel like I'm doing what I came here to do. I enjoy interacting with my patients and my colleagues. I enjoy pulling together all the information and applying it to real world scenarios. I enjoy the fast pace and hands on learning.
However free time has been highly rotation dependent. I've had rotations where simply staying awake long enough to eat and read a bit when I got home was a struggle after spending 4am --> 9pm in the hospital. I've had rotations where there are no weekends and I'm only there 7am --> 1pm. For the most part I've had far less free time than ever before and have gone weeks at a time without the free time to do more than watch some tivo while I eat dinner. While of course we all know that this sacrifice is coming sometimes it is still frustrating to have to miss out on events. I can see how some people can feel down during some of the rougher rotations of 3rd year.
Again, I my impression is that the bolded is very true
Alright, that's my impression based on what I've seen so far, and I reserve the right to change my mind. I'll let you all know what I think 3 years from now
Most of the students I know that are on clinicals now still make time to have a life outside of school. Sure, it's not as much as in college or even during the pre-clinical years, and it's less on the harder rotations like surgery, but it's a matter of being efficient with your time. Realistically, I think it's better to be working your butt off in med school than to be working your butt off for, say, some faceless corporation, or worse, to be looking for a job right now.
