I feel dumb. Is it just me?

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Poniii

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Hi everyone.

I have finished 3 years of med school and at the moment I'm having a gap year (due to my own health problems - depression).

The thing is I have finished half of med school and I feel stupid compared to my classmates. Like I know so little and they know so much. I don't understand how I have gotten this far. I'm a hardcore procrastinator and generally a sad excuse for med student. I know I want to be a doctor but I don't think I'll ever make a good one. I'm too dumb for that. I don't remember most of the things from year 1 and my grades are bad. Sometimes I think I should just quit and find something else.

Do any of you feel this way or is it just me?
 
Poniii said:
Hi everyone.

I have finished 3 years of med school and at the moment I'm having a gap year (due to my own health problems - depression).

The thing is I have finished half of med school and I feel stupid compared to my classmates. Like I know so little and they know so much. I don't understand how I have gotten this far. I'm a hardcore procrastinator and generally a sad excuse for med student. I know I want to be a doctor but I don't think I'll ever make a good one. I'm too dumb for that. I don't remember most of the things from year 1 and my grades are bad. Sometimes I think I should just quit and find something else.

Do any of you feel this way or is it just me?
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You are not stupid. You are not dumb. You've made it this far. Work through the things you need to work through and then you'll be better prepared and ready to go back. Youuuuu can do it! 😀

(That said, if you seriously think that your career choice was wrong, I would maybe talk to someone before deciding to quit entirely)
 
O Grady said:
I'm just an M1, but I also feel that way. It's not that I'm a procrastinator, but I feel like I purge everything I learned for a test just so I can start studying for the next one. I'm worried about what boards are going to do to me.
Click to expand...

I think you will honestly be surprised at how much you retain once you start second year. Most of my second year is review (my school crams most of the first 2 years of info into the first year and then repeats most of it second year, with the exception of psych and micro). Learning something for the second time doesn't take nearly as much time as it does the first time around.
 
sinombre said:
I think you will honestly be surprised at how much you retain once you start second year. Most of my second year is review (my school crams most of the first 2 years of info into the first year and then repeats most of it second year, with the exception of psych and micro). Learning something for the second time doesn't take nearly as much time as it does the first time around.
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That's certainly an interesting curriculum. I get the benefit of the repetition, but I can't imagine cramming all of that into first year.
 
Ismet said:
That's certainly an interesting curriculum. I get the benefit of the repetition, but I can't imagine cramming all of that into first year.
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Our second year is supposed to be more clinical, but just about everything has been presented in some form during first year, so it takes much less effort to study (even though lecture hours have increased quite a bit). We didn't cover any microbio during first year so that took quite a lot of effort, but everything else is more or less review.
 
sinombre said:
Our second year is supposed to be more clinical, but just about everything has been presented in some form during first year, so it takes much less effort to study (even though lecture hours have increased quite a bit). We didn't cover any microbio during first year so that took quite a lot of effort, but everything else is more or less review.
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I'm wondering if our curriculum is similar. In first year we cover all the systems and how they normally work. Bits of pathology are thrown in. 2nd year we go over everything again with the pathology.
 
chizledfrmstone said:
I'm wondering if our curriculum is similar. In first year we cover all the systems and how they normally work. Bits of pathology are thrown in. 2nd year we go over everything again with the pathology.
Click to expand...

Yep, that's how it's designed. Except when they say "some pathology" during first year, they apparently mean most of it.
 
sinombre said:
I think you will honestly be surprised at how much you retain once you start second year. Most of my second year is review (my school crams most of the first 2 years of info into the first year and then repeats most of it second year, with the exception of psych and micro). Learning something for the second time doesn't take nearly as much time as it does the first time around.
Click to expand...
I guess ours sounds fairly similar. For the rest of M1 we take micro, physio, and path, then 2nd year we go through all the systems and pharm
 
O Grady said:
I guess ours sounds fairly similar. For the rest of M1 we take micro, physio, and path, then 2nd year we go through all the systems and pharm
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M1 is probably General Pathology in your curriculum.
 
DermViser said:
M1 is probably General Pathology in your curriculum.
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so what does 'general pathology' encompass?

like, right now, we are in anatomy block. Say for example you have stab wound disease to your lateral chest wall that cuts your long thoracic nerve. Is that under 'general pathology'?
 
O Grady said:
I'm just an M1, but I also feel that way. It's not that I'm a procrastinator, but I feel like I purge everything I learned for a test just so I can start studying for the next one. I'm worried about what boards are going to do to me.
Click to expand...
sinombre said:
I think you will honestly be surprised at how much you retain once you start second year. Most of my second year is review (my school crams most of the first 2 years of info into the first year and then repeats most of it second year, with the exception of psych and micro). Learning something for the second time doesn't take nearly as much time as it does the first time around.
Click to expand...
Listen to this guy. You'll be shocked how much you're actually retaining. With a little review and a bit of prompting, facts and concepts just start flying back to you out of no where......Its actually kinda awesome
 
Ismet said:
No that's just anatomy.
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Correct. I guess technically it would fall under Environmental Pathology of Robbins. But yes, no "stab wound disease", @masaraksh. It's more just to demonstrate what happens when the nerve (long thoracic nerve) is severed - it's a clinical correlate, in this case called Winged Scapula . It could be a tumor that compresses long thoracic nerve and it would be the same thing.
 
Gotcha.

Just didn't know what 'general pathology' covers. We do get a lot of clinical correlates in anatomy. But i guess I'll leave them as that. We some amount of discussion of diseases when we did biochem/genetics/etc in the first 'foundation' type block.
 
masaraksh said:
Gotcha.

Just didn't know what 'general pathology' covers. We do get a lot of clinical correlates in anatomy. But i guess I'll leave them as that. We some amount of discussion of diseases when we did biochem/genetics/etc in the first 'foundation' type block.
Click to expand...


General pathology...as in the steps in inflammation, differentiating between acute and chronic inflammation, cell damage histo, maybe some stuff on infarcts, sepsis, or even coagulation woes.

Then in organ blocks you learn about specific pathologies of respective organ.
 
O Grady said:
Would you recommend it? Or would you say to stick to more concise materials?
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Depends how closely your pathology instructors follow Robbins for test questions. It's usually not easily digestible by most med students --- it's a reference. I would either use the smaller Basic Pathology book written by the same people (the Pocket Companion is probably too small - but probably great for short blurbs) or Rapid Review Pathology by Goljan (with his audios).

I have no idea about Pathoma and how good it is, although it gets stellar reviews.
 
masaraksh said:
Is there a 'nurses' version. Cuz, I'm guessing its probably shorter and they're basically doctors too.... and with higher patient satisfaction scores.
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Yes they do, in fact: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias=stripbooks&field-keywords=pathology for nurses
upload_2014-12-2_20-16-34.jpeg
upload_2014-12-2_20-17-36.jpeg
upload_2014-12-2_20-18-25.jpeg
 
O Grady said:
Would you recommend it? Or would you say to stick to more concise materials?
Click to expand...

I like and, yes, I do actually read it (pretty much along with my coursework so like 150-200 pages every month or so). Not every page, but it does put things together for me in a way that other sources don't at time.
 
xffan624 said:
I like and, yes, I do actually read it (pretty much along with my coursework so like 150-200 pages every month or so). Not every page, but it does put things together for me in a way that other sources don't at time.
Click to expand...
But do you actually retain Big Robbins afterwards?
 
I'm only an MS1 as well but I feel stupid daily. Honestly, I comfort myself with the observation that the people who act like they know it all usually know very little and the ones who feel like they don't know anything actually seem to know quite a bit. Dunning Krueger effect or something like that.

With that said, I feel stupid when I actually am clueless. Which is always. Sigh.
 
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