Anyone else getting all C's?

Started by mr.applesauce
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Robin-jay said:
How common of a reason is that (kids acting out in school)?
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I don't know how common; I just throw it out as an example from having a family member who had that issue. I do recall a student who failed out because he was separated from family. I also remember a student (let's call her RR) who was living apart from hubby and daughters, and one daughter had to come live with RR because she was butting heads seriously with the dad.

I think our learned colleague @JustPlainBill also had trouble in med school from living a distance from family. Bill, am I correct in think it was you?
 
Kkshake said:
Not everyone, but a good portion do buy it illegally. And many that don't use Adderall buy legal study stimulants which are pro-drugs.
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It certainly isn't even close to half of the students who are pulling A's. Believe it or not some people in medical school are pretty dang smart and work like crazy to get those As. It may be small fraction but if your school has that much of a substance problem there are far more issues at hand
 
Chibucks15 said:
It certainly isn't even close to half of the students who are pulling A's. Believe it or not some people in medical school are pretty dang smart and work like crazy to get those As. It may be small fraction but if your school has that much of a substance problem there are far more issues at hand
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Well, I guess there's far more issues at hand because I'm going off of what I know and not what I assume to be true.
 
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Kkshake said:
Well, I guess there's far more issues at hand because I'm going off of what I know and not what I assume to be true.
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Well that's unfortunate really...seems like a toxic environment. Not sure if the 'assume to be true' bit was a dig at me but I'm going off what I know too...Best of luck to you but from what I know there isn't as much abuse in the vast majority of situations...it's usually just a coping mechanism people tell themselves. I found myself falling onto it in undergrad then you realize were in the top 1% of educated people and ya learn to live with it.
 
Chibucks15 said:
Well that's unfortunate really...seems like a toxic environment. Not sure if the 'assume to be true' bit was a dig at me but I'm going off what I know too...Best of luck to you but from what I know there isn't as much abuse in the vast majority of situations...it's usually just a coping mechanism people tell themselves. I found myself falling onto it in undergrad then you realize were in the top 1% of educated people and ya learn to live with it.
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It wasn't a dig at you, it was that you seemed to be implying that I was making an assumption about the students at my school. I have decent grades so I don't need to tell myself these things to cope. I just happened to learn and meet the majority in my class because of the small class size and know which ones are taking substances.
 
kovalchuk71 said:
Histology is kicking my butt. Our professor is terrible (~50% of the class is failing or close to failing). Besides that though, I have low B's in everything except Anatomy (grrrrrrr), which is a comfortable "C".

I had C's at the beginning of the semester after our first integrated exam, but I just hunkered down and started studying more. It's really the only thing you CAN do. Keep trying study methods, and keep learning.

As others have said, SOMEONE has to make up the bottom half of the class. That's life in the Bell-Curve lane.
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Check out Histology Helpers on Youtube for a quick, straightforward outside source that might help push you up a bit. There are also a lot of online resources available similar to Umich for anatomy (in fact, they have info as well) to use if you aren't already using them.
 
kovalchuk71 said:
See the problem is that our professor doesn't test us on the material presented in class. We will go through some slides, but >50% of the class consists of us being scolded for doing poorly and not answering what he is asking for. For our image exams, he will be vague on what is being pointed out or simply show us images that haven't even been shown before. It's very frustrating. I use Histology Time and am still struggling.

Ill check those other resources out, thanks.
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Are these tests multiple choice? If so, I really think you need to review your test taking strategy. I had classmates that didn't do well in our histology despite probably our best basic science professor at school teaching it without the flaws your professor seems to have. When it was discussed, the number one thing that people did wrong was guessing things that couldn't possibly be the answer even if the arrow was ambiguous. Everyone has to guess on some questions, of course, but people were choosing things without using the context clues of the whole slide to tell the story of the tissue landscape. Sometimes they would pick distraction answers that couldn't even show up in the tissue shown. I also heard a lot of people picking answers that statistically just weren't likely. For hypothetical example, on a blood smear with two cells that look similar I would choose the one that is present ~68% of the time versus the one that occurs ~22% of the time. Could that be wrong because he found the only basophil on the slide to tag? Sure, but if I have to guess and I have no other metric it makes sense to pick based on something rather than literal guessing if you can't positively identify something or just freeze on the exam. Hope that makes sense.
 
Chibucks15 said:
It certainly isn't even close to half of the students who are pulling A's. Believe it or not some people in medical school are pretty dang smart and work like crazy to get those As. It may be small fraction but if your school has that much of a substance problem there are far more issues at hand
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20% of all medical students take drugs. That’s a statistical fact. You just don’t notice it because you are either not as well plugged in as you thought or you’re just too oblivious.
 
Neopolymath said:
Are these tests multiple choice? If so, I really think you need to review your test taking strategy. I had classmates that didn't do well in our histology despite probably our best basic science professor at school teaching it without the flaws your professor seems to have. When it was discussed, the number one thing that people did wrong was guessing things that couldn't possibly be the answer even if the arrow was ambiguous. Everyone has to guess on some questions, of course, but people were choosing things without using the context clues of the whole slide to tell the story of the tissue landscape. Sometimes they would pick distraction answers that couldn't even show up in the tissue shown. I also heard a lot of people picking answers that statistically just weren't likely. For hypothetical example, on a blood smear with two cells that look similar I would choose the one that is present ~68% of the time versus the one that occurs ~22% of the time. Could that be wrong because he found the only basophil on the slide to tag? Sure, but if I have to guess and I have no other metric it makes sense to pick based on something rather than literal guessing if you can't positively identify something or just freeze on the exam. Hope that makes sense.
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No, they are free answer image examinations.
 
68PGunner said:
20% of all medical students take drugs. That’s a statistical fact. You just don’t notice it because you are either not as well plugged in as you thought or you’re just too oblivious.
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20% (~4000 students) isn't that close to 50% (~10000 students). And a basic google search just gave me a 15% reported number not 20%. Like I said I'm sure it goes on, but that doesn't take into account the people that take it legally and correctly, and discounts the work ethic of the people who are killing it without using study drugs. To just brush off the people at the top of the class as "using study drugs" seems a bit pre-mature and a coping mechanism. But that's just my opinion so whatever floats your boat.
 
68PGunner said:
20% of all medical students take drugs. That’s a statistical fact. You just don’t notice it because you are either not as well plugged in as you thought or you’re just too oblivious.
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Can you provide a source? Because i think i remember reading something similar and it included alcohol and caffeine as drugs, and if so I’d be surprised if it was anything less than 50%

Edit: nvm found it on sdn, it’s a different study than the one im thinking of. But damn guess I’m oblivious to this as well
Drug Use Among Medical Students - Student Doctor Network
 
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Scrubs101 said:
Can you provide a source? Because i think i remember reading something similar and it included alcohol and caffeine as drugs, and if so I’d be surprised if it was anything less than 50%

Edit: nvm found it on sdn, it’s a different study than the one im thinking of. But damn guess I’m oblivious to this as well
Drug Use Among Medical Students - Student Doctor Network
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I thought it was bs until I overheard my classmates asking each other for spared pills bc their supplies run out for the moment.
 
mr.applesauce said:
I'm pretty much getting all C's in my science classes except one class. I work so hard to just barely pass :/

Anyone else in the same boat? I'm seriously on the closer end of a 2.0 than a 3.0 GPA right now.
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Are you an undergrad premed or a med student?
 
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Didn’t think getting Cs was that big of a deal. Some of my section exams have been like 15 questions or less. If I get a 15/15 I gotta say I don’t feel like I’m significantly more knowledgeable than someone who got a 12/15 lol. A C like 25 % of the time seems like it shouldn’t matter imo.
 
Kkshake said:
Don't worry too much, half of those passing with A's are taking Adderall or stimulants
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This is the truth. Trend the weight loss patterns going into 2nd and 3rd year and you will see how many students are abusing stimulants to get by.
 
Scrubs101 said:
Can you provide a source? Because i think i remember reading something similar and it included alcohol and caffeine as drugs, and if so I’d be surprised if it was anything less than 50%
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If they considered caffeine in their study, then i'm a hardcore druggy.


As for the OPs question. I think our average is somewhere between a 78-82 on most exams. There are outliers as always. So far, I've been a low and a high outlier, just depends on the test. I think a large majority of the class got destroyed by our Cards test yesterday.
 
The problem with your situation OP, is that in almost no time you'll have to start prepping for boards, and that takes time, time away from class exams. You need to get this taken care of sooner rather than later.
 
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whats wrong with family medicine tho

everythings done for me for first semester besides one more exam tomorrow. It's an exam i can get 20% on and still pass. Feels Good Man.
 
ortnakas said:
Nothing. It has a stigma that because it’s easy to get, something must be wrong with it. It’s not what most people are looking for for that and many other reasons, but there’s definitely a need for primary care so if it’s a good fit for you, nothing wrong with that.
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Pre-meds/Meds care because it has a less of a 6-figure paycheck than specialties.

They have nightmares about the lowly checks. Don't let the 200k-a-year boogie man touch you.

{sarcasm}
 
so 5.4% of my OMS-1 class failed the first term.

Curious if anyone knows if this is a fairly average figure
 
pseud0 said:
so 5.4% of my OMS-1 class failed the first term.

Curious if anyone knows if this is a fairly average figure
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That’s a little bit high bc you guys still haven’t touched even the big weeded out classes yet, especially classes like Neuro. This is based on my class statistics, but about 3% of my class repeats 1st year.
 
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Well, how can you say they haven't touched those classes if you don't know the curriculum? If the school does PBL you're taking all of the courses at once.
 
Kkshake said:
Well, how can you say they haven't touched those classes if you don't know the curriculum? If the school does PBL you're taking all of the courses at once.
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🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Feel free to sign up for Step 1 and ace that thing over the summer and go on a vacation during 2nd year.
 
the curriculum for most of first semester is introductory biochem, physio, path concepts, microbio, intro pharm, anatomy, etc. but the final block had a ton of neuro.
 
pseud0 said:
so 5.4% of my OMS-1 class failed the first term.

Curious if anyone knows if this is a fairly average figure
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At my school, that's on the high end. But these numbers vary from year to year. Some Classes are stronger than others. We're doing doing grading, but it seems like maybe 3% will fail. I think that in our worst year we had a 6% failure rate. It was a perfect storm of family issues and/or mental health issues.

The numbers will be higher at newer schools.
 
pseud0 said:
the 5.4 percent figure is the combined failure rate from both the old and new sister campus in Arkansas so that might explain some of it
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Yeah 5.4 is probably actually pretty low if you are considering both campuses.
 
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Spectreman said:
So your school doesn’t just remediate a given class you failed as a summer course? You have to repeat the whole year?
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At my school, there’s no such thing as summer remediation. If you fail a class like MSK, you will come back five days later to take a comprehensive test of about 100-200 quests. If you fail that reassessment test, it’s game over.
 
Wow, are those study stimulants really helpful? Maybe that's what keeps me from bumping up my grades a notch? 🙂 Seriously, are they helpful?
 
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