I'm in my second year right now. I finished first year with only passes in all my courses (no honors) and I failed neuroscience, which I remediated over the summer. I was hoping that this year would go better, but so far I'm doing incredibly terribly. I'm failing pharmacology and after today's path exam, I think I might be failing that as well. I just can't do it. I sit down for hours and hours, days and days, trying to memorize the insane amount of material like everyone else, yet it seems to take me MUCH longer and I always forget everything come test day. I never had great work-ethic when it came to studying and didn't know what I was getting myself into with med school. Memorization is obviously not my thing either...instead I'm VERY VERY good at thinking, solving complex math problems, etc. I'm beginning to think that I should've went into engineering since I LOVE mechanical things and design in general.
Thing is, I'm $130k in debt already, so I CANNOT quit. Its not that I don't find medicine interesting, its simply the fact that I'm unable to memorize and study the way everyone else does. I'm so incredibly upset and don't know what to do....
I guess I should've taken a hint when I needed to take physics. I enjoyed the course very much while all the other med students struggled with it and hated it. Furthermore, they all hated Calc I, but I went on to take calc II, calc III, linear algebra, differential equations, etc. I love that stuff.
In the words of Gob Bluth, "I've made a huge mistake."
Hey, hey. I hear you. I liked physics too, and I also took some advanced math courses. (Wasn't GREAT at it like you probably were, but I did enjoy the process of learning how to do proofs, etc. I got a lot out of it.)
Med school is tedious. There's just no comparison between this type of drudgery ("difficult") and the "difficulty" of math/thinking type courses. The latter is tough but pleasurable and fulfilling.
The former is just mind-numbing, and soul-sucking. And even more soul-sucking when I see my peers apparently lapping this stuff up like it's oxygen. (It makes me wonder: What's wrong with me that I'm not finding this stuff half as scintillating as they apparently find it?)
All that said, I've mostly adapted/found my way to deal with the crap. Occasionally, I can do rather well, but it's hard to maintain that level across all subjects... so it ends up averaging out. Also, the material we're tested on at school & the way our courses are set up (no practice exams available, if you can believe) makes it that much more unlikely for me to do truly well... sooo I've kind of given up on that.
BUT, I have my sights set on Step 1. I mean, it actually asks reasonable questions, that are predictable enough for me to study for. I'm saying all this because there's still a lot of hope for you, even if you think you're not doing great in class. It might be that your classes just aren't that great.
Although, if you're failing it's probably more urgent right now for you to figure out a way to pass.
Speaking of pharm, I said this in another thread, but one thing that has worked great for me is making flowcharts. It organizes all that crap, and "chunking" the information in that logical manner makes it much more easy to retain. If you're at all like me, you probably would NOT benefit from the notecard method (which a lot of ppl seem to like). 'Cuz I just can't force myself to memorize each drug by rote, like that, one per notecard. All the drugs sound the same to me, when I tried to do that.
Take "drugs for asthma", what I'd do is take a blank white sheet of paper, split it by "drugs to tx symptoms" & "drugs to treat inflammation". Under "drugs to tx symptoms", I'd split it by (+) sympathetic and (-) parasympathetic, then further split it by SABAs (short-acting beta adrenergics), LABAs (Salmeterol), etc. It's also very logical, once you split it up like that, no?
For each drug lecture, I'd try to find a way to stick all the drugs into one framework, and I find that I retain info about each drug much better once I already have a framework for where the drug fits in my mind, how it relates to other drugs, what drugs belong to the same class/employ the same mech, etc.
There's still rote memorization involved, of course. But it's very very important for me to attempt to structure the onslaught of info in this way. Especially for subjects like pharm or microbiology (worked very well to split the pathogens by G+, G-, cat+/cat-, etc.). This was the solution I found to retain the info.
Because I am NOT a good memorizer at all. Little facts are like little trinkets I just can't seem to hold on to. But once I find some patterns and relate things together, I can hold on much better.
For path, are you using Goljan rapid review? I can't say enough about Goljan- book or lectures. Also recently purchased Robbins Review (Question Book)... very very worthwhile, as well. With these 2 resources, it's really really hard to do super poorly in path, unless your path class is just totally unreasonable. Another good resource is Webpath. I know sometimes it's tough to have too many resources, it's almost like you're overresourced with not enough time. Especially when the class material diverges from the "important stuff" in Goljan
😉. But... I do try to follow along in these resources, and try to make it through at least once before the test. It helps a ton. It doesn't help me with all the little nitpicky stuff some of my classes require... but it does definitely help me hurdle over that "passing" border.
So, long story short, if you're trying to memorize "like everyone else"... maybe it just won't work! I know if I were to use popular techniques I see my classmates doing- things like reading/re-reading (and just basically memorizing it that way) I would totally fail. I would fail if I used notecards to try to memorize pharm, like I see others do, too.
But there are ways to minimize the "rote" part of the memorization. Ways to make things a bit more "patterned"... and it makes it go down much less bitterly. Maybe you just haven't hit your stride yet?