Dropping out of med school after 2 years....

[devildoc2]

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[dave262]

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[ckent]

Well, I would ignore the above poster but actually consider his advice. Have you thought about taking a year off instead of just dropping out? Maybe you just need some time to re-dedicate yourself to your studies. Once you get by second year, your life during third year will be very different then second year. Many people who hated first and second year loved it during their clinical years. I would definitely talk with a lot of people about your decision too, don't just rely on the dean of student affairs. They are oftentimes more interested in keeping their usmle avg's up more then they are about individual student careers. Good luck.

 

[beanbean]

Second lease on med school thread ......

Assuming this this previous post was truthful and you are now failing second year, I think you need to take some time off and perhaps seek some professional counseling.

 

[ItsGavinC]

Originally posted by devildoc2
We're approaching the final stretch in my 2nd year and I have decided to quit med school.

Nobody can fault you for making such a decision if it is indeed one that has been borne of deep thinking and personal introspection.

You should realize, however, that there IS a light at the end of the tunnel. You mention that you feel you would love the day to day life of being a doctor, so it's important to realize that you aren't *that* far away from that life.

With the coming of third and fourth years, you'll find you'll finally be able to clinically apply much of that memorization you've crammed in.

If you're reason for quitting is only because your grades are too low, then you ought to consider repeating the year. A better alternative, of course, would be to get your rear in gear and do all you can do still pass those courses. Obviously, passing the courses at this point would save you time rather than repeating the entire year.

Whatever you do, don't make a rash decision, and remember that you are fully capable of suceeding in medical school, although the journey probably isn't much fun for you. Also be assured that you aren't alone. A random sampling of your fellow classmates should reveal several that feel exactly the same as you do.

Keep your head up!

 

[kutastha]

Originally posted by beanbean
Second lease on med school thread ......

Assuming this this previous post was truthful and you are now failing second year, I think you need to take some time off and perhaps seek some professional counseling.

Good catch. I remember that thread.

I'd have to agree with this poster.

 

[deleted29780]

I feel sorry ... please don't give. Think about the sacrifices u made before getting into med school. Instead of taking a whole year off, how about taking a week off.
See a specialist... de-stress. All the best.

 

[Stinger86]

During second year you build upon the concepts you learned your first year. Sure, it's a ton more information, but without it how can you possibly expect to be a competent doctor? If a patient presents with swollen limbs and hyperglycemia, how can you possibly help him without knowing something about the diseases he might have?

You should definitely consider taking some time off to think about your position. If you really hate learning about disease, then I would strongly suggest you do something other than medicine. It's wonderful that you enjoy the patient contact, but if you don't know anything about disease, how can you possibly treat them?

Best of luck.

 

[8744]

Originally posted by devildoc2
We're approaching the final stretch in my 2nd year and I have decided to quit med school.

I love working in the hosptial with patients, but I am failing 2nd year courses because I just cant motivate myself to sit down and memorize lists of information day after day, night after night.

First year coursework was fine, because there was less mindless memorization and instead of memorizing the 5 histological features of diabetic nephropathy, we were learning about CONCEPTS.

I feel like I would love the day to day life of being a doctor, however I cant stand the and have grown completely disinterested in the "cram everything you can" approach of mindless, numbing, memorization.

Dude, you should never quit anything worthwhile, ever. Even if you can't stand it it is better to "gut it out." Fer cryin' out loud, repeat your f*cking second year rather then quit.

Let me give you some unsolicited advice which I think most people in third and fourth year will verify as accurate:

Just suck it up and tough it out. Play the game. Memorize what is necessary to pass Step 1. Get some study habits and stick to them.

Third and fourth year are a lot more fun then first and second year even if the hours are longer. You don't really have to study that much. If you pay attention on the wards and go to the conferences you will probably learn enough to pass the shelf exams. Plus you can get the easy-to-read "Blueprint" books for every rotation which are concise and short. You can easily read their 200 or so pages in the two months usually alloted for each rotation. And that's all you have to do to pass.

(Not to mention the "First Aid for the Wards" which are even more concise.)

Third and fourth year are as hard as you want to make them. Within reason, you can slime your way through third year doing the bare minimum, keeping a low profile, and still mange to get a low, low "C" in everything. Fourth year can be even easier.

Now, I personally love medical school and usually try to get the most out of it I can. But let's say you hated it and were on, for example, your surgery rotation. Pretty much we came in at about 5:30, saw our patients, wrote a note on them, and did speed rounds from about seven until seven-thirty. Then, on most days we went down to surgery and held retractors or did anything else we could to help. If you are bound and determined that medicine is not for you you could either not scrub in and just stand in the operating room outside of the sterile field feigning interest or you could just not show up.

Medical school is mostly on the honor system. Nobody really checks up on you. As long as a few of your attendings see you a couple of times you'd just be another face with nondescript evaluations resulting in that low, low, "C."

Same with medicine, or OB-GYN. The worst that you will ever have to do if you are not gung ho to is some clinic work, a couple of deliveries, and some surgery. But at our school, the rotations are broken up into smaller chunks. We have, for example, OB-GYN for two months but it consists of four two-week blocks at various places and services. I can tolerate anything for two weeks. Fact is I loved OB-GYN so it was no problem. But I hated Heme-Onc during medicine which we also had for two weeks. I mean I hated it. It was like torture. I didn't even want to touch the patients...but I kept telling myself, "hey, it's only two weeks."


Third year is just a series of two to four week blocks which pass at lightning speed. I can't believe sometimes how fast this year has passed. (But my group did Surgery, OB-Gyn, and Medicine first)

Don't anybody flame me. I like medical school and I am definitly not "sliming" my own way through.

So don't quit. Graduate, and if you hate it after third and fourth year you can get a law degree or go into journalism or do absolutely anything with your prestigious MD degree. If you just slime through so you can pass then you won't be a risk to the public because you won't actually practice medicine.

 

[Samoa]

Also, if it's working with patients that motivates you, you may find it MUCH easier to learn about the diseases when it helps you to take care of your patients better.

In any event, 1st and 2nd year are not at all like the actual practice of medicine, and I really think you owe it to yourself to stick it out and see if you like 3rd and 4th years. It's hard and incredibly discouraging to study what seems to be senseless minutiae, but you're SOOOO close to the end of the stuff you hate.

You might try taking an hour or so out of your day once or twice a week to go to the internal medicine noon conference over at the hospital, or whatever other specialty's teaching conference interests you (however marginally). Particularly if it's the kind of conference where they bring in the actual patient. It may help you to realize how much you've learned already, and give you the motivation to stay focused.

 

[care bear]

aw. . .if it's just the classes holding you back then i really hope you find a way to hang in there.

anyway. ..this quote of yours is fromthe other thread and i'm honeslty not trying to embarrass you or anything, i'm honeslty wondering- you said:

"I'm buying the MS2 books right now and starting to work on the clinical skills volunteering during the summer... just the simple stuff like blood pressure, venipuncture, practicing H&Ps, writing SOAP notes, DRE, breath sounds, abdominal exams, etc.

I plan to study 5 hours a day this summer on the MS2 curriculum--this should also help for the USMLE Step I board exam next summer."

and i was wondering if you actually found time to do that, and if it helped at all with the classes this year? or if you managed to do that and still had these troubles.

this question is actually just for my own personal benefit

 

[jake2]

bump

I was wondering if the op is actually failing his classes (which it sounds like) or just can't make the 10% promise. Other than that, I also second the take a year off idea. Worst thing that can happen is you have to postpone your decision to drop out for a year.

 

[oldtimer]

2 first author pubs in the first year of medical school? That's amazing. And he spent 40 hours/week in the lab when he should have been studying? Sounds like he chose the wrong career. Go to grad school and get a PhD. That seems more like your calling.

 

[8744]

Originally posted by jake2
bump

I was wondering if the op is actually failing his classes (which it sounds like) or just can't make the 10% promise. Other than that, I also second the take a year off idea. Worst thing that can happen is you have to postpone your decision to drop out for a year.

Amen. We had a guy in our class just quit after second year. He even passed Step 1. He should have asked for a one year leave of absence which they would have given to him automatically. That way, if he could come back if he found out that "civilian" life was not as cool as he thought. Now he has zero chance of ever getting back into medical school if he has second thoughts.

 

[pikachu]

Devildoc2,
I have been in the same position-- end of first semester of first year. At that time I wanted to just drop out as well. my parents and friends were somewhat more realistic and told me to take a year off so I would keep all my options open. Just to humor them (since I thought I was DONE with med school FOREVER) I took a year's leave of absence. After six months of the most hellish office job imaginable at a think tank in DC I went straight back to med school. Now i'm halfway done with 3rd year, something that didn't seem remotely possible when i was about to fail Biochemistry or whatever worthless course that was keeping me down. Also, (and i think there is a thread about this) your 1st-2nd year performance has NOTHING to do with your 3rd-4th year performance, or how good of a doctor you'll be when you get out. When you're at that place where all the academic pressures are overwhelming you to the point where you want to drop out, it's not that easy to think clearly about all your options. All you want to do is get the hell out of med school (trust me I understand). However once you are out in the world with a crappy boring job in a cubicle, and a bitchy boss who yells at you for taking a coffee break, and a 90 minute commute, and all the other wonderful amenities that the 21st century has to offer the B.A./B.S. paper-pusher/computer monkey with no postgraduate degree, med school will look a whole lot better. In fact, it will look like f---ing Utopia. Sometimes you have to give it up for a while and get perspective on why you were there to begin with -- and realize that there are a lot worse things out there than memorizing some body parts and some drug interactions.

Plus I would second the opinion of earlier posters that 3rd year usually makes up for the aggravation of the first 2 (including step 1).

So I hope all the posters have convinced you that you should try to stick with the preclinical B.S. for now, because it really does get better the day you walk into rounds on July 1 of Year 3. Failing that, hopefully you will take a year off to work instead of just dropping out. You'll either see that med school really isn't that bad -- or that it isn't for you. Either way you will still have the option of going back and won't be (cliche time!) Kicking Yourself for Burning All Your Bridges.

Stay strong,
Pikachu

 

[Wednesday]

Hmmm, are we feeding a troll?

If you aren't a troll, you certainly are an extreme person. Last year you were swearing to the deans that you were going to be in the top 10% of your class for the rest of your tenure at school and now you are "disinterested" and ready to drop out completely. You might benefit from some moderation. If you truly are on the verge of quitting, taking some time off is a great idea (as many previous posters have mentioned). The only problem is, aren't you on some very stringent probation?

 

[stomper627]

Originally posted by Wednesday
Hmmm, are we feeding a troll?

If you aren't a troll, you certainly are an extreme person. Last year you were swearing to the deans that you were going to be in the top 10% of your class for the rest of your tenure at school and now you are "disinterested" and ready to drop out completely. You might benefit from some moderation. If you truly are on the verge of quitting, taking some time off is a great idea (as many previous posters have mentioned). The only problem is, aren't you on some very stringent probation?

OP,
You might try some lithium....from past posts and this thread, you do sound a bit bipolar. Get some psychiatric help.

 

[monkeyarms]

plain and simple: we don't need someone like you as a future colleague. go ahead and quit if your heart is not in it. good for you and everyone else you might subsequently encounter in the profession. the crap about not quitting is just that: crap. you clearly didn't know what you were getting into when you started, which is by no means an attack, just a fact. if you're burned out by two years of lecture, then how do you think you'll feel years deep in residency in the wrong specialty in the wrong program? no offense intended, but just quit.

 

[5oProlene]

Originally posted by monkeyarms
plain and simple: we don't need someone like you as a future colleague. go ahead and quit if your heart is not in it. good for you and everyone else you might subsequently encounter in the profession. the crap about not quitting is just that: crap. you clearly didn't know what you were getting into when you started, which is by no means an attack, just a fact. if you're burned out by two years of lecture, then how do you think you'll feel years deep in residency in the wrong specialty in the wrong program? no offense intended, but just quit.

monkeyarms as a physician:

plain and simple: we don't need someone like you as a patient. go ahead and die if your heart is not in it. good for you and everyone else you might subsequently encounter in the profession. the crap about not dying is just that: crap. you clearly didn't know what you were getting into when you started living, which is by no means an attack, just a fact. if you're burned out by now , then how do you think you'll feel years from now if you're still living? no offense intended, but just die.

 

[aphistis]

Classic.

 

[SilverAngel1110]

Originally posted by monkeyarms
plain and simple: we don't need someone like you as a future colleague. go ahead and quit if your heart is not in it. good for you and everyone else you might subsequently encounter in the profession. the crap about not quitting is just that: crap. you clearly didn't know what you were getting into when you started, which is by no means an attack, just a fact. if you're burned out by two years of lecture, then how do you think you'll feel years deep in residency in the wrong specialty in the wrong program? no offense intended, but just quit.

i'm not by any means attacking you, but i'd just like to ask, have you never gotten frustrated with something in your life? even something you love? the fact of the matter is that we all get frustrated and we all have doubts at times, even about the things to which we are whole-heartedly committed. and anyone who tells you otherwise is a liar, now THAT's plain and simple. having doubts about med school doesn't make anyone a bad person, and it certainly doesn't mean that the questioner will turn out to be a bad doctor, should he ultimately decide to stick it out. and importantly, questioning whether one's decision is right certainly doesn't make that person any less passionate about medicine. sometimes things just get hard and frustrating, and yes sometimes we don't know what we were getting into when we started. does anybody REALLY know for sure what it's like until they get there? what is so horrible about stepping back for a while and evaluating whether you've made the right choice? i think that anybody who does so shows a great deal of commitment to their own well-being. whether the OP decides to stick it out, take some time off, or leave for good is up to him. and whatever decision he makes will be the right one for HIM. leaving won't make him a failure if that's what makes him happy. and conversely, sticking it out won't make him a hero if medicine is ultimately going to make him miserable. the important thing is to take some time and figure out what is right for you. and don't listen to anyone who says that your having doubts means you'll be a crappy doctor. in my experience, the people who've asked questions throughout their lives end up being the most passionate about what they finally choose to do, simply because they took the time to figure out what they really wanted. the question you should ask yourself is whether it's worth it to you, whether you think you can overlook the mundane and horrendously frustrating "drinking from a fire hose" style of learning that is the first two years, and set your sights on something in medicine that TRULY makes you happy and fulfills you. if you ask yourself that question, and you find that the answer is that nothing fulfills you about the profession, then yes, by all means leave. but don't feel guilty. just go and find out what else is out there that WILL make you happy. good luck to you.

(man i really hope that the OP was telling the truth, b/c if he's lying about the whole thing, as some people tend to believe, well then, that's a whole other ball game...)

 

[modelcitizen]

Originally posted by SilverAngel1110
i'm not by any means attacking you, but i'd just like to ask, have you never gotten frustrated with something in your life? even something you love? the fact of the matter is that we all get frustrated and we all have doubts at times, even about the things to which we are whole-heartedly committed. and anyone who tells you otherwise is a liar, now THAT's plain and simple. having doubts about med school doesn't make anyone a bad person, and it certainly doesn't mean that the questioner will be will turn out to be a bad doctor, should he ultimately decide to stick it out. and importantly, questioning whether one's decision is right certainly doesn't make that person any less passionate about medicine. sometimes things just get hard and frustrating, and yes sometimes we don't know what we were getting into when we started. does anybody REALLY know for sure what it's like until they get there? what is so horrible about stepping back for a while and evaluating whether you've made the right choice? i think that anybody who does so shows a great deal of commitment to their own well-being. whether the OP decides to stick it out, take some time off, or leave for good is up to him. and whatever decision he makes will be the right one for HIM. leaving won't make him a failure if that's what makes him happy. and conversely, sticking it out won't make him a hero if medicine is ultimately going to make him miserable. the important thing is to take some time and figure out what is right for you. and don't listen to anyone who says that your having doubts means you'll be a crappy doctor. in my experience, the people who've asked questions throughout their lives end up being the most passionate about what they finally choose to do, simply because they took the time to figure out what they really wanted. the question you should ask yourself is whether it's worth it to you, whether you think you can overlook the mundane and horrendously frustrating "drinking from a fire hose" style of learning that is the first two years, and set your sights on something in medicine that TRULY makes you happy and fulfills you. if you ask yourself that question, and you find that the answer is that nothing fulfills you about the profession, then yes, by all means leave. but don't feel guilty. just go and find out what else is out there that WILL make you happy. good luck to you.

that's a good post!

 

[cali23]

Hey,

I am in the same situation as you are. Rather than failing my second year, I am taking a leave of absence. I have been through a lot this year, and had to accept the fact that I cant balance counseling with my second year workload.

My advise to you is...

1. Definitely take a leave of absence from medical school.

2. Think about what went wrong second year and plan on ways to fix it. This takes guts and commitment because you need to find out why you made your mistakes and have the initiative to correct your problems before you come back to medical school.

3. Find out if you really like medical school. I too hate memorizing, but I LOVE working with people and think I will make a good doctor, so I'm staying in the game.

4. Remember life is full of obstacles. Learning how to deal with these obstacles puts you on the track to fulfilling your personal potential in life.

5. **** what everyone else think/says. F residencies, F counselors who are not supportive. Your life is yours and it is up to you to live the way you want to. You've got to come back with faith in yourself that you can kick ass, because in my opinion, anyone accepted to med schl has the potential to kick ass.

Good luck,

email me if u have more ?'s at [email protected]

Hopefully we can both turn things around.





P.S. Do you know how a leave of absence affects loan repayment?

 

[roady]

So what did you hope would happen by starting this post anyway, devil doc?

Thanks,
Roady