Did anyone not like science in undergrad but enjoy med school?

[okayplayer]

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I am already accepted to a med school for next year and ready to go, but I am just wondering if any of you went through the same thing as me. I am a double major (zoology and history), and to be honest, I like my history classes a lot better than my zoology classes. I definitely did not do any research in undergrad for that reason (I volunteered at the ER and a local Crisis Line instead).

I have really disliked most of my science classes (physics, o. chem, animal development, evolution, genetics, gen. chem, gen. bio, etc.) and liked only a few (anatomy, mammalian physiology). I did take it as a good sign that I enjoyed two of the more medically-related classes (anat/physio).

Will I enjoy med school if I can't stand most of my undergrad science classes? I really am more into the clinical aspect of medicine than the academic (ie. research)...

 

[diggelicious]

being honest, i hated my undergrad science classes because they were boring.... but in medical school, i've gained an interest and really enjoy it... its because of the kind of material, i hated biochem my M1 year.. just have to evaluate why you are doing medicine. good luck.

 

[Megalofyia]

I hated undergrad science. I liked my grad school science when I was studying specifically what I found interesting. Now in med school there are things I strongly dislike, like anything to do with expresion of proteins ie replication, translation, transcription, it is far far better than undergrad.

 

[rpkall]

I disliked a lot of my undergrad science classes, and I love med school (and I'm currently in the molecular med/biochem part of first year). The science in med school is *so relevant,* it's really exciting. It's none of this, "Why do I need to memorize what plants do with their electrons?" crap, and it's all human disease and treatment. You never have to look far to see that the info is going to be useful and relevant in the treatment of actual patients--and that's nice.

If you really hate science, well... There *is* a lot of science in med school. You have to learn it so you can pick a specialty. But if you go to med school for the right reasons (an opportunity to learn how to heal people, to serve others and be useful to society in a pretty unique way) there's a field for you no matter what your strengths and weaknesses are.

If you don't like biochem, there's a hundred places to wind up where you don't need to make critical care decisions based on your understanding of an anion gap or the kinetics of plasma proteins. If you hate building relationships with people, but love disease--there's pathology, surgery, radiology, etc. If you don't like very invasive procedures or hospitalist clinical medicine, there's family medicine or psychiatry or pediatrics.

But personally, I think in order to be a really good physician, you have to have a curious mind (at least in the field you ultimately choose). And one thing I've learned is that in order to understand the cooler, more advanced concepts in genetics and molecular biology, you really have to do the work and put in the time learning all that annoying crappy stuff (polymerase reads 3'-5', redox reactions, what a nucleophile is, etc). But it's worth it, I think.

Anyway. Good luck to you.

If you got in, you're capable of the workload--it's just a question of how hard it will be for you to motivate yourself to do it...

 

[quideam]

I didn't like my undergrad science classes in general, though I found a few of them interesting. It's the same way in med school - some of it is really boring (and in my opinon, pointless), and then some of it is actually very interesting. I think that if you dislike science, you won't enjoy most of your classes first year (except possibly anatomy and physiology, though anatomy also has a lot of fairly useless memorization). Second year really does get better - pathology is really cool, and you finally start feeling like you're learning 'medicine'.

So, in short, you're probably not going to love most of your science courses in med school, and you'll downright loate a lot of them. But it gets more interesting as you go, and if you can tough it out, they tell me 3rd year is much cooler 🙂

Good luck.

Q

 

[powermd]

It's almost irrelevant whether you like science or find it interesting. I like pizza, but being force-fed pies year after year would kill my appetite. Likewise, in med school you don't have much time to sit back and enjoy thinking about what you're learning. I loved the time we had during fourth year to kick back, take some easy rotations, and really start to think about medicine again.

 

[deleted59964]

It's almost irrelevant whether you like science or find it interesting. I like pizza, but being force-fed pies year after year would kill my appetite.

Yeah nothing quenches your thirst for knowledge like being forced to drink from the niagra falls of information that is med school.

 

[peppy]

I wouldn't say I hated science, but I was a psychology major and found my psych classes much easier and more fun than O-Chem, physics, etc.!
I'm only an MS-I but so far med school has been much better than undergrad was. The science is definitely more directly applicable to medicine.
For example, the biochem exam I took earlier today had a lot of questions where we had to look at blood test results and determine what vitamin/enzyme deficiency the patient had from that info. It's a lot more interesting to learn the reactions and pathways when you're also learning the connections to actual diseases like that.

But I guess if I were you, I'd look at it this way: The question isn't whether you enjoy med school, but whether you think you would enjoy being a doctor. After all med school is only 4 years. Most people find it difficult at one point or another, but just about everyone does make it through one way or another, so you just have to decide how bad you really want to be a doctor.
I would definitely say if you think there's anything else you think you'd be happy doing, to pursue that path first before committing to the debt and stress that med school can bring. However, so far, I have no regrets about going to med school.
It turned out to be much better than I had feared it would be before I came here (I was so worried at one point that I seriouslyy considered deferring for a few years to do some soul searching, or even trying to apply to dental school!).
HOWEVER, once I actually started classes, I found out that it was NOT as bad as I had feared.
Seriously - I am the happiest I've been in a long time, because I feel like I am finally doing what I was meant to do with my life, and none of my worst fears about failing or being miserable have come true so far.
Hope you find the path you're happy with too. 🙂

 

[okayplayer]

Thanks so much, guys. Awesome advice.

I am glad to hear that classes like biochem are made to be more applicable to medicine than in undergrad. I am VERY excited to one day be a physician but I'd like it if the first 2 years weren't pure hell...hopefully I will find some enjoyment. 🙂

 

[nightowl]

Peppy-
Thanks so much for your post. I was accepted a week or so ago and so now I have 9 months to be excited but also DREAD medical school. Like you, I've felt the urge to apply to dental school or do something drastic. It's strange, bc before I heard I was 100% sure I wanted to do medicine. I think it's the nervous anticipation and sheer fear of medical school. It is really, really reassuring to know that someone that had similar doubts/fears is really enjoying it now.

 

[DoctorFunk]

I am glad to hear that classes like biochem are made to be more applicable to medicine than in undergrad.

I'm not so sure I would go that far. At our school the faculty will throw us a bone every once in awhile and we will cover some disease based on an inactive enzyme of metabolism, but generally these are covered at the end of class (read: are overlooked if we are running short of time) and are mentioned in only the most vague terms, while for testing we are expected to know the actual metabolic reactions down to details of carbon-counting. The exams are definitely written much more like biochemistry exams than MEDICAL biochemistry exams as well.

I'm sure it will be worth it in the end, but when you have clinicians give lectures on topics they specialize in pertaining to biochemistry and they approach the material in a much more general manner than the PhDs giving our other lectures, one can become a little skeptical about the detail at which we REALLY need to know this stuff.

 

[redgrover]

Peppy-
Thanks so much for your post. I was accepted a week or so ago and so now I have 9 months to be excited but also DREAD medical school. Like you, I've felt the urge to apply to dental school or do something drastic. It's strange, bc before I heard I was 100% sure I wanted to do medicine. I think it's the nervous anticipation and sheer fear of medical school. It is really, really reassuring to know that someone that had similar doubts/fears is really enjoying it now.

Dental school students are hacking it late at night in the library, too. Dental school sounds like an out, but looking at the dental students around, don't buy into it.

The nice thing they've got going on is no residency and shorter hours. You know, if I could do it over again, I might have gone that route...

 

[bananachip]

you'll definately hate med school, like 90% of everyone. I mean, that's unless you like mindlessly memorizing lots of stuff constantly.

Dont think about it. Even I dont think about how crappy it is to study this crap. Just do it when you have to, and pretend you're cool when you're not studying.

 

[3rd_i]

I was a philosophy major in undergrad (way back in the class of 99) As you would expect, I tried my best to avoid all of the hard sciences that I could. However, after a couple of years in the peace corps, workin arm in arm with doctors, I came to the realization that medicine is what I want. Now i'm a first year at BU, and loving anatomy and histo. It's all about motivation. Doing science at 19 when I would have rather been chasing the girls didn't work out. Now that I know what I really want...

Hope this helps.

 

[Antigunner]

I'm not so sure I would go that far. At our school the faculty will throw us a bone every once in awhile and we will cover some disease based on an inactive enzyme of metabolism, but generally these are covered at the end of class (read: are overlooked if we are running short of time) and are mentioned in only the most vague terms, while for testing we are expected to know the actual metabolic reactions down to details of carbon-counting. The exams are definitely written much more like biochemistry exams than MEDICAL biochemistry exams as well.

I'm sure it will be worth it in the end, but when you have clinicians give lectures on topics they specialize in pertaining to biochemistry and they approach the material in a much more general manner than the PhDs giving our other lectures, one can become a little skeptical about the detail at which we REALLY need to know this stuff.

I get this feeling too, both in biochem and anatomy. It's like they throw some sort of clinical correllation into a lecture because they're "supposed to" because its medical school. Thankfully, I'm just a little bit of a science nerd, so I don't mind the classes very much, but biochem pathways do get rather old after awhile... tell us something we'll actually use at some point! 😴

 

[funshine]

I hated undergrad science. I liked my grad school science when I was studying specifically what I found interesting. Now in med school there are things I strongly dislike, like anything to do with expresion of proteins ie replication, translation, transcription, it is far far better than undergrad.

Isn't it funny how certain topics are more interesting than others, and it's totally subjective? Like you, I also hated learning about transcription and translation...the diff polymerases, exonucleases, mismatch repair....it's never stayed in my head either. I actually enjoyed learning all the biochemical pathways of metabolism though....

 

[FrkyBgStok]

Oh thank goodness. i was sitting in Bio this morning and evolution is very interesting but I know what I want to do so it is hard for me to really memorize the material and get really into the material like i should and I can't help but think who cares. gotta keep my eye on the goal.

 

[DoctorFunk]

Oh thank goodness. i was sitting in Bio this morning and evolution is very interesting but I know what I want to do so it is hard for me to really memorize the material and get really into the material like i should and I can't help but think who cares. gotta keep my eye on the goal.

I wouldn't say that med school is some revelation in which you are finally able to learn (ok...memorize) only material that is going to be useful to you and clinically interesting. Our M1 courses thus far have been full of useless material and inane scientific drivel. This point is only driven home when clinicians come to the school to talk to students and talk about the clinical irrelevance of the details we are tested on.

Maybe M2 year is better. Then again, I've been telling myself that since 3rd grade when we started cursive.

 

[yellowcat322]

I wouldn't say that med school is some revelation in which you are finally able to learn (ok...memorize) only material that is going to be useful to you and clinically interesting. Our M1 courses thus far have been full of useless material and inane scientific drivel. This point is only driven home when clinicians come to the school to talk to students and talk about the clinical irrelevance of the details we are tested on.

Maybe M2 year is better. Then again, I've been telling myself that since 3rd grade when we started cursive.

Hmm, I really don't feel quite the same way, but this could be because my school has a bit of a different approach to the curriculum. For example we're doing immuno, microbio and path in our first year and I find those sciences very clinically relevant. In addition, we get to start seeing patients right away and every now and then you'd get one with a disorder that you learned about in class and understanding that patient's problem based on the science you learned makes it all worth while. I also feel that we didn't go into painful minutia in biochem (which actually kinda makes me worried about the boards🙂 In general though I hate many of my undergrad sci classes that were outside of my major (neural sci) because I feel that just because you're interested in how the human body works, doesn't necessarily make you interested in memorizing organic chemistry reactions or endless physics formulas. In med school, though, I really do feel like most of the stuff I'm learning is relevant to my profession in one way or another. And yes we may not be using the knowledge of Krebs cycle intermediates every single day of our future practice, but I feel that as a physician you need to understand the biology behind the disorders you're treating, and even behind the disorders you're not treating to an extent.

 

[DoctorFunk]

Hmm, I really don't feel quite the same way, but this could be because my school has a bit of a different approach to the curriculum. For example we're doing immuno, microbio and path in our first year and I find those sciences very clinically relevant.

You should consider yourself very lucky. At my school we don't take any of those classes until 2nd year. 1st year we take biochem, development, anatomy (which has some clinical relevance and is pretty interesting), neuro, physiology, and histo. Clinical problems in development are somewhat minimized by the professor (a PhD) and minutia is the name of the game in biochemistry, right down to how many ATPs or NADPHs are involved in converting Acetyl CoA to mevalonate in cholesterol biosynthesis. Sure, future clinicians should probably understand cholesterol transport (HDL, LDL stuff), but this is just ridiculous--even for the boards, I would imagine.

Alright, I shall end my ranting. It's pre-test block week and I'm sitting in the library on a Friday night...

 

[yellowcat322]

You should consider yourself very lucky. At my school we don't take any of those classes until 2nd year. 1st year we take biochem, development, anatomy (which has some clinical relevance and is pretty interesting), neuro, physiology, and histo. Clinical problems in development are somewhat minimized by the professor (a PhD) and minutia is the name of the game in biochemistry, right down to how many ATPs or NADPHs are involved in converting Acetyl CoA to mevalonate in cholesterol biosynthesis. Sure, future clinicians should probably understand cholesterol transport (HDL, LDL stuff), but this is just ridiculous--even for the boards, I would imagine.

Alright, I shall end my ranting. It's pre-test block week and I'm sitting in the library on a Friday night...

Yes that I agree with actually. I don't see a point in knowing how many ATPs are needed for a particular biochemical step unless ofcourse you're going into research in that particular field, in which case you'll pick it up at that time anyway. Do the professors really expect you to retain that kind of stuff? I mean who is going to remember that minutia by their fourth year of med school -- let alone by the time they're in practice. I feel that there are so many other things to learn in medicine that aren't taught, or aren't taught well enough, just to make room for teaching useless minutia. I guess that's the established tradition, though. In my school they revised the curriculum a while back and I guess they decided to cut down on a lot of the detail. I know our anatomy professors had a fight because one of them wanted to teach anatomy hard core and the other one wanted to teach only the basics necessary for the boards. I'm glad the latter one won🙂. Now no one hates anatomy.

By the way, I;m in the library too on a Friday night and it's packed! (midterm monday)Oh and nothing stays open that late around campus so my dinner courtesy of chez vending machine is dorritos and coke. Yay med school.

 

[funshine]

Which school in NYC do you go to? It'd be useful to know since you seem pretty satisfied w/ the teaching there...(I'm in the process of applying).
Thanks!

Hmm, I really don't feel quite the same way, but this could be because my school has a bit of a different approach to the curriculum. For example we're doing immuno, microbio and path in our first year and I find those sciences very clinically relevant. In addition, we get to start seeing patients right away and every now and then you'd get one with a disorder that you learned about in class and understanding that patient's problem based on the science you learned makes it all worth while. I also feel that we didn't go into painful minutia in biochem (which actually kinda makes me worried about the boards🙂 In general though I hate many of my undergrad sci classes that were outside of my major (neural sci) because I feel that just because you're interested in how the human body works, doesn't necessarily make you interested in memorizing organic chemistry reactions or endless physics formulas. In med school, though, I really do feel like most of the stuff I'm learning is relevant to my profession in one way or another. And yes we may not be using the knowledge of Krebs cycle intermediates every single day of our future practice, but I feel that as a physician you need to understand the biology behind the disorders you're treating, and even behind the disorders you're not treating to an extent.

 

[neoncandle]

You guys go to school where the biochemistry you learn is relevant??! Well, we are taught by PhDs down here in Dallas who think it is important for us to know about hormone receptors in flies that have to do with their research.

Anyway, the good news is that some of what we learn is relevant... like most of anatomy. Unfortunately they go through everything so quickly that most people end up hating it as we go through it.

Though it is more relevant than plain old o-chem, memorizing reactions and synthesis pathways is good practice for the "hell" to come.

Good luck.

Tiffany

P.S. Some of us are still having fun and managing to get our studying done...

 

[OmahaMX80]

I don't think we're expected to remember all of the details at all. I think it's just a combination of 1.) exposing us to it so we've heard of it and 2.) getting us used to becoming competent with large volumes of information in a very short time... which has nothing to do with staying competent/remembering it for longer than it takes to pass an exam. 🙂

I feel like med school has been a series of hoops so far. Even the more clinically relevant second year is full of details I know I will never remember. It's not about remembering it the first time. By the time we're residents, we'll be learning the same material for the 4th, 5th, or 6th time... granted from a different angle, but still. By the time we reach practice, we'll know the clinically important stuff, imo. The small stuff that never came up again (i.e. receptors on flies) just falls through the cracks and is probably not too important. A good chunk of anatomy falls into that category unless you're a surgeon.

My school has a system-based curriculum.. we do anatomy first semester, as well as biochem, molecular bio, and some cell bio. Then second semester we do immunology, some intro pathology (cell injury, inflammation, neoplasia, etc), intro microbiology (viral replication concepts, bacterial replication, etc), and concepts in pharmacology (efficacy, potency, volume of distrib). Then in the spring on M1 year they do neuroscience... which includes neurophys, neuropath, neuropharm, neuroanatomy, etc. Second year is composed of similar courses covering infectious disease (clinical micro), hematology, cardiovascular (what I'm doing now), respiratory, renal, etc. But we never actually take pathology as a course, or physiology as a course. I think it's a little more clinically relevant but I'm sure we still get a lot of stuff we don't need.