If someone were to find the pre-med pre-reqs insanely boring, does this mean....

[anephew]

...that this person should reconsider becoming an MD or DO?

I am curious because while I have taken Physics and Chemistry at the University and loved both courses, I really think I will be bored out of my mind taking General Biology I (if I do decide to take it later on). I'm just a curious non-pre-med student, and for those interested--i am a sophomore in college thinking of majoring in chemical engineering. 🙂 This is why I would like to explore the current Med Student's perspective. Are there any med students here that hated your pre-med pre-reqs but thoroughly enjoy the med school curricula?

What are some main things a prospective doctor should enjoy learning about? Hobbies, interests, and key characteristics of a person who should be a doctor?

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[lord_jeebus]

Many medical students hated the prereqs, and they do not reflect the medical school experience, let alone a career as a physician.

 

[AndyEmmDee]

I absolutely loathed undergraduate organic chemistry & undergraduate physics (even though it was supposedly "Physics for the life sciences"...false advertising if you ask me).

It sucks, but you have to get through it. Believe it or not undergrad premed classes teach you things that are more valuable than the actual information content, including critical thinking skills, problem solving skills, work ethic etc.

You won't be head-over-heels in love with everything you have to do in life, or as a doctor for that matter. Take the bad things as they come, and just make sure you enjoy the good things enough to compensate 😉

As far as whether hating undergrad biology means you shouldn't be a doctor...Don't panic! I don't think that hating your undergrad biology class is a fair indicator of whether or not this profession is for you. A better idea would be to actually get out there and do some shadowing, volunteer work etc. You may find that your doctor's job looks very different from outside the lecture hall.

Best of luck to you in the future!

 

[dw2158]

maybe i'm crazy, but i think if you don't find any sort of biology interesting then maybe you don't want to go to medical school... 😕

i mean, intro biology is not ALL biology, obviously! but if you think you'll be bored by biology in general, i would do some serious thinking about whether or not you'll find medicine interesting. JMO.

 

[flip26]

maybe i'm crazy, but i think if you don't find any sort of biology interesting then maybe you don't want to go to medical school... 😕

i mean, intro biology is not ALL biology, obviously! but if you think you'll be bored by biology in general, i would do some serious thinking about whether or not you'll find medicine interesting. JMO.

I agree with this assessment.

 

[AndyEmmDee]

maybe i'm crazy, but i think if you don't find any sort of biology interesting then maybe you don't want to go to medical school... 😕

i mean, intro biology is not ALL biology, obviously! but if you think you'll be bored by biology in general, i would do some serious thinking about whether or not you'll find medicine interesting. JMO.

Hm, I think that medicine can be considered the *application* of natural sciences, biology in particular. If someone's teaching you raw, unrefined biology without how it applies to humans in particular, I think it's perfectly OK to find that boring...after all, I did!

I was a biology major in college and happened to find a lot of the intro stuff very dry: Learning that the rough endoplasmic reticulum synthesizes protein, for example, means nothing until you get to find out about all the cool proteins that actually do get synthesized in there (MHC, chaperones, surface receptors etc).

Some biology classes are worse, and give you historical/raw experimental data from animal models to basically say "this is how we found out about this/that/the other" (my developmental neurobiology class in 4th year of undergrad did lots of this) - that's great, but the information was so far removed from real-world application (at least for another 50 years) that I found it hard to be interested.

I'm now in medical school completely fascinated by the information being thrown at me here. I love how "real" the information here is, every bit of it is applicable in some way or another - it's not academic in the usual sense: we're not in the ivory tower anymore.

I love it, I feel like I'm finally pursuing my calling in life.

Just my $.02

 

[Lokhtar]

Hmm, I love the theoretical stuff, and can sometimes be annoyed at the applications. Med School does not sound that fun 😀.

 

[greatnt249]

...that this person should reconsider becoming an MD or DO?

I am curious because while I have taken Physics and Chemistry at the University and loved both courses, I really think I will be bored out of my mind taking General Biology I (if I do decide to take it later on). I'm just a curious non-pre-med student, and for those interested--i am a sophomore in college thinking of majoring in chemical engineering. 🙂 This is why I would like to explore the current Med Student's perspective. Are there any med students here that hated your pre-med pre-reqs but thoroughly enjoy the med school curricula?

What are some main things a prospective doctor should enjoy learning about? Hobbies, interests, and key characteristics of a person who should be a doctor?

If it makes you feel any better, I find the basic sciences incredibly boring even here in medical school; can't wait until next year when we actually get to learn pathophysiology.

 

[pooghe]

maybe i'm crazy, but i think if you don't find any sort of biology interesting then maybe you don't want to go to medical school... 😕

i mean, intro biology is not ALL biology, obviously! but if you think you'll be bored by biology in general, i would do some serious thinking about whether or not you'll find medicine interesting. JMO.

I agree with the statement. You don't need to love them so much that you jump out of bed in the morning excited about it. But at some level you should feel vaguely interested in the concepts. If you don't even feel that interest then maybe med school is not the place to go.

 

[boaz]

http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=672957

 

[DrYoda]

Are there any med students here that hated your pre-med pre-reqs but thoroughly enjoy the med school curricula?

I didn't like many of the pre-reqs, and so far I find the MS1 subject matter boring.

Hobbies, interests, and key characteristics of a person who should be a doctor?

Bowling, drinking, basketball, poker, coffee lover and German speaking.

 

[randombetch]

Honestly, I kind of hate biology. I love genetics, and molecular biology is very interesting too, but anatomy and etc... That stuff I could live without.

Maybe you're right - I won't like studying medicine. Maybe Shakespeare didn't like learning vocabulary when he was a kid. Doesn't mean that he shouldn't have become a writer.

Learning biology is like learning vocabulary - they are the basics that allows you learn more advanced concepts (such as medicine or rhetoric), which in turn allow you to do what you are really interested in (such as diagnosing patients or writing plays).

 

[BlueElmo]

doesn't mean anything. I hated these pre-req courses as well.