Is Medical School Really All That Bad?

[sliceofbread136]

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I don't know; must have fallen off your high horse last week and accidentally created an account.


Sent from my iPhone using SDN mobile app

Someone that pretentious can only come from reddit. You should really just ignore him like most other people are doing.

 

[ChrisMack390]

@Winged Scapula @Planes2Doc @ChrisMack390 @sliceofbread136 Just for clarification, 8/9 to 5 is what we get paid for biweekly and what we tell our families so they know that we aren't running around making calls and filing/filling out last minute paperwork from home at midnight in order to make sure tomorrow doesn't run without a hitch. Because the only 9-5 jobs that I've worked that were actually 9 to 5 was working a retail gig that has likely now been replaced with a sales kiosk or will be replaced by a robot with opposable thumbs. The jobs that required a significant portion of my frontal cortex seemed like they never ended from one day to the next. Everything got pushed back and everyone stayed over hours and a lot of it was off the books to finish by deadline.

I had a full time career for 4 years before I went to medical school.

 

[jcorpsmanMD]

@Gurby @jcorpsmanMD If you go on amazon and look up "standing whiteboards" they range roughly below and a little above $100. I bought a standing NOSIVA whiteboard last week because I've always been a kinetic learner rather than being visual or auditory. There are some nice standing desks, but they are too cumbersome and I just didn't have the time to deal with a product that may be 50/50 worth my time or not. If it doesn't fit in an amazon locker, I hesitate before buying it. Watch out world, the treadmillenials are coming.

How do you like the standing whiteboard so far?

 

[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

Uh huh.

Dopamine is like that. You can't just get one hit. You need more, and more, and more to get another rush of power, attention from others and of course vainglory



Matthew 9:35 "Jesus went around to all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, and curing every disease and illness."

Jesus. Isn't He that guy who went around preaching about love, forgiveness, mercy, compassion, turning the other cheek, understanding, and what not?

The proclaiming of Jesus to others is a tricky thing b/c then people expect to see Jesus instead of you.

You millennials are adorable online.

==

OP, medical school (including 3rd year) is thrilling, wonderful, an honor, a privilege, and definitely worth every penny.
If you are whining about third year, then exit the program and let someone else who really wants it to take your seat. The world
will always need ballet dancers and bartenders. Ballet dancers have legs of immense strength, enormous grit and ovaries/balls of steel so bartending might be a better gig for you.

And by all means, take your USMLE Step 1 Exam seriously. Don't settle for a lack luster score just because you're going to be a primary care doctor and will be doing your residency in BFE. If your Step 1 exam is that important to you, you'll unplug from the internet, disconnect from social media and engage the Deep Work...which dove tails nicely to:

Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World - Cal Newport

Apply the law of the vital few to your internet habits. The law of the vital few​

says in many settings, 80 percent of a given effect is due to just 20 percent of
the possible causes.

Quit social media for 30 days. Don’t formally deactivate these services, and
(this is important) don’t mention online that you’ll be signing off: Just stop using
them, cold turkey.

After thirty days of this self-imposed network isolation, ask yourself the
following two questions about each of the services you temporarily quit: 1.
Would the last thirty days have been notably better if I had been able to use this
service? 2. Did people care that I wasn’t using this service?

Don’t use the internet to entertain yourself. If you give your mind something
meaningful to do throughout all your waking hours, you’ll end the day more
fulfilled, and begin the next one more relaxed, than if you instead allow your
mind to bathe for hours in semiconscious and unstructured Web surfing.

To summarize, if you want to eliminate the addictive pull of entertainment sites on
your time and attention, give your brain a quality alternative. Not only will this
preserve your ability to resist distraction and concentrate, but you might
experience, perhaps for the first time, what it means to live, and not just exist.


Take yourself seriously if you expect others to take you seriously.
How did I ever wind up on the Pre-Allo forum?

Wtf did I just read?

Also:

Matt. 18:15-17
If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.

Luke 17:3-4
Pay attention to yourselves! If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him, and if he sins against you seven times in the day, and turns to you seven times, saying, ‘I repent,’ you must forgive him.

1 Timothy 5:20
As for those who persist in sin, rebuke them in the presence of all, so that the rest may stand in fear.

You should really start reading the things you quote.

 

[BombsAway]

Millennials in particular today are very dramatic but our culture in general is as well. Thus OP gave us this salvo:

We often discuss at home how not too long ago men and women after World War II, Korean and VietNam wars were getting married in their early 20s, had careers and raising children in their own personal homes embracing being adults. Can you imagine? What nerve

Then there is today.

At times I think our culture needs to get its head out of their asses and act like the brave men and women who lived before us.

Were you in the military? If you weren't, could you kindly step off our coat-tails? We do our own laundry, and us millennials have been pretty busy with the longest wars in US history.

 

[Cura_te_ipsum]

Were you in the military? If you weren't, could you kindly step off our coat-tails? We do our own laundry, and us millennials have been pretty busy with the longest wars in US history.

O3

proper English utilization is "and we millennials...", not us

 

[WingedOx]

And boom goes the dynamite.

I knew this dude had to be a respawn.

 

[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

Were you in the military? If you weren't, could you kindly step off our coat-tails? We do our own laundry, and us millennials have been pretty busy with the longest wars in US history.

There's no way that clown is a vet. No one whose actually been in talks like that.

 

[Donna Moss]

Every month of tests gets harder than the last but you get surprised at how much you are capable of learning. The information seems overwhelming going in but somehow becomes manageable.

However as someone said above you can't really take time off like you could in undergrad which can become exhausting.

Can you take like half a day/day off on non exam weeks off? Or like an hour of relaxing time off a da? How do you guys cope with not burning out?

 

[bluestreaks]

Everybody makes everything sound worse than it is.
MCAT, then med school basic science curriculum, then Step 1, then the surgery rotation... yeah they all kinda suck but not nearly that much.

 

[aaronrodgers]

I go by the motto that 99% of people lived through it and so will you unless you are in the 1 percentile

 

[carrots28]

I have to say I am really surprised how easy the transition was to med school from being out of school several years. Yes there is a lot of work but I treat it like a full time job as I did before and that helps me to stay focused. Relaxing time is only on the weekend so far. I make frequent calls to family and my SO for emotional support.

 

[Shams al Deen]

M1/M2 are a joke if you choose the right med school. But MS3 sucks. Grades and responsibilities come back. I will say though, if you go to a difficult undergrad, take a bunch of science classes, and also work ~25hrs+ as a scribe or something --that's harder than MS3.

 

[Crayola227]

As a general surgeon who trained before work hour reform, I certainly know about emotionally taxing situations. I still counter that using the phrase "hell on earth" is hyperbole and in no way corresponds to what people without homes, food, safe drinking water, etc. go through. But we can let it rest - if others choose to be dramatic, then so be it.

as someone who has actually spent quite a bit of time without those things, I have to point out that abuses suffered at work can be as bad or worse than chronic hunger (which I experienced for all of my growing up AND as a med student.... felt pretty sucky both ways, actually)

basically this denies the experience of so many in healthcare that find their mental health severely eroded by training

workplace stress, mental health challenges, suicidality, and finding work to be "hell on Earth" are NOT exclusive to medicine, NOR are they just "dramatizations"

I was in better spirits when I was sleeping outside in the cold rain next a bridge, going hungry eating out of a dumpster, begging for change, terrified of assault on the street, than I was during training

I guess you can either make of that that I'm a wimp (of the mean streets??) or that different people respond to different stresses differently

 

[Dr. Souk]

Med school is kind of like Blastoise. If you can't drink from the fire-hydrant, you become the fire-hydrant.

Too funny!!!

 

[Winged Scapula]

as someone who has actually spent quite a bit of time without those things, I have to point out that abuses suffered at work can be as bad or worse than chronic hunger (which I experienced for all of my growing up AND as a med student.... felt pretty sucky both ways, actually)

basically this denies the experience of so many in healthcare that find their mental health severely eroded by training

workplace stress, mental health challenges, suicidality, and finding work to be "hell on Earth" are NOT exclusive to medicine, NOR are they just "dramatizations"

I was in better spirits when I was sleeping outside in the cold rain next a bridge, going hungry eating out of a dumpster, begging for change, terrified of assault on the street, than I was during training

I guess you can either make of that that I'm a wimp (of the mean streets??) or that different people respond to different stresses differently

i'm clearly not doing a good job of explaining myself.

In no way did I mean to demean the experience of those going through medical training. As I've said multiple times before, I probably cried every other day during my surgery training so it was not any picnic for me either.

My point about the drama is that we frequently see users comparing it to slavery or somehow implying that their plight as an educated first world person is somehow akin to those who are literally slaves or face other abuses every day.

You cannot tell me that being hungry during residency is the same as someone who goes for days without eating and or doesn't know when they'll have their next meal. At least you had access to fresh clean drinking water and peanut butter and crackers on the wards. Some people don't even have that and I think some of our users don't realize how good they've got it.

But this is the last I'll say on the subject. I had an extremely bad time during residency myself and I posted about it frequently so I don't deny that it's difficult.

 

[bananafish94]

I feel like in threads like these there are posters who swing all the way to one side and say that medical school is the worst thing ever, and those who swing all the way to the other side and say that it's just school and anybody who complains is a baby.

In my mind, there are clear positives and negatives to both sides. In medical school, your time is never your own. In real life, you get home at the end of the day and live your life. Real life might be boring, and you might have to do a job that is unfulfilling just to put food on the table. Medical school is interesting and you get to spend all day learning. Real life comes with a certain amount of stability. In medical school you're never more than one or two screw-ups away from completing derailing your life.

As with everything, there are good parts and bad parts. There are valid complaints. I'd still pick medical school again easily.

 

[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

I feel like in threads like these there are posters who swing all the way to one side and say that medical school is the worst thing ever, and those who swing all the way to the other side and say that it's just school and anybody who complains is a baby.

In my mind, there are clear positives and negatives to both sides. In medical school, your time is never your own. In real life, you get home at the end of the day and live your life. Real life might be boring, and you might have to do a job that is unfulfilling just to put food on the table. Medical school is interesting and you get to spend all day learning. Real life comes with a certain amount of stability. In medical school you're never more than one or two screw-ups away from completing derailing your life.

As with everything, there are good parts and bad parts. There are valid complaints. I'd still pick medical school again easily.

I generally agree with your post, but I think it's still a little hyperbolic to say that you're one or two screw-ups from derailing your life. Like 95% of medical students graduate and become doctors. If you screw up and can't match into ortho and end up becoming an internist, you've hardly derailed your life. You're still a doctor, albeit in a different specialty than you had initially envisioned. I can see why someone might view that as the worst thing ever, but put in perspective, you're a doctor making 6 figures. Hardly something to lament.

 

[bananafish94]

Like 95% of medical students graduate and become doctors.

That doesn't mean you don't worry about being the 5%, even if everything tells you it's illogical.

 

[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

That doesn't mean you don't worry about being the 5%, even if everything tells you it's illogical.

Right, I get that. But having an irrational worry is not the same as working 80 hours a week to feed your family or wondering where your next meal is coming from. I think that was @Winged Scapula's point.

 

[Mad Jack]

I see a lot of people here complaining that medical school is worse than death. It's very disheartening and unmotivating. Is medical school really hell on earth?

No, people just like to complain.

Medical school is a lot of hard work.

It's more work than a full-time job.

It's less work than slave labor in a coal mine.

It's stressful beyond anything most normal human beings experience, however. You've got to keep in mind we are descended from hunter-gatherers who didn't do much planning beyond "kill that thing, pick that thing," so being thrown into a multi-year training path with zero instant gratification in which every day you must be thinking of a tomorrow that is so far down the end of the tunnel that you can't even see the light, and your today consists of brutal memorization of more information than the vast majority of human beings on this planet never learn in their entire lives.... Well, it's enough to really push people's stress centers well beyond 11. Eventually that part of your brain recalibrates and you're fine if you're like myself, but until that happens you feel awful.

 

[Planes2Doc]

And on a serious note, this is a pretty bad question to ask and answer. In college I saw plenty of people that boasted about their achievements, and it was no big deal. Some people went to good schools, some went to bad schools. Some went for easy majors, and some went for hard. Medical school is whole different animal. Whether MD or DO, we are all in the same boat learning the same boatload (shipload, and no profanity or pun intended) of information.

I'm sure you have heard about mental illness in medical school and how people are driven to suicide. People boasting about how it's so incredibly easy or how it's a wonderful privilege is just a massive slap in the face for those that struggle with it. This can ultimately lead to suicide when they question themselves. It sucks to ask why you are doing so poorly while everyone else is [supposedly] coasting through? It's not good, just not good.

The only person I spoke to in-depth about these experiences is my Labradoodle. Other people, many who often lie about what they are actually feeling, are not the right people for this, especially when things do get hard.

With that said, never be afraid to seek help if you need it. You're not alone, and you're most definitely not an idiot if you made it this far.

 

[WedgeDawg]

its fun you'll have fun

 

[Crayola227]

i'm clearly not doing a good job of explaining myself.

In no way did I mean to demean the experience of those going through medical training. As I've said multiple times before, I probably cried every other day during my surgery training so it was not any picnic for me either.

My point about the drama is that we frequently see users comparing it to slavery or somehow implying that their plight as an educated first world person is somehow akin to those who are literally slaves or face other abuses every day.

You cannot tell me that being hungry during residency is the same as someone who goes for days without eating and or doesn't know when they'll have their next meal. At least you had access to fresh clean drinking water and peanut butter and crackers on the wards. Some people don't even have that and I think some of our users don't realize how good they've got it.

But this is the last I'll say on the subject. I had an extremely bad time during residency myself and I posted about it frequently so I don't deny that it's difficult.

oh, WS, I think this is the first that I've read of your struggles during training 🙁
thank you for sharing

being homeless in the USA is such a different ballgame than even typical life in like Central America
almost ALL of our water from taps are safe
food can always be found, even if you're still hungry or malnourished

I maintain that medical training is often the most difficult thing that anyone will ever do in their lives, and that's coming from active military vets, homeless, former heroin addicts, etc, but it can be certainly be the most fulfilling.

Being super duper hard and even being an experience that breaks some people physically or emotionally, does not in any way make it literal slavery.

 

[bonedoc5576]

 

[Crayola227]

I didn't watch this, but just looking at how miserable everyone in the video looks, I kinda don't want to.

Will I feel more or less suicidal after watching this video? I'm afraid to find out*

(*joking, suicide isn't a joke. if you or someone you know is suffering, please seek help immediately)

 

[taffer]

It's worth it to me. Making the decision to go into the medical field and start medical school is never really a fair decision though from my estimations. There is literally no way for one to know of everything that decision entails regardless of how much shadowing you do; at some level you just have to take a chance. It's pretty dope though, you get to learn and do things that most people would never dream of.