Does it get "better"?

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linkin06

We are all witnesses.
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i hate anatomy. i've passed first two tests (though mostly cuz multiple choice helped me out over my poor practical performance). i'm not liking head & neck for my final test either. does it get any "better"? i'm not saying necessarily easier. i hate lab, and i feel so annoyed when i spend a lot of time looking stuff up on wiki. part of me just thinks, "wow if i can look it up in 1 second, why do i need to have to rote kill this". but if all my tests are going to make me this uhgg i don't know...med school so far has not been what i imagined, even when i wasn't imagining.
 
lol.

quite the opposite, my friend.

cheers

How-To-Pour-Beer-Bottle-and-Draught-aka-Draft-o.jpg
 
I think it gets better every year. I'm having more fun as an intern than I ever had as a medical student. MSI sucked.

I agree. MS2 was harder than MS1, but at least more interesting. MS3 was pretty cool, and nothing beats MS4 🙂

I'll report back in a year and say if being an intern is better (kinda doubt it though...)
 
Yeah, M2 was way, way better than M1 for me. I also hated anatomy with the fire of a thousand suns, so I feel your pain. M3 is really, really nice, despite the long hours. You finally (usually) feel like you're doing something with your education besides spitting out random facts.
 
Anatomy just sucks, the rest of 1st year was better once anatomy was finished for me. Then MS2 just sucked..... started to realize just how much more you had to cover to be ready for Step 1.

With the exception of residency apps, and trying to schedule audition rotations/interviews 4th year, years 3 & 4 are MUCH better. During first two years a big motivation for not failing was the thought that if I did I may have to repeat one of those years..... no thanks.
 
For me, it's been like this...

MS1: boring subjects but LOADS of free time (I could study 1 week out of a 4 week cycle and still make honors)
MS2: more interesting/relevant subjects but had to study more, fair trade-off
Step 1 studying: worst 5 weeks of my life
MS3: very little free time, but enjoyed it a lot more than studying all day
MS4: words can't describe how awesome this year has been, I've barely seen a patient all year
 
See if you library has "Anatomy and Physiology revealed" and use it just to quiz yourself. I did that and didn't know anything about anatomy (pretty much hated dissection) and got a high A on all my practicals.

I think the pathology/systems are a little big better than the 1st year material. Depends a lot on your teachers. There are a lot of inane clinical details in our curriculum.

Most importantly, you'll get used to it and it won't *feel* as bad. You'll probably stop caring as much about your performance too. What I realized is that I pretty much always do a certain amount above the average no matter how I study. I think that is true of most people.
 
Yes OP, it gets better! Like you, I hated anatomy and slogged miserably through the course. The rest of the first year, while still stressful, was not nearly as terrible. So far, second year is going pretty well - lots more material, lots more time studying, but to me it's much more interesting information.

Since you're not struggling with grades, don't give up yet!
 
I liked anatomy a whole lot more than micro and pharm. But a lot of the students who hated anatomy love that stuff. It varies. You'll find your niche. I wouldn't spend much time thinking about it. Focus on fooling yourself into enjoying it somehow. There's always a way to look at it in a new way that helps ease the bull****, no matter how crappy a class is. Staying positive is key.
 
It gets better when you get to the clinical side, when you actually see patients, take histories, DDs and all that, gets pretty interesting.
 
In 1st year my main motivation was not to fail...it worked (solid performance all around and honored some stuff), but it made me lose sight of what the hell I was in school for. That sucked. There was free time though which was nice--I worked a job the whole year.

Even though 2nd year is harder than 1st year, it's so much more relevant that I don't care (I'm sure I'll be laughing at this statement when I start rotations but ignorance is bliss for now). I'm starting to shift my focus on actually retaining key things for purposes of actually treating a patient and am caring less about cramming pointless minutiae into my head that I'll forget 5 minutes after an exam anyway (do I care that TLR-5 detects flagella?!). Not as much free time though--giving up the job.

Like anything else, **** rolls downhill...just keep clawing your way up.
 
I liked anatomy a whole lot more than micro and pharm. But a lot of the students who hated anatomy love that stuff. It varies. You'll find your niche. I wouldn't spend much time thinking about it. Focus on fooling yourself into enjoying it somehow. There's always a way to look at it in a new way that helps ease the bull****, no matter how crappy a class is. Staying positive is key.
hm, well that's what im holding out hope for. i was a bio major and generally like learning how things work.

but i'm scared i'm going to end up hating the rest of med school stuff too...leaving me with a miserable time. i feel like an idiot second-guessing myself a lot as to why i'm here. not sure if it's just cuz i don't like to study anatomy or something more fundamentally flawed at my heart...
 
MS2 is harder than MS1 but WAY WAY more fun and more relevant IMO. I hated MS1 (partly social reasons too) mostly because the material was really dry and boring. MS2 material (for us, immuno, micro, path, pharm, etc) is WAAAAAY more interesting.
 
I think what this forum needs is a bit of philosophical perspective.

Literally no med student is prepared for medical school. We get here and think, "M W F for 3 hours." Then I'll study some, party some, and it'll be good. Like College. WRONG.

The first two years of medical school will be the hardest adjustment you will ever make. You realize that its class 8 hrs a day, reading another 8 hours a day, and maybe a day off each week. Its stressful, its long, its exhausting, it isnt fun. Its hard.

But why is it so hard? Its hard because you are entering a world of complexity. The thing that separates a physician from every other health care provider is two fold. First, it is the sheer depth of knowledge you will have. Second, it is understanding why we do things, not just what.

I relate medical school to how you learned language. You first say a few words, and develop vocabulary. Then you learn how to put those words together into sentences, developing vocabulary. By the time you reach third or fourth years you will be writing prose. Beautiful poetry, sonnets, and essays with the slightest of ease. But you must go through the pain staking nonesense of learning vocabulary (year 1), then grammar (year 2), then finally reading and writing. And, just as language is inherently natural to you now, so too will be disease.

Let me relate to you a story. As a paramedic student I had a patient with hepatic failure. My preceptor asked me what we should look for. I was able to regail all the problems of not having a kidney. Oops. That mistake, now, is so far fetched. The difference between the word renal and hepatic is as simple and trivial as the difference between "the" and "is". Now, so too are the things that can go wrong with each organ, the lab values that track them, and the treatment options for both.

The point is that you have to go through the not fun stuff in order to inherently and implicitly understand the end result. Will you recall every nerve or artery you found in anatomy? Of course not. I don't even remember the brachial plexus, and we spent a week on that. Do I remember the different pathological findings of cirrhosis on a needle biopsy? Of course not. But if some one said to me ballooning-degeneration and bridging portal fibrosis I would go "OH! OH! CIRRHOSIS!" Not only do I have the vocabulary, but i have the understanding to recall lost information when prompted, to relate that to pathology, relate that to a potential patient presentation, and then be a doctor.

When some one says something like "ACE-inhibitors are used in congestive heart failure to improve renal perfusion while aldosterons is used to prevent continuing fibrosis," do you know what they mean right now? I mean, you might be able to look up the meaning of the words, but do you implicitly understand why fibrosis is bad? How renal prefusion links to heart failure? What congestion is? You will.

You will go from a frustrated student unable to see the light at the end of the tunnel to a fully functional practitioner of medicine. And you wont even know it. You will still be struggling uphill, just to get a glimpse of the end, not realizing how far you've climbed. The summit is so far away, yet the ground below you is farther. If it feels like suffering. Suffer. The end result is worth it. You can't climb everest in a day, nor can you go from college student to the most highly trained post-graduate degree holding person in the country.

In reality, med school sucks. The first year is hard. Second year is harder. Studying for Step is the worst. But trust me, when you get on the other side of step, and you spend 12 hrs a day 6 days a week in the hospital, you will not only be happy to be seeing patients, but you will be able to communicate like you never thought possible. You will be thankful for it.

College is over. Med school is hard. You are part of the top 0.1% of the country. You are joining a field that requires the most training over any other. The longest degree tract possible. And you will be amongst the elite of the elite. Masters of the human condition, knowledge to a fault. Keep climbing that summit. On the way up, the view is terrible, and the terrain treacherous. When you are on the top looking down the view is simply spectacular.
 
i hate anatomy. i've passed first two tests (though mostly cuz multiple choice helped me out over my poor practical performance). i'm not liking head & neck for my final test either. does it get any "better"? i'm not saying necessarily easier. i hate lab, and i feel so annoyed when i spend a lot of time looking stuff up on wiki. part of me just thinks, "wow if i can look it up in 1 second, why do i need to have to rote kill this". but if all my tests are going to make me this uhgg i don't know...med school so far has not been what i imagined, even when i wasn't imagining.

A lot of this depends on your school. I thought second year was better than the first. Not just more fun, but also a lot easier. I F-ing hated practicals. Third year is highly depended on rotations and can vary from 10 hr/week (seriously) of radiology rotation to an 8 week Surgery rotation that is 10x worse than the worst class you've ever had.
 
I think what this forum needs is a bit of philosophical perspective.
...<snip>....
In reality, med school sucks. The first year is hard. Second year is harder. Studying for Step is the worst. But trust me, when you get on the other side of step, and you spend 12 hrs a day 6 days a week in the hospital, you will not only be happy to be seeing patients, but you will be able to communicate like you never thought possible. You will be thankful for it.

College is over. Med school is hard. You are part of the top 0.1% of the country. You are joining a field that requires the most training over any other. The longest degree tract possible. And you will be amongst the elite of the elite. Masters of the human condition, knowledge to a fault. Keep climbing that summit. On the way up, the view is terrible, and the terrain treacherous. When you are on the top looking down the view is simply spectacular.

blah blah, tl;dr. paragod much?
 
For me, each year is really different so it's a bit like comparing apples to oranges.

MS1: All classes pass/fail but it was mostly basic science. So pretty boring but not particularly stressful
MS2: Honors involved so more stress related to doing well in each test but at least the classes had clinical relevance and were more interesting
MS3: The rotations that you were interested in are exciting but the hours are long and theres more pressure to be on the top of your game since you're being evaluted everyday rather than once every 2 weeks.
MS4: The best in terms of lifestyle, especially during elective rotations where you're just part of a consult service. Attendings respect you a lot more and trust your assessment of the patient. But theres a certain frustration to know that you're so close in your training to the current interns but still aren't allowed to write orders or act in any sort of useful independence.
 
As strange as it sounds, it gets better AND worse. You'll find those that do well on exams, those that don't, friends disappear, doors close, you get to do more, you can't do a lot, until you finally find out what you can do in medicine. It all boils down to who is the best at memorization, kissing ass, and who helps whom get to their final destination. It's a great time, a lot of work, frustrating, and full of nastiness lurks around every corner. Enjoy the ride!
 
Of course it gets better. You reset your baseline for happiness, and adjust your actions/expectations accordingly. Over time, you find new meaning in what you're doing, and learn to see the good inside almost every person around you. And what the haters think starts to matter less and less until it just doesn't matter anymore.

Keep holding on and push yourself harder each day... so worth it.
 
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