Help - Failed...

[surferdude123]

I am in first year medicine. On June 26 I just wrote my first exam, and flunked it. Not by much, but still failed none the less.


Our program is divided into 8 week blocks. It was a combination of Male and Female Repro phys, Microbiology, Obs/Gyn, Maternal/Fetal Phys, Anatomy of the Pelvis, and statistics and genetics. Our program is integrated so everything gets integrated during these 8 week blocks.


So anyway, I don't feel I deserve to fail as I studied for the exam, but I've also had a lot happen since first year started. 1) death of a family member and another one in serious condition in the hospital. 2) relapse of depression and the student affairs coordinator(physician) prescribed me Effexor, I also have an appointment with a psychologist for assessment.......also an appointment with the academic counselor to review study skills etc.....

but regardless I feel dumb, deflated, and discouraged, devastated. It just doesn't make sense, maybe I put the wrong effort into the exam??

like I've worked so hard to get into medical school, and I've had to overcome a lot of adversity in my life to get to where I am now, all to have my life come crashing down just when I thought things were going well....

Should I quit? (roughly 65K in debt).....keep going?! I really want to do medicine, but I don't want to keep failing........sigh.


Has anyone else faced this kind of ordeal? What are some suggestions..?

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[njbmd]

First of all, take a deep breath and slow down. You have to find out the consequences of your failure such as:

Does this put you on probation? If so, what are the conditions of your academic probation?
What is the remediation?
How can you handle this from here on out in terms of your approach to your exams?

Once you have that information, you can make some decisions as to how to proceed from there. For example, if you cannot have any more failures, then you need to be sure that you don't fail. This means working on anything that you need to work on to be sure that you are mastering the material that you need to learn.

Since you have distractions that you mention, you may need to unload some of your academic stress. This is best done by a conversation with your Dean of Students who is the person with whom you need to be sure you have thoroughly discussed your person situation and its effect on your academics. Your faculty adviser is another person who should be hearing from you too.

The next thing that you have to realize is that no one "deserves" to fail in medical (or any other school for that matter) school but students run into problems regularly. Many of these can be solved with some assistance from your administration so make sure that they know your situation and that the lines of communication are open. It sounds like you have moved in that direction.

When you fail an exam, it is perfectly natural to feel that your are totally responsible or that you did something "stupid" but sometimes situations are totally out of your control (and you don't know it). Try to resist the urge to beat yourself so that you can calmly take an honest appraisal of what you need to do to get on track. It could be your medication, it could be your study skill or it could be any combination of factors that added up to the "critical mass" of your failure.

In any event, you take action calmly and as objectively as you can but try very hard to learn from this experience and keep moving forward. Failing one block of material does not mean that you are not cut out for medicine or that you start figuring out what career you will do outside of medicine. If you want this career, you find a way to get past this situation enlisting the help of everyone that is potentially in a position to help you.

I can tell you that 75% of my freshman medical school class failed our first Gross Anatomy exam. Things like this just happen and the faculty, the students and the administration went to work to make sure that any deficiencies were thoroughly covered. Those people who failed got a second chance to review and remediate that material. Only two people ended up failing the course in the end.

I can also tell you that as a professor, every person who fails one of my tests gets on my radar. I ask them to come in for a discussion of their performance and we go over the test question by question. This is a great experience that many times provides good insight for the student. I can also tell you that many students will not come in (even when asked) because they are ashamed of failing. This only adds to the problem.

As you state, you have overcome adversity in the past thus the odds are with you that you will overcome this. I can tell you that students who struggle in medical school are most likely to become excellent physicians because they learn how to solve problems (theirs and their patients) early on.

Follow through on the plans that you have outlined and make sure that you don't "mentally" defeat yourself with thoughts of quitting or ideas that you will just keep failing. If you don't take action, you have a 100% chance of failing/quitting. If you do take action, you can put this behind you and keep going. Like a tennis match, you can be at match point and just keep serving winners until you get back into the game. Step back and do this if you want this career.

 

[surferdude123]

First of all, take a deep breath and slow down. You have to find out the consequences of your failure such as:

Does this put you on probation? If so, what are the conditions of your academic probation?
What is the remediation?
How can you handle this from here on out in terms of your approach to your exams?

Once you have that information, you can make some decisions as to how to proceed from there. For example, if you cannot have any more failures, then you need to be sure that you don't fail. This means working on anything that you need to work on to be sure that you are mastering the material that you need to learn.

Since you have distractions that you mention, you may need to unload some of your academic stress. This is best done by a conversation with your Dean of Students who is the person with whom you need to be sure you have thoroughly discussed your person situation and its effect on your academics. Your faculty adviser is another person who should be hearing from you too.

The next thing that you have to realize is that no one "deserves" to fail in medical (or any other school for that matter) school but students run into problems regularly. Many of these can be solved with some assistance from your administration so make sure that they know your situation and that the lines of communication are open. It sounds like you have moved in that direction.

When you fail an exam, it is perfectly natural to feel that your are totally responsible or that you did something "stupid" but sometimes situations are totally out of your control (and you don't know it). Try to resist the urge to beat yourself so that you can calmly take an honest appraisal of what you need to do to get on track. It could be your medication, it could be your study skill or it could be any combination of factors that added up to the "critical mass" of your failure.

In any event, you take action calmly and as objectively as you can but try very hard to learn from this experience and keep moving forward. Failing one block of material does not mean that you are not cut out for medicine or that you start figuring out what career you will do outside of medicine. If you want this career, you find a way to get past this situation enlisting the help of everyone that is potentially in a position to help you.

I can tell you that 75% of my freshman medical school class failed our first Gross Anatomy exam. Things like this just happen and the faculty, the students and the administration went to work to make sure that any deficiencies were thoroughly covered. Those people who failed got a second chance to review and remediate that material. Only two people ended up failing the course in the end.

I can also tell you that as a professor, every person who fails one of my tests gets on my radar. I ask them to come in for a discussion of their performance and we go over the test question by question. This is a great experience that many times provides good insight for the student. I can also tell you that many students will not come in (even when asked) because they are ashamed of failing. This only adds to the problem.

As you state, you have overcome adversity in the past thus the odds are with you that you will overcome this. I can tell you that students who struggle in medical school are most likely to become excellent physicians because they learn how to solve problems (theirs and their patients) early on.

Follow through on the plans that you have outlined and make sure that you don't "mentally" defeat yourself with thoughts of quitting or ideas that you will just keep failing. If you don't take action, you have a 100% chance of failing/quitting. If you do take action, you can put this behind you and keep going. Like a tennis match, you can be at match point and just keep serving winners until you get back into the game. Step back and do this if you want this career.

Thank you. It means a lot to me you took the time to write an insightful and motivating response.

 

[Law2Doc]

It just doesn't make sense, maybe I put the wrong effort into the exam?

I agree with what njbmd wrote above. Bear in mind that there is a fairly steep learning curve in med school. Most don't show up knowing what they ought to be doing, how best to study for a med school exam, how to most efficiently study the large quantity of information, how to take med school exams. They don't have a good sense of the expectations or where the average is going to be given the better credentials of average med students over most undergrads. So yeah, it's sometimes going to take an exam or two until you get this ship sailing in the right direction. Most people show up to med school having been toward the top of their class throughout undergrad. And half will come to the shocking reality that they are going to be in the bottom half of their class. And some will fail tests for the first time in their life in med school. Failing one test is not the end of the world. Not figuring out how to learn from it and fix things might end up being a recipe for repeating a year though. Best to step back, talk to the appropriate people, and see what you can do differently for the next one. If something doesn't work, scrap it and try something else. Be radical in revamping your study plan. It's hard for folks to do after years of success in undergrad, but honestly success in undergrad is meaningless now.

 

[Orthodoc40]

I have nothing more insightful to add to either of the above posts but am just surprised you had your first exam at the end of June!? That's one early start!

 

[anon-y-mouse]

I am in first year medicine. On June 26 I just wrote my first exam, and flunked it. Not by much, but still failed none the less.


Our program is divided into 8 week blocks. It was a combination of Male and Female Repro phys, Microbiology, Obs/Gyn, Maternal/Fetal Phys, Anatomy of the Pelvis, and statistics and genetics. Our program is integrated so everything gets integrated during these 8 week blocks.


So anyway, I don't feel I deserve to fail as I studied for the exam, but I've also had a lot happen since first year started. 1) death of a family member and another one in serious condition in the hospital. 2) relapse of depression and the student affairs coordinator(physician) prescribed me Effexor, I also have an appointment with a psychologist for assessment.......also an appointment with the academic counselor to review study skills etc.....

but regardless I feel dumb, deflated, and discouraged, devastated. It just doesn't make sense, maybe I put the wrong effort into the exam??

like I've worked so hard to get into medical school, and I've had to overcome a lot of adversity in my life to get to where I am now, all to have my life come crashing down just when I thought things were going well....

Should I quit? (roughly 65K in debt).....keep going?! I really want to do medicine, but I don't want to keep failing........sigh.


Has anyone else faced this kind of ordeal? What are some suggestions..?

Anatomy of the pelvis is really hard... I remember having a really ridiculously tough time with it with the nerves diving in and out everywhere and that damn UG diaphragm. Don't beat yourself up about it. Some of my classmates and I found that to be one of the hardest topics in anatomy. Plus all that reproductive physiology, blah. Anyway, you have excellent suggestions above which I suggest you look at! Clearly you should not give up. Plenty of people fail an exam or two in med school and still get through. The first step is to figure out *why* you failed. You studied, but perhaps you didn't study the right way. When you got to the test, were you surprised at the format of the questions? If so, then I think you should do some active studying, but do lots more sample questions (like from BRS books, etc.) so you can really test what you know. While you're integrated, medicine is medicine everywhere -- if you're studying some particular topic, you should make sure you can answer all the relevant questions from a particular resource (e.g. UMich questions, BRS, etc.). Keep going!! Don't give up!

 

[mjl1717]

I am in first year medicine. On June 26 I just wrote my first exam, and flunked it. Not by much, but still failed none the less.


Our program is divided into 8 week blocks. It was a combination of Male and Female Repro phys, Microbiology, Obs/Gyn, Maternal/Fetal Phys, Anatomy of the Pelvis, and statistics and genetics. Our program is integrated so everything gets integrated during these 8 week blocks.


So anyway, I don't feel I deserve to fail as I studied for the exam, but I've also had a lot happen since first year started. 1) death of a family member and another one in serious condition in the hospital. 2) relapse of depression and the student affairs coordinator(physician) prescribed me Effexor, I also have an appointment with a psychologist for assessment.......also an appointment with the academic counselor to review study skills etc.....

but regardless I feel dumb, deflated, and discouraged, devastated. It just doesn't make sense, maybe I put the wrong effort into the exam??

like I've worked so hard to get into medical school, and I've had to overcome a lot of adversity in my life to get to where I am now, all to have my life come crashing down just when I thought things were going well....

Should I quit? (roughly 65K in debt).....keep going?! I really want to do medicine, but I don't want to keep failing........sigh.


Has anyone else faced this kind of ordeal? What are some suggestions..?

You took a good jab.. At least you didnt get knock down.. Keep fighting, it all goes with the territory.. Maybe find a decent study group to exchange info and ideas..

 

[docmode]

njbmd that was very well said. You seem to be a very kind person and you must be quite an asset to your University. I agree with you totally and hopefully your advice will be followed. Good luck, I think you can do it, sometimes it just takes a bit more time and effort.

 

[surferdude123]

thank you guys it really means a lot.

sometimes I think what the hell I am doing. but then other times I think to myself, you know I relate really well with people, I am kind and sensitive and compassionate, I will make a good doctor. I guess everyone goes through that.

I have decided to keep going, and push through. Revamp my study skills, and enlist who ever I can to help and go from there.

I am going to make an appointment to review my exam to see where I went wrong, but I was only 3% away from an academic pass. I have never been a 95% student, but when I try I have a very strong determination.

I've also made an appointment with the student affairs coordinator to discuss it. It was a shock.....

As mentioned above perhaps I studied wrong. Med does have a steep learning curve obviously and that is something I am going to have to work at if I want to do it and I do.

I have to say though if I may make an excuse the amount of material ALL med schools cram down our throats in 8-12 weeks in insaneee!!!!!!!!!! haha

=] cheers guys

 

[Law2Doc]

I have never been a 95% student, .....

As mentioned above perhaps I studied wrong. ...

(1) Stop looking back at your track record. You had no track record in medicine -- it is a new ballgame. Whether you were a 95% student or a 70% student back in the day, the med school admissions folks made the decision that you had the ability to make it through. So you do -- they tend to be very good about picking for this as about 95% of med school admittees will eventually become doctors. So now you just need to learn the ropes. Past history in college is not particularly determinative; the folks who do well in med school are the ones who are able to make adjustments, study efficiently and figure out what works, not the ones who used to get good grades in college without much effort.

(2) I think there is no "perhaps" about it. If you didn't pass, you "studied wrong". Time to change things up drastically and try to get on a path that works. This is easier said than done, but you've got to do it. Look at what you do, look at what others do, and look at what things you could do. This may mean studying from different resources, studying more or different hours (maybe start getting up at 5am and studying early rather than staying up late), taking more active, rather than passive, approaches (copying notes, making flashcards, drawing structures out), studying with other people, getting help from advisors or profs, studying different places with fewer distractions, giving up TV, video games, computer or social phone calls for a month, attending classes regularly and prepared. Lots of tweaks you can try. No one thing works for everybody but everybody does have some approach that is going to give them maximum benefit (it will be different from everyone else's), so the key is to play around with approaches until you find the one that gives the most benefit. Bear in mind it might not be the approach you "enjoy" the most -- you may prefer to sleep in in the morning, watch TV, study alone in a coffee shop, and just read with a highlighter, but if that isn't getting you the passing grades, you may end up needing to get up uber early, go to a library, not watch any TV, spend more hours, and recopy every paragraph you read into your own words and make numerous notecards. Go with what works, not what is in your comfort zone.