Ehh college was a lot more fun and less stressful than med school.
You are super poor in med school and never have time to work so I was always really tight on money (which sucks).
M1/M2 years are very predictable. You have a set amount of knowledge to learn before each test and can kinda set your own schedule. Wasn't terrible after you adjusted to the work load (which is hard for the first 1-2 months).
M3 year just sucks. I swear half of your evaluation is based on your enthusiasm for the particular specialty. You can't do anything helpful and most of the time you are just slowing everyone down. If you are lucky you find an area of medicine you enjoy (which I did).
I just started M4 year last month and I am ready to be done. Everyone says M4 year is the best year. But so far M4 year is ok, but kinda pointless and a waste of $33,000. I know the same amount or more than the new interns since I just finished step 2 and M3 year, yet I am still just a student and can't really 'do' anything. Although it will be nice to have a few months of vacation and having some free time.
Honestly I wouldn't go to med school if I were to do it again. I have several classmates who feel the same way. However, if you make it this far you basically have financial handcuffs on forcing you to complete a residency and work for awhile as an attending.
Maybe residency will be better....but at the very least I will get a pay check.
Sounds like burn out (everyone experiences after third year). Hope it gets better. I'm an MS4 as well.
Anyway, I'll echo a bit of what was said here.
MS1/2: Most schools are shifting to P/F and most students don't even attend lecture. The amount of material you have to learn makes undergrad look like a complete joke. Though, it's doable and all this material will be hammered into you throughout the rest of your career that it's really just making sure you're exposed to it for the first time. In general, if you don't get yourself too involved in pointless EC's and/or elective classes, it's pretty do-able to lead a very normal life with free weekends. In many ways, it's much more flexible than having a normal 9-5 PM job because you do everything on your own schedule.
MS3: Pretty much a total **** show. Unclear expectations, constantly shifting rotations, clinical sites, mentors, etc. I like to say, with all the moving around 3rd year, MS3 is pretty much like starting a new job every week with a new boss in a new field in which you have no experience in and all your evaluators have years or even decades practicing. Once you finally feel like you've had time to adjust and can be valuable, you're thrust into a new rotation or clinical site and have to start all over. Also... Subjective grading that doesn't make any sense, especially being evaluated on how well you're taking caring of patients even though for the most part you're not given the responsibilities to do so. Working up to 80 hrs/week, sometimes on rotations you don't like very much (i.e. for us non-surgical folk like myself, getting up at 4:30 AM 6 days a week to spend 10 hours in the OR retracting, barely speaking, and developing severe back pain from standing for so long).
MS4: I actually like MS4 a lot more than MS3 so far. You actually have a learned a lot so you feel more helpful in the hospital...or at least, the work is more rewarding even if you're not the primary provider because at least you know what's going on and can contribute a lot more intellectually to patient care. The hours are also better for the most part, because it's just fulfilling electives and doing the rotations you LIKE doing and avoiding the ones you don't.
Residency: Haven't been there yet, but it's long hours. The main difference is that you're no longer being evaluated like a medical student. You do a good job primarily for your patients, not to impress your attending. Though, I am increasingly convinced a lot of residency is just doing all the annoying paperwork and logistical planning that the attendings don't want to have to be responsible for.
