Honestly, this is what I hope it's like. I'm so sick of the useless busy work in undergrad. I know this sounds crazy, but I honestly just want to STUDY, without any of the other useless bull****.
Careful what you wish for. There's a firehouse coming for your face.
I too tired of busywork, little assignments here and there, in undergrad, punctuated by these giant 20 page lab reports I had to write weekly - but THEN -
A lot of med schools are like mine,
here's the lecture outline,
here's the ppt slides,
here's some books and suggested pages to read,
*maybe* there's a practice exam to take to see if you're totally going to fail,
and THEN
2 weeks later there was a FOUR HOUR EXAM over the material, that's like 25% of your grade.
The other 75% will be 3 more such 4 hour exams.
As I described it to one undergrad, they piped in, "So it's like finals week, but every other week?"
Why yes, that is a great description. It's just as stressful, believe me.
The volume stretches the bounds of what is physically possible for an above average human brain to memorize in a given timeframe.
Some of it also requires higher order thinking as well, of course.
Some of these courses did have lab portions, but usually it was just attendance taken, which would be not insignificant portions of your grade, enough where you wouldn't **** it off, however, there wasn't much "busywork" with these, it was the same deal, come, learn, or fail. These labs usually were pretty necessary for learning anyway, and handling an actual brain or looking at slides for a few hours a week can be a welcome break from a textbook or ppt slides 12 hours a day. Actually, having portions of your grade for just showing up can be a welcome thing.
There were a few times when there would be a worksheet for a lab or something - and this is where you realize that while deadlines for assignments are annoying - I missed undergraduate assignments. Sure, some didn't help you learn. But done properly, they not only help to teach you the material, apply the material, but they help you REMEMBER the material. They also keep you from slacking off too bad, and keep you with pace through the material. They set you up to succeed on a massive exam (if that's the set up).
The "every 2 weeks giant exam" formula - as you might imagine, it wouldn't take much to throw you majorly off your game. Every day, every hour counts. Truly. No joke.
There was always one other course we had that had did have "busywork," but this was minimal because they knew you were drowning in tough stuff. I might have one paper to write for the whole 3 month chunk of that course, or short presentation, etc. Usually it was just reading a few papers to prepare for the weekly discussion, and if you had a bad week you could "skip" the prep and just show up for the hour and be OK, as long as you weren't clueless every time. Through your engagement at other sessions the discussion leaders/graders wouldn't hold a few bad weeks out of 12 against you.
TLDR:
Firehouse coming!
School with minimal busywork, "here is it bitch, learn" philosophy -
Finals week every other week
No assignments to help you learn, gauge progress, keep you on track
Might just miss "assignments"
Careful what you wish for
