anyone like 3rd year MUCH better than 1st or 2nd?

[nightowl]

Just looking for a light at the end the tunnel

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[Kazema]

3rd year is WAY better. Even the rotations that suck are better than 2nd year (I kind of liked 1st year just because everything was new and we were all meeting/getting to know new people).

 

[71263]

Oh hell yeah!! In spite of the hours, pimping, etc., M3 year is wayyyyy better than clinical years. In fact, I sort of enjoy pimpage. Now is the time when its acceptable to look like a *******, and I learn something in the process.

I feel like M1 year was the worst year of all of medical school, and that every year after became progressively better. I really liked M2 year, in spite of boards and the year long cumulative finals, and I like M3 year the best. I have a feeling M4 year will be amazing...

 

[surprisedgirl]

while i feel like im learning a ton finally getting to talk to REAL patients (yay) i truly hate the hours .....i miss skipping class and not HAVING to be somewhere early i nthe morning.....i guess i still like it much more than previous years, but man do i miss the sleeping in!

 

[The Buff]

while i feel like im learning a ton finally getting to talk to REAL patients (yay) i truly hate the hours .....i miss skipping class and not HAVING to be somewhere early i nthe morning.....i guess i still like it much more than previous years, but man do i miss the sleeping in!

yeah, this is the worst part about third year. That and you never have any idea what you are doing until its about time to rotate again, so you always feel like a *******. That gets old.

 

[Droopy Snoopy]

yeah, this is the worst part about third year. That and you never have any idae what you are doing until its about time to rotate again, so you always feel like a *******. That gets old.

And my newfound perspective of a 6:30am wake up as "sleeping in". I wholeheartedly agree that 3rd year is so much better. And from what I've heard 4th year, aside from the Match stress, is even better.

 

[nightowl]

reading these replies has been such an inspiring study break

 

[erin682]

And my newfound perspective of a 6:30am wake up as "sleeping in". I wholeheartedly agree that 3rd year is so much better. And from what I've heard 4th year, aside from the Match stress, is even better.

4th year is great despite the stress of match. I'm loving life right now. But yeah, though I had some truly miserable moments during 3rd year if I had to do one of the first 3 years of med school over again it would be 3rd year.

 

[getunconcsious]

Just looking for a light at the end the tunnel

Not me. I actually would rate them MS2>MS3>MS1. I actually liked MS2 MUCH better than MS3. You're more in control of your time and at my school, class is almost always from 8-12. Also I found the material fascinating, especially path. In third-year, you can end up having to wake up at 4 or 5 am, get yelled at by bitchy residents/attendings, deal with disrespectful patients, and do and see boring things you have no interest in. I realize that a lot of MS2 is boring/uninteresting but at least you're not dealing with it at 6 am. A lot of people like MS3 better, but I think that's because most med students like to be 'doing stuff' and being hands on. I prefer to think and am somewhat introverted and sensitive so I like to sort of be left alone without people yelling at me and critiquing my every move. I'm also planning to go into pathology, so I don't really care about how to do sliding scale insulin or how to deliver a baby; I don't feel there's much for me to get out of MS3. I do enjoy patient contact most of the time, but I didn't realize how often patients can be rude and disrespectful. I guess for most people it's really terribly important for them to feel like they are 'doing something' and so that's why they like M3 and M4 better.

 

[Sureshot83]

MS3 > MS2 >>>>> MS1


In my opinion, first year is the worst because you are forced to learn so many things that have no relevance, and you need to learn them in much more detail than what is required for step 1 and clinical practice.

 

[goodies]

uhhhhhhh, i will have to vote NO on third year being better than first and second year.

i think 1st yr> 3rd yr > 2nd yr...

1st year was so chill! woke up late on days i wanted to, able to ditch freely, partied once a week. studied leisurely.

3rd year sucks cuz some rotations u have to wake up at 4-5am every day for a month and u work more than 12 hrs. some rotations u feel like u wake up, work, come home to sleep just to repeat that over again. some weekends u are also working so sometimes u are working like 6 days a week. on top of that, u have to study when u come home. its not always come home and chill time. u have to get ur ass to study some more before u sleep and re-start the same routine. but i have to admit, outpatient is real nice and not so bad...8 to 5. this is coming from someone who is doing pretty well in 3rd yr with good evals, so its not like im bashing third yr cuz i've been doing bad. i guess 3rd yr is just hard because it feels like u have a job... can't ditch.. and it is tiring. if inpatient was 8 to 5 everyday, i'd love that cuz seeing patients and acting like a doc is fun.

2nd year was only crappy because it was stressful with boards always looming over me, but i still partied like once a month and didnt go to any classes at all. studied my ass off nevertheless..at least 12 hrs/day. hence 2nd yr was the worst.

i cant wait till 4th year. i think 4th year will be the best.

 

[hyperbaric]

MS3 > MS2 >>>>> MS1

I could not agree more!

A bad day in the clinic is better than a good day in lecture.

 

[OnMyWayThere]

100x better than first two years.. you actually get your life back and reunite with your old friends again. It's like having a job. People like myself who never went to class might not appreciate the being required to be somewhere at a certain time everyday, but it's gonna be like this from here on out til we retire.

 

[Raggaman]

I would rate my experience so far as MS2>Ms1>MS3

MS1: I had no idea what was going on and didnt know how to study but still got thru and had tons of fun with my new found friends.
MS2: Slept in, studied efficiently, got better grades with less effort, partied every friday, had plenty of company with friends to bitch about studying, played online video games pretty often. SWEET!
Ms3: The Bad:Sux. Wake up super early, go to a hospital full of short tempered/busy residents/attendings. Get almost no direction on what to do. Get in trouble and almost fail out of a rotation due to a very very mean intern (I am trying to not say bad things, but once this intern actually indirectly called me a "******" for not knowing things). Meet new students from other schools who are mostly gunners and offer no friendship or warmth. Have to work over 13 hours a day, come home and be to tired to study, go to gym or do anything. Some rotations have to work 6 days a week. Not being able to hang out with most friends due to mismatching schedules.
Now the good in MS3: Meet some really cool docs/people/patients (some-not most!). Get to see/help with some awesome procedures/surgeries

I hope I feel better soon about 3rd year, but at this point I HATE IT! It also seems like I am not really learning anything. Oh well......

 

[Anka]

MS4 > MS3 > MS2 > MS1

MS4: You finally get to do only the rotations you want to do. You know what to do and how to get it done. You probably know many of the residents and nurses. People give you the benefit of the doubt because it's an elective and you decided to sign up for it, so you must be interested. And NO SHELF EXAMS!!! You get to think about where you want to spend the next 3-7 years. You find out what all your classmates are going to do for the rest of their lives (very cool), and watch the future ED docs settle into an ED persona, the future pediatricians settle into a pediatrics persona, etc. Down side: you'll be ready to be done being a medical student by your last clinical rotation... finding a resident to cosign your order for tylenol gets a little old.

MS3: It's clinical and you get to deal with real patients with real diseases. Downside is, some of your patients are going to be jerks; some are going to have bad outcomes. And the jerks aren't the ones who have the bad outcomes -- it's always the really nice woman who reminds you of your grandmother. You get to spend several weeks on each of the core rotations, and often have the feeling "wow, I'm glad I'm not going to have to do this for the rest of my life, but I guess it was good to learn how to do a well child check" [then you do fifty more and you're ready to be done ]. You're going to figure out which of your classmates are decent human beings (and, unfortunately, learn that some are not). You'll have some great teachers, and some horrible ones. While the beginning of the year is rough, toward the end as you know the ropes things are going to get a lot smoother and you'll have more fun (also, by the last rotation, a lot of the BS that worked to get you all freaked out your first rotation isn't going to work anymore). Can be trying to study for a shelf exam when your rotation has you at the hospital by 4:30 am and you don't get home until 10-10:30 pm... and you don't get home every night. By the end, you'll probably have a decent sense of what you're going to do with your life.

MS2: Nice to be dealing with real diseases, even if you don't see any real patients for another year! Interesting pathology, good prep for MS3.

MS1: Ion channels. NEVER AGAIN!!!!

 

[joe6102]

I would rate my experience so far as MS2>Ms1>MS3

MS1: I had no idea what was going on and didnt know how to study but still got thru and had tons of fun with my new found friends.
MS2: Slept in, studied efficiently, got better grades with less effort, partied every friday, had plenty of company with friends to bitch about studying, played online video games pretty often. SWEET!
Ms3: The Bad:Sux. Wake up super early, go to a hospital full of short tempered/busy residents/attendings. Get almost no direction on what to do. Get in trouble and almost fail out of a rotation due to a very very mean intern (I am trying to not say bad things, but once this intern actually indirectly called me a "******" for not knowing things). Meet new students from other schools who are mostly gunners and offer no friendship or warmth. Have to work over 13 hours a day, come home and be to tired to study, go to gym or do anything. Some rotations have to work 6 days a week. Not being able to hang out with most friends due to mismatching schedules.
Now the good in MS3: Meet some really cool docs/people/patients (some-not most!). Get to see/help with some awesome procedures/surgeries

I hope I feel better soon about 3rd year, but at this point I HATE IT! It also seems like I am not really learning anything. Oh well......

That's pretty much how I feel too. I would have liked MS1 a lot too but I didn't figure out the skipping class/labs thing for a while.

I hate MS3. Almost everything I do has to be done again. If I see a pt and do the physical exam, the resident then comes in right behind me and does the exact same thing. As soon as I'm figuring out the policies/procedures/personalities in a rotation, it's over and I'm starting over again somewhere else. For large portions of time I'm standing around watching other people do work that I'm not allowed to do for whatever reason. You always have to work on someone else's schedule. If the attending skips lunch, guess what you're skipping lunch too. You can't go to the bathroom because even the residents don't know where they'll be 3 minutes from now. It's a lot of early mornings and overnight call, and most of the time I'm bored out of my mind.

 

[Thievery Corp.]

A bad day in the clinic is better than a good day in lecture.

Ditto. I think the thing people are sometimes suprised/frustrated about third year is that your job is still to learn X amount of material, even thought the setting is different. Other skills your supposed to pick up are not much, (e.g. how to write notes, orders, and present patients) anything else is just icing on the cake.

 

[getunconcsious]

Ditto. I think the thing people are sometimes suprised/frustrated about third year is that your job is still to learn X amount of material, even thought the setting is different. Other skills your supposed to pick up are not much, (e.g. how to write notes, orders, and present patients) anything else is just icing on the cake.

I think the thing that people who actually LIKE MS3 are frustrated about is that they actually still have to learn stuff. Reading/bank of knowledge is really my strongest suit on all my rotations, but I still would prefer 2nd year. I think the people that like the basic science years the best tend to be more introverted, more sensitive to criticism, and more easily upset by the petty politics that control so much of your grades, and even worse so much of your daily life in third year. I think that for a lot of people sucking up/dealing with petty politics comes more easily than memorizing vast amounts of info...but some of us are the opposite way around.

Still, I would take MS3 over MS1. MS1 is just so painfully boring and irrelevant. Spending all that time learning fine details of useless basic science from Ph.D's....ugh. Hardly any of that stuff was even on Step 1!

But to the MS1/MS2 people who are reading this...most of your will like 3rd year better. If you're extroverted, want to 'do stuff', and are politically inclined, it should be better for you than the first two years.

 

[Doowai]

In fact, I sort of enjoy pimpage.

I was not a big fan of pimpage. On my first rotation I learned something by accident that served me well. I rotated one afternoon with this neurologist Alzheimer's researcher - as I was going down to meet him someone pulled me aside and told me not to take things too seriously, because this guy was known for enjoying pimping people so hard they sometimes cried. I am not one to cry, but I was a bit nervous.

As I approached him I had a question about Alzheimers which I asked him - this guy was passionate about it - he rattled on and on - got so long winded he had to take breaks so we could see patients. I realized if I ask them a question about something they are passionate about it eats up the time.

I used this too much I suppose, and perhaps avoided learning things I might have learned from pimpage. but you could sort of feel when the pimping was about to start - kind of like the air before a tornado. It was then I would ask preceptors questions about something they were passionate about. This varied from preceptor to preceptor - my pulmonologist was a martial arts fanatic and this was the topic that got him going the most. An IM preceptor loved helicopters and motorcycles. Anyway when I felt the pimpage about to begin I would beat them to the punch with a question about Greek philosophers, soccer, jetski's or whatever they express a real passion for. Of course when they had a real passion about something in medicine it worked best - I pumped them for information and they did not pimp me.

 

[marie337]

Right now I'd much rather be in the classroom than in the hospital. But, I'm at a point in my 3rd year where I still feel terribly clumsy and lost half the time and people are starting to expect things from me. I feel like an idiot most of the day and probably rightfully so. I know I'm in the minority, but I thought the first 2 years were much more enjoyable. I love talking to patients and even enjoy getting pimped . But, I kind of liked the study/test mode where I could get into a routine. Now it seems that when I start to figure things out, it's time to switch rotations and start all over again. I know that someday it will all start to meld together and it will get easier. That's what keeps me going .

 

[lumbering]

MS3 = MS2 > MS1

The problem with MS3 is that you feel very out of place and don't have much of a role. Your status decreases considerably when you move from MS2 to MS3. I personally enjoy interacting with patients though, and the learning curve is steep.

 

[chaser08]

I realized if I ask them a question about something they are passionate about it eats up the time.

I'm glad it's worked so far, but I will tell you that when it doesn't work, it REALLY doesn't work. I had one chief resident that I would try that with and he'd answer your question and get back to the pimping. In fact, getting him off on a tangent only meant that you would stay later because he would answer your questions and then return right to where he left off with the pimping until he was satisfied that he had sufficiently ruined your confidence in your ability to not kill your patients.

But he was great. He knew his stuff, taught a lot, and made sure you took care your patient. I aspire to be like him one day.

OT: In my opinion, the worst day as an M3 beats the best day as an M1 or M2. And M4 may be the best year of my life (and I've lived a pretty damn good life!).

 

[Krazykritter]

I agree w/ the others here that MS3>>>>>>M2>M1.

The only thing that I don't like about MS3 is that you can't just have a day where you're a little "off" & no one notices. I kept forgetting things from my H&P's today (i.e. Fam hx, Sexual activity...) that I would normally never miss. Luckily I had never worked w/ this attending before & he was still happy w/ my work so I guess it was a wash.