free time as a medical student?

Started by gmcguitar4
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gmcguitar4

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I know there are older threads on this but I wanted to bring it back because A) its useful for me B) its useful for other people using SDN who are too lazy to search like me C) time and curriculums change

So I am calling out to current 1st and 2nd year medical students..what is a typical day like when there is no exam approaching? approximate time frames would be nice too.

I am especially interested in this because I currently practice guitar/piano around 2-3 hours a day and was wondering if it would be possible to practice maybe an hour a day during school.
 
very good mentality. you are right, it can be searched for because it has been discussed a lot. Being too lazy to search is really valuable and definitely makes other members appreciate you for not taking initiative on your own. And time and curriculums do change, but there are probably 5 threads like this every 3 months, so I am fairly certain most of these threads probably cover.

quit being a tool.
 
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1st year: most can get away with <40 hours/wk.
2nd year: most work harder than M1, but that's all relative. Might still get away with <40 hours/wk if you're indifferent to your Step score.
3rd year: this will be tough. time commitment depends on the rotation. eg Psych is generally understood to be less intense than Surgery.
4th year: it looks awesome, wish i was there already.

if other people have time for significant others, then you have time for a hobby. the challenge for all years is in prioritizing what's truly important - you won't have time for everything any more. find the two things you can't live without and make time for those, the rest will get buried.
 
FrkyBgStok said:
very good mentality. you are right, it can be searched for because it has been discussed a lot. Being too lazy to search is really valuable and definitely makes other members appreciate you for not taking initiative on your own. And time and curriculums do change, but there are probably 5 threads like this every 3 months, so I am fairly certain most of these threads probably cover.

quit being a tool.
Click to expand...

Now snide comments... THOSE are a rare gem. If you don't like the thread, don't read it.
 
So far, I have more free time as a M1 than I did my junior year of college. I am spending more time studying/school and less time doing ECs.

Typical day:
Study/Class - few hours (3-5)
Rest of time - ???

I'm finding out that the hard part about med school, at least for me, isn't the amount of time required to do well in class. The hard part is staying interested/motivated to get your **** done.
 
Loads of free time in med school (except during test week, when you have slightly less time).

This depends largely on your school's curriculum though; I am on campus for about 3 hours a day (2 hours of anatomy lab + 1 hour of problem-based learning), four days a week. Studying takes <2 hours per day.
 
On the other end of the spectrum, our first course is anatomy and we're in class from 9-5 with lectures and lab. It's pretty terrible. After anatomy is done, though, we have 2 hours of lecture in the morning and then nothing else most days of the week.

There's definitely time to pursue interests as long as you stay on top of your work and get efficient at studying.
 
Thank you for the insight. If there are any more medical students please share your experience! I am suprised by peoples answers though. I thought I wouldn't even be able to sleep during medical school. My time management skills are kinda ****ty because I just don't have too much to do at the moment.



BHaus9 said:
Now snide comments... THOSE are a rare gem. If you don't like the thread, don't read it.
Click to expand...

I agree. People think they can say all the stupid/negative things they want because they are hidden behind an avatar.
 
gmcguitar4 said:
I agree. People think they can say all the stupid/negative things they want because they are hidden behind an avatar.
Click to expand...

Let me get this straight, you openly state you know that the answer you seeks exists but you are too lazy to look for it.

Yet you complain when someone calls you out for being lazy???

Froggy didn't comment like he did because he is online, he commented because you feel your time is more important than ours given that you refused to search and frankly that is rude on your part.
 
LifeTake2 said:
Let me get this straight, you openly state you know that the answer you seeks exists but you are too lazy to look for it.

Yet you complain when someone calls you out for being lazy???

Froggy didn't comment like he did because he is online, he commented because you feel your time is more important than ours given that you refused to search and frankly that is rude on your part.
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Frankly, I don't care. My time is important. Not more important than yours in any way, but I don't have time to scroll through forums all day. If you want to start arguments go elsewhere.
 
Last fall, I went to class 4 hours a day, and studied maybe 2 beyond that on non-test weeks. Or so it felt.

Last spring, I still went to class 4 hours a day, but it took me a bit longer to study... maybe 3 hours a day. Some systems were better than others.

This fall, I'm starting to study for Step 1 as well, and we're onto the harder systems (cardio, pulm, renal). Plus, I haven't been terribly motivated since I got back from summer break. So I ended up going to class 4 hours a day, and studying an additional 4-5 hours a night (and still not managing to finish my work). I'm on fall break now, and once I come back, I'm not planning on going to most classes, so I figure I'll be back to 7-8 hour days, with my additional step 1 studying.

tl;dr: yes, you will have time to practice your guitar, especially during M1. If you don't, you're doing something wrong.
 
gmcguitar4 said:
Frankly, I don't care. My time is important. Not more important than yours in any way, but I don't have time to scroll through forums all day. If you want to start arguments go elsewhere.
Click to expand...

Somewhat amusing since you stated that you have poor time management skills because you don't have much to do...
 
Does anyone else feel like an ******* when they're not studying (like now for example)? It's gotten better this year, but last year was bad.
 
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You have a fair amount of free time during M1, I say that and I'm in the middle of anatomy. Granted, I'm nowhere near the top of my class and don't really care about getting honors. Maybe if I was gunning, it would be different. If you don't have an exam coming up, how much work you have a day depends on how much you want to put into it. Everyone has to study a ton during exam weeks.

It's not too bad, you have to learn to spend your time more wisely and "being social" takes on a new meaning. So even studying a few hours everyday isn't so bad if you are studying with friends or people whose company you enjoy.
 
Varies. I'm in a program that has 9-5 classes. Obviously that is a huge time sink, plus a few hours on top of that of studying every night. Now granted, my first course is anatomy, so the bulk of that time is invested into lab. I dissect, or am required to be in lab 4 hours a day at minimum, if my group manages to finish dissecting the day's agenda. We're graded on dissection quality, so we need to spend more time in lab to clean and tidy up the bodies.

The people who are shooting for honors in my class put in anywhere between 75-90 hours a week. For the average person just looking to just pass, they could probably get away with 60. The reason this number is so high right now is because of lab. This changes once we wrap up anatomy though. It will be straight lectures from then on out, and I don't plan on ever showing up. Recorded lectures + VLC player FTW!
 
I think it depends on the school. The students I met at UVA kept telling me how much free time they and their classmates had (the curriculum is designed to improve understanding, which cuts back on study time), while some students at another school told me that their schedule had them going crazy.
 
LifeTake2 said:
Let me get this straight, you openly state you know that the answer you seeks exists but you are too lazy to look for it.

Yet you complain when someone calls you out for being lazy???

Froggy didn't comment like he did because he is online, he commented because you feel your time is more important than ours given that you refused to search and frankly that is rude on your part.
Click to expand...

Hey, man, I totally agree. Really don't like this type of person who is willing to waste other people's time and not take literally 2 min to search himself.
 
NickNaylor said:
On the other end of the spectrum, our first course is anatomy and we're in class from 9-5 with lectures and lab. It's pretty terrible. After anatomy is done, though, we have 2 hours of lecture in the morning and then nothing else most days of the week.

There's definitely time to pursue interests as long as you stay on top of your work and get efficient at studying.
Click to expand...

Yea I would back this up. Basically have classes/anatomy lab/group learning from 8AM until the afternoon five days a week, and then sporadic mandatory events peppered after that. You can make time for other interests, but not a whole lot of time, and not a whole lot of interests.
 
gmcguitar4 said:
I know there are older threads on this but I wanted to bring it back because A) its useful for me B) its useful for other people using SDN who are too lazy to search like me C) time and curriculums change

So I am calling out to current 1st and 2nd year medical students..what is a typical day like when there is no exam approaching? approximate time frames would be nice too.

I am especially interested in this because I currently practice guitar/piano around 2-3 hours a day and was wondering if it would be possible to practice maybe an hour a day during school.
Click to expand...

When there are no exams, you can always put off studying for a day or two if you have interesting/important things to do. I always manage to find an hour every other day for video games or running. Beach every other weekend.

When there are exams... I don't even do laundry. Or cook. Or eat. 😀

I definitely think a day should be longer than 24 hours...
 
NickNaylor said:
Somewhat amusing since you stated that you have poor time management skills because you don't have much to do...
Click to expand...


tumblr_ljsc195iah1qhvkubo1_250.gif
 
gmcguitar4 said:
I know there are older threads on this but I wanted to bring it back because A) its useful for me B) its useful for other people using SDN who are too lazy to search like me C) time and curriculums change

So I am calling out to current 1st and 2nd year medical students..what is a typical day like when there is no exam approaching? approximate time frames would be nice too.

I am especially interested in this because I currently practice guitar/piano around 2-3 hours a day and was wondering if it would be possible to practice maybe an hour a day during school.
Click to expand...

It depends entirely on you and your school. My school has plenty of unstructured time, but if I slack off and misuse that time, I'll pay the price in the second half of the block. That said, I have more than one hour of time for "me" during the day. That may change in January/February when Step I rears its ugly head, but you can have time for yourself.

What you should be concerned about is whether or not you'll be able to take the times when you don't have an hour to yourself. You will have to make sacrifices to be be in and get through medical school. Are you willing to do those, even in the face of having to give up something you love?
 
Cinclus said:
I think it depends on the school. The students I met at UVA kept telling me how much free time they and their classmates had (the curriculum is designed to improve understanding, which cuts back on study time), while some students at another school told me that their schedule had them going crazy.
Click to expand...

And this is what makes UVA so awesome 🙂

In all seriousness, I do think that looking at these things for the schools you interview at/are accepted to is important. I chose between a school that had roughly 24 hours of class a week over a school that had 40 hours of class a week, and those 16 hours make a big difference. This isn't like undergrad where you can passively absorb what the professors tell you in lecture.
 
Cinclus said:
I think it depends on the school. The students I met at UVA kept telling me how much free time they and their classmates had (the curriculum is designed to improve understanding, which cuts back on study time), while some students at another school told me that their schedule had them going crazy.
Click to expand...

UVA is awesome and I looove that we (usually) have only 4 hours of class a day...but I don't have nearly as much free time as I feel like I should from what I was told. I'm hoping that, since I've only been in class for 8 weeks so far, it's because I'm not yet a super-efficient studier, and because I still feel like I have to fill out eeeevery learning objective question. Have yet to master the "treat med school like a full time job" thing.

That said, I still almost always have at least 3 hours a day of non-studying/non-sleeping time per day.
 
My school really tries to ease you into the whole process, so I have more free time than I know what to do with right now because we're only really taking Gross and Histo. When we finish Histo in a few weeks, we pick up Embryo and Neuro, so I'm sure I'll see a pretty big decrease in my free time when that happens.
 
This year (m2) I spend about 4 hours every morning watching lecture online. Then I do nothing for the rest of the day aside from lift/shoot/golf/play with my dogs/build things/work on my house, etc.

If I have an exam within the next 2 weeks add around 1 hour a day of studying and as the time to the exam draws nearer I ramp it up more depending on my needs. Usually max per day of studying post lecture watching is around 4 hours.

You will encounter plenty of jabrones in med school who claim they study 8/9/10 hours a day. Either these guys fall into the "im not really that smart but if I study enough I will pull down some decent grades" category, sit in the library and fb it or talk with their friends and waste time, or really have no idea how to study and are just running around in circles while they study, or straight gunners. Med school is essentially set up so that you can study a reasonable amount and get 80s-mid 85s. In order to break 90 and start getting As you really need to study a disproportionate amount of time. I am not willing to put in that amount of work...not to mention preclinical grades are like #7 on the list of things that program directors critique you on.
 
Last edited:
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gmcguitar4 said:
Frankly, I don't care. My time is important. Not more important than yours in any way, but I don't have time to scroll through forums all day. If you want to start arguments go elsewhere.
Click to expand...
If your time was really important, you would have done an easy search, gotten your answer, and been done with it. Instead, I'm pretty sure you just wanted to stir up the hornet's nest.

http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=506559&highlight=day

http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=348259&highlight=day

http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=691023&highlight=day

http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=678424&highlight=day

http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=653627&highlight=day
 
girlSam said:
UVA is awesome and I looove that we (usually) have only 4 hours of class a day...but I don't have nearly as much free time as I feel like I should from what I was told. I'm hoping that, since I've only been in class for 8 weeks so far, it's because I'm not yet a super-efficient studier, and because I still feel like I have to fill out eeeevery learning objective question. Have yet to master the "treat med school like a full time job" thing.

That said, I still almost always have at least 3 hours a day of non-studying/non-sleeping time per day.
Click to expand...

It might have something to do with the three extra weeks of summer and your fall break.
 
gravitywave said:
1st year: most can get away with <40 hours/wk.
2nd year: most work harder than M1, but that's all relative. Might still get away with <40 hours/wk if you're indifferent to your Step score.
3rd year: this will be tough. time commitment depends on the rotation. eg Psych is generally understood to be less intense than Surgery.
4th year: it looks awesome, wish i was there already.

if other people have time for significant others, then you have time for a hobby. the challenge for all years is in prioritizing what's truly important - you won't have time for everything any more. find the two things you can't live without and make time for those, the rest will get buried.
Click to expand...

Disagree. Some can certainly get away with fewer hours but very few get away with less than 40 hours per week. Honestly most people who keep their head above water treat it like a 60+ hour per week job and do fine. Which means you will have a few free hours each day, but hardly the kind of free time a 9 to 5 person will. That's not helpful advice to the vast majority. Truth of the matter is there will be a few super smart people in each class who can get way with very little work, and a few people at the very bottom of the class hoping to sneak by with very little work (some don't manage to sneak by, and most end up regretting not doing more later down the road) But the vast vast majority are going to need to be putting in pretty substantial work daily, including weekends. 60 hours per week ( including class time) is pretty normal -- that's 10-11 hours per day and then 5-10 hours each weekend. it's not like college, and very few should expect it to meet that low threshold.
 
Law2Doc said:
Disagree. Some can certainly get away with fewer hours but very few get away with less than 40 hours per week. Honestly most people who keep their head above water treat it like a 60+ hour per week job and do fine. Which means you will have a few free hours each day, but hardly the kind of free time a 9 to 5 person will. That's not helpful advice to the vast majority. Truth of the matter is there will be a few super smart people in each class who can get way with very little work, and a few people at the very bottom of the class hoping to sneak by with very little work (some don't manage to sneak by, and most end up regretting not doing more later down the road) But the vast vast majority are going to need to be putting in pretty substantial work daily, including weekends. 60 hours per week ( including class time) is pretty normal -- that's 10-11 hours per day and then 5-10 hours each weekend. it's not like college, and very few should expect it to meet that low threshold.
Click to expand...

Agree with l2d... esp second year we have like 6 hours of class a day consistently + clinical skills labs and/or humanities mandatory stuff we gotta go to. If you just watched lectures and thats it you wouldn't pass unless as l2d said you are a super genius. Most people need to read through the notes several times and apply the knowledge with questions etc. Def more than 40 hours a week altho I never really calculated how much time every week I spend doing school stuff. I do know that I used to be able to play video games and now with modern warfare 3 around the corner I'm very upset that I won't have the time 🙁
 
I will dissent to the above two posts. But I will say your TYPICAL med student studies a pretty good amount.

There is no way I spent 60h/wk on school work. Hell I probably dont even spend 40. About 4h of lecture a day with an odd 6 hour day thrown in there. Dont watch many of the lectures whose lecturers are infamous for just reading off the PPT. So that saves a bunch of time. I had more clinical skills labs M1 than I did this year by a long shot. I dont typically review material from lecture until about a week before an exam. So that leaves me with about 2-4 hours of work a day on an average day. Ramping up studying before a test I usually spend 2-3 doing lecture...then another 4 tops studying. In the day or two before an exam I ramp that up to 6 hours for maybe one day or two days TOPS.

Med school is significantly less of a time sink for me than working FT+being on call for the last 5 years before med school.
 
mauberley said:
You're not really dissenting, then. 😛
Click to expand...

Exactly. I said most people go well beyond 40 hours per week, and that's simply a true statement. That you personally, or one or two people you hang with, get by on less than that is irrelevant. As a premed you have to assume you will be the average typical guy, not the outlier. Outliers generally do a huge disservice when they give advice on SDN because they paint a picture of med school that won't match the majorities reality. Plan on spending 60+ hours per week. If you get by with less, kudos. Some, like the two above apparently do. But that isn't the norm and you'd be foolish planning for that.

In general in this field you are better off planning for the worst and being pleasantly surprised than the other way round,
 
I still cant agree that MOST med students study 60+ hours a week. Maybe that was the experience at your school...but not at mine. I think a lot of med students waste a lot of time while studying however. I have noticed a lot of people treat group study time as more of a social hour than true study time. Efficiency is greatly going to impact the amount of time you need to study. If you are in a room alone, away from other med students, no music on, away from the laptop...your study time is going to be way more efficient than if you are in a room with other med students chatting away while "studying."

Anyways, it is ridiculous to sit here arguing about how much people study.

You will study more than you have in your life....the end. Whether this is 40 hours, or 60 hours or whatever is not important. You will need to study a lot to keep up.

But dont think you are going to have a life. I (and everyone I know) still does the things they did before. Whether it be lifting, running, rugby, soccer, play WoW, you will still have time to do this stuff.

If you are efficient with your time in preclinical years, you WILL have a life.
 
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I have less free time than I did in undergrad, but definitely still time. It's really going to depend on your background in subjects/how quickly you learn/what you're good at. I memorize visual things pretty quickly, so anatomy isn't that bad for me, but I have to spend a lot more time on biochem. Also on block schedule here, so free time depends on how close exams are, I relaxed quite a bit this weekend but I'll be gearing up to do a LOT of studying in the next 2 weeks. I didn't do anything for the first week of block practically.

Also a lot of people that I see working a ton of hours a week aren't necessarily doing as well as you'd think - I'm not sure if they're over thinking things, not studying efficiently, or unable to distinguish important/extraneous detail, but I saw a lot of people last block doing a lot of studying without the results they wanted.

I also agree that I don't think "most" people spend 60+ hours weekly unless its week before/exam week (although I guess it might depend if you include lecture/lab time as studying). And if you are you should be acing classes.
 
gmcguitar4 said:
I know there are older threads on this but I wanted to bring it back because A) its useful for me B) its useful for other people using SDN who are too lazy to search like me C) time and curriculums change

So I am calling out to current 1st and 2nd year medical students..what is a typical day like when there is no exam approaching? approximate time frames would be nice too.

I am especially interested in this because I currently practice guitar/piano around 2-3 hours a day and was wondering if it would be possible to practice maybe an hour a day during school.
Click to expand...



If you don't care about being at the top of your class, you'll have plenty of free time for pursuits outside of school. I study 3-4 hours every day after class, and then the rest of the evening is mine. Our school has grades, and I'm still doing well, so it's all about how you budget your time. Don't be one of those people that possesses the compulsion to study every waking hour of every day--more often than not it won't do you much extra good.
 
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