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Most of them are so immature. A lot of hotties but the age difference makes a much bigger impact than I thought
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- Thread starter ilovegrapesoda
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Most of them are so immature. A lot of hotties but the age difference makes a much bigger impact than I thought
The first two years were a lot like high school, except the people were slightly more tolerable in some ways. High school for me involved a lot of frustration with my classmates' anti-intellectual attitudes. For instance, a real conversation from high school:
Me: "Hey guys, I've been noticing recently that even though it certainly feels like we have some amount of choice and self-determination, since we can only make one "choice" from a set of options, I don't think it's possible we can ever know whether the universe is deterministic or allows for choice. Do you guys have any thoughts on this or can you think of any ways we can know this sort of thing that I've missed?"
Friends: "Dude, shut up. It's lunch period. This is no-thinking time."
In med school, people will usually be happy to talk about this sort of stuff (although their points are more frequently half-baked/concrete/uninteresting than when talking with fellow philosophy people in college, which I miss).
The social dynamics were similar in that you spend a lot of time with the same people and in my program (which was PBL), everybody got out of group at the same time and had lunch together. People were cliquey, with groups revolving around, typically, either personality or specialty. The "California people," for whatever reason tended to hang out together. There were a few people who were more philosophically trained/inclined, who I hung out with (however, most of these people for whatever reason were also planning on doing psych, so it's unclear which initially formed the basis of the clique). However, I felt the cliques were a little less exclusive and people were more friendly to out-groups.
In the clinical years, I find it hard to compare to high school. It's much more comparable to when I had a ****ty summer job in college than high school. In my ****ty summer job, there was one vagrant 19 year old who would show up to work high and ask me to drive him home because he lost his license due to a DUI. On clinical rotations, there's often some idiot who refuses to preround on patients, never prints out notes, never gathers wound supplies, can't follow up on a fax, etc. and generates more work. At my ****ty summer job, I would often get dismissed right before I would hit overtime hours. In the hospital, I often get dismissed right before signout. In both situations, it was framed as "you get to go home early." In both situations people asked me incredibly dumb questions or expected me to know **** that I had no business knowing: "Excuse me, med student who is not part of my medical team, my doctor said I might want to have some procedure, I don't remember what it was but I think it starts with an H. Anyway, my insurance is X and I wasn't sure whether that thing will be covered. Do you know about this?" Both the hospital and my ****ty summer job involved unscheduled lunch breaks at the attached food court which mostly sells ****ty food. Both the hospital and my ****ty summer job involved some cursory day of "training" after which I knew some esoteric random stuff about my work environment but still didn't know things like what to do on my first day.
Me: "Hey guys, I've been noticing recently that even though it certainly feels like we have some amount of choice and self-determination, since we can only make one "choice" from a set of options, I don't think it's possible we can ever know whether the universe is deterministic or allows for choice. Do you guys have any thoughts on this or can you think of any ways we can know this sort of thing that I've missed?"
Friends: "Dude, shut up. It's lunch period. This is no-thinking time."
In med school, people will usually be happy to talk about this sort of stuff (although their points are more frequently half-baked/concrete/uninteresting than when talking with fellow philosophy people in college, which I miss).
The social dynamics were similar in that you spend a lot of time with the same people and in my program (which was PBL), everybody got out of group at the same time and had lunch together. People were cliquey, with groups revolving around, typically, either personality or specialty. The "California people," for whatever reason tended to hang out together. There were a few people who were more philosophically trained/inclined, who I hung out with (however, most of these people for whatever reason were also planning on doing psych, so it's unclear which initially formed the basis of the clique). However, I felt the cliques were a little less exclusive and people were more friendly to out-groups.
In the clinical years, I find it hard to compare to high school. It's much more comparable to when I had a ****ty summer job in college than high school. In my ****ty summer job, there was one vagrant 19 year old who would show up to work high and ask me to drive him home because he lost his license due to a DUI. On clinical rotations, there's often some idiot who refuses to preround on patients, never prints out notes, never gathers wound supplies, can't follow up on a fax, etc. and generates more work. At my ****ty summer job, I would often get dismissed right before I would hit overtime hours. In the hospital, I often get dismissed right before signout. In both situations, it was framed as "you get to go home early." In both situations people asked me incredibly dumb questions or expected me to know **** that I had no business knowing: "Excuse me, med student who is not part of my medical team, my doctor said I might want to have some procedure, I don't remember what it was but I think it starts with an H. Anyway, my insurance is X and I wasn't sure whether that thing will be covered. Do you know about this?" Both the hospital and my ****ty summer job involved unscheduled lunch breaks at the attached food court which mostly sells ****ty food. Both the hospital and my ****ty summer job involved some cursory day of "training" after which I knew some esoteric random stuff about my work environment but still didn't know things like what to do on my first day.
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Not really? I mean, people gossip about who's hooking up but that happens in grown up workplaces too. There aren't cliques so much as people who group up around some common origin, race, religion, or interest. Again, just like any adult workplace. But no one isolates or judges anyone else. They say high school is kind of like a microcosm of society...
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One of our recent fellows was a huge cerebral intellectual, complete with Ivy League philosophy degrees (note the "s"), etc. They were thinking on a different level all the time. I think their year was much less intellectual than they expected. We're a bunch of amazing CV prestige ******, and look fabulous on paper, but at the end of the day we just want to do the job well and efficiently and go home to our significant others/hobbies/beach houses/whisky collection, not debate the merits of *** (insert anything not directly related to today's patient care here). At the end of the day, medicine is just a job, and even if you're one of only a couple hospitals performing some rare procedures or are writing the book on cutting edge research, it's still just a job.
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Il Destriero
Dude, what? I never implied that I wanted to distract people with philosophical questions while someone's placing a line . . .
But it's a job that requires a significant amount of time dedicated to learning and the profession has historically been a very philosophically rich one. A lot of important philosophical works (esp. Ancient and 19th century ones) were written by physicians. I don't think it's that insane to want a little more general curiosity about the world from these people.
I don't think having an interest in philosophy makes someone a bad physician. I think it gives them better insight into the things that form the basis of the profession, like the basis of knowledge, the standing of empirics, concepts of what it means to be ill or sick, etc.
Yeah, I did.
But I also was a little bit weird like that in high school. There were at least two times I can recall where teachers had to basically tell me to stop talking (despite the fact that they thought I made good points) because I was demolishing somebody else's argument to the point of almost bringing them to tears. One of them was an actual formal debate in a history class about federalism/antifederalism and the other was just me challenging another student in psychology class regarding accommodations for people with learning disabilities.
I calmed down a bit in college because I realized that most people don't like being confronted on their beliefs all the time, but I still get frustrated when people who have shown at least some commitment to learning don't even want to amiably discuss their understanding of the world.
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As long as you keep it real that's what matters. I feel you can learn anything from anybody.. it's just people are too sensitive and get butthurt when they think they are always right and confronted and don't know how to explain themselves. I never let what others say or feel get to me and I understand they are a culmination of their own experiences. You are a real one fam... deep convos and philosophical issues are the shiznit.
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I'm a bit of an outlier here as my school's one of the largest in the country with about 300 students (about twice the size of my high school) and frankly the social atmosphere's not great in my opinion, but I'm pretty introverted so maybe I just don't attend the right parties. I mean, it's no one's fault, but I actually don't know a ton of people in my class and neither do most people because a fair amount don't really come to school aside from required events and choose to stay at their parents/own homes. In fairness, everyone's really nice and many people try to make it work, but after the first few weeks everyone just split into their cliques and its usually the same one's showing up to the class parties, etc. I just asked a friend who has a 150 size class and 600 student high school class and he apparently can't stand his class because apparently everyone is like anal about stuff. That's two perspectives for ya.
I think the most important thing going in is to not idealize it and expect a whole new amazing social experience and just get ready to for the work you'll be doing. If you were a jock in high school/college, expect the same social scene in med school. Same goes for all the other categories. I've heard some people love their classes though too so I don't know whether my situation's the exception or the general trend. Just with a quick skim of this thread, it seems nontrads like their social experiences better than the ones right out of college.
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My med school class was awesome (pbl)... to this day some of my closest friends. I've stood up in their weddings, we get our kids together. Every other year we rent a massive house in outer banks with our families... honestly, one of the best stages of my life.
Maybe I was fortunate though.. I was engaged in m1, married after m2. Made it easy to pass on nights at the bar and hunker down. It's all a balance man. The only way to survive.
Maybe I was fortunate though.. I was engaged in m1, married after m2. Made it easy to pass on nights at the bar and hunker down. It's all a balance man. The only way to survive.
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Very few actively go out to sabotage others. I've finished pre-clinicals and the closest thing I've seen is just a boaster. They won't bother you if you aren't susceptible to jealousy (problem is, a lot of medical students are). To avoid being labeled as this, just be humble. I know high achievers who are extremely (or at least do an incredibly good job of being) modest and then there are others who boast. Avoid discussing your thoughts about exams especially right when you walk out of one no matter how good you feel about the exam. At the end of the day, pre-clinical grades have little bearing on residency applications relative to other factors. In medical school, I've noticed some high achievers really make it harder on themselves by showing off. It's med school so a lot of people already strive to be at the top so being at that level will already create some jealousy that people will naturally try to suppress. Boasting about doing really well will just make things 1000x worse by giving people reasons to openly dislike you.
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Same here.
Met my wife during M1 years.
Long engagement and we got married after 6 years.
She's doing OB-GYN im doing FM.
And we became friends with a lot of our classmates.
Lesson is, work together. Group study really helped. Especially with practicals.
And when it was step 2 CS time. We took turns to practice on each other.
Same thing during interview season, yup we practiced those too.
Medschool for us, is not like highschool.
The difference was night and day
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You, I like. I've been lately looking into global transient amnesia where certain patients exibit function-like response to a repeated given set of inputs due to memory resets which begs the obvious question of free will as non existent, and our verbal responses/gestures as deterministic.
There are many interesting classic thought experiments on determinism, and I think it's a difficult question. One of my favorites involves how quantum indeterminacy can sort of muck up the idea of material determinism. I think it's called the quantum bomber or something like that, but in any case it goes something like this:
A bomber plane is loaded with bombs and the bombay doors are connected to a Geiger counter pointed at a block of uranium. Every time a particle hits the counter, it drops a bomb. The plane then flies a predetermined route over Europe. Since radioactive decay on the particle level is random, there is very little good argument that which cities are demolished at the end of the day results from a deterministic chain of cause and effect.
Now whether it actually works out that quantum indeterminacy affects macro-scale events in real life is an interesting question. Just intuitively it seems like it would. I mean, human life is pretty dependent on molecular stuff. If water routinely consisted of more than 50% deuterated water, human biology would almost certainly be impossible.
I don't, however, think that indeterminacy is necessarily an argument for free will (i.e. indeterminacy is not necessarily a bastion for self-determinacy). One could conceive it as such, but this would likely involve relegating the concept of "choice" to stochastic events that people feel they are controlling.
I'm not the biggest apologist for free will, though, so maybe somebody else has more to add on this issue. I don't really have a strong opinion and kind of think the answer is going to come down to definitions of what we're talking about when we say free will. (Which kind of reminds me of the thought experiment of a man trapped in a cell who has been content there and never tried to open the door, the question being whether he is making a free choice).
Any high stress environment brings out the worst in people. That being said, figure out how to relieve your stress with healthy coping mechanisms sooner than later, and stay away from those who don't. Also, people in med school reek of crippling insecurities... So, yeah, high school ambiance.
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Everyone has a huge ego and we really aren't that mature. The only maturity I've seen came out of the late 20s, early 30s students who were well sorted in life and didn't have time for childish bull****. Everyone else? High School 2.0. Only more scandalous behaviour and **** talking.
Im sure by M2/M3 most people have sufficiently grown up, its just M1 and really Term 1 where you get to experience the undiluted asshattery that you thought you left behind in high school.
Im sure by M2/M3 most people have sufficiently grown up, its just M1 and really Term 1 where you get to experience the undiluted asshattery that you thought you left behind in high school.