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Hello everyone,
Tldr; getting a divorce, crappy step 1, dx’d with a bad case of ADHD, bullied and intimidated in internal med rotation, unsure of what I even want to do for residency, worried about just going straight from a crappy med school experience right into a malignant residency. Help! Advice?
I’m an MS3 and I’ve have a pretty crappy 3rd year so far. It started off with a mediocre step 1 score due in part to concurrently separating from my emotionally abusive spouse and also learning that I had been living with a severe case of undiagnosed ADHD my whole life. I actually started my medication the day after I took step 1, and I instantly realized how distracted/restless I’ve been my entire life…and I really wished I could have started the regimen a bit earlier (childhood would have been nice). I ended up with a 211…and my adviser keeps telling me my score is just fine (easy for her to say, as she’s Harvard trained in an uber-competitive surgical subspecialty and the type who could have just walked into any residency of her choosing) but I know this will be a hindrance for me.
Anyway, so I was just glad that I passed with >200 score as I was almost sure I was going to have to fail and retake. I started my internal med rotation early on in third year after taking a few electives (at my school you can take electives whenever during third/fourth year). It was at a particularly malignant site with site director who would often pick favorites among the students based on past reviews I obtained from our medical student website. I rotated through it doing my best to try to deal with the mean, indifferent residents and the very odd site director (DEFINITELY has a personality disorder), who bullied/humiliated me a few times during the rotation. I finished the rotation with average-to-above average evals, and solid shelf score. My last attending even offered to write a letter of recommendation for me…saying that I was working at the level of an intern in many ways.
So, I finish my internal med rotation and start my peds rotation. 4 weeks in, I receive an email from the site director saying that I failed the med rotation and will need to retake it due to multiple low scores throughout the rotation. Completely shocked as I kept actively seeking weekly feedback from everyone (including this site director) that I worked with at that rotation.
In trying to get a straight answer as to why I failed I uncovered several emails that the site director sent to my adviser---basically painting me a unstable and unwilling to respond to feedback, which was odd because every single one of my evals praised the fact that I sought out and acted on feedback often. Anyway, I spent several weeks contacting people in the dean’s office who all kept passing the buck as the school actually had no specific policy in place for when students disagree with a failing grade. Eventually, I was told that I would have to contact the medicine rotation clerkship director to ask for a re-grade. I email her, and she never responded to me (I waited over a month for a response). I had to go to the Dean to get her to respond, and when I was finally granted an interview I laid out all the evidence of bullying and the weird, unsubstantiated emails from the site director to my adviser and then the surprise fail. During this meeting, I was still not given a straight answer as to why I failed.
I then do not hear from her for almost a month and I start getting emails stating that I would soon have to go before a committee that oversees failing students. My adviser also said that she tried contacting the clerkship director for some news on my status, but never got a response. I also ran into this clerkship director a few times at noon conferences but she would quickly walk/look away from me when she saw me.
Getting worried, I decided to go to the university wide conflict resolution center but I was told that they do not get involved in the professional school grading policies and that based on prior cases, I will have to basically take all of the blame when I go before the committee and that I will have to retake the rotation and will most likely only be given a “pass” no matter how well I do, and that the original fail will stay on my transcript. Feeling utterly defeated, I was contemplating just quitting medical school. A week later, I get an email from the clerkship director saying that they will remove the fail from my transcript and that I don’t have to go before any committees. I will have to redo the entire rotation at a different site but I wouldn’t have to retake the shelf.
This whole process took up a majority of my third year, and now I have to move things around to retake internal medicine (which is going to take a huge chunk of time away from taking career exploration electives)….but I know my outcome was better than the vast majority of people who had to deal with this before me (I basically think it was only because I had those emails as evidence), so I’m not complaining.
One good thing that came out of this, is that the Dean’s office is going to investigate some of the ways that sites evaluate/treat students as apparently no one in the office knows exactly how the internal medicine sites are grading people. I also proposed an actual grade appeal policy (based on policies from other med schools) with deadlines (for both parties) which will hopefully be added to the student policy handbook.
But I am now exhausted, jaded, very worried about retaliation at the new site when I redo the rotation (as the school basically admitted that they have no oversight), and disheartened by the attitudes of faculty in the dean’s office (though there seems to be a glimmer that things are changing). I still have no idea what I want to do with the rest of my life either and really have been put off by how unhappy, overworked, and mean residents seem to be at many of the rotations (like…wow, do I really want to jump from one cluster**** right into another cluster**** for 3 to 5 more years?).
Can anyone offer any advice for me? Has anyone had a similar experience? I’m wondering how I should finish out my med school experience. Should I take some time off?
Tldr; getting a divorce, crappy step 1, dx’d with a bad case of ADHD, bullied and intimidated in internal med rotation, unsure of what I even want to do for residency, worried about just going straight from a crappy med school experience right into a malignant residency. Help! Advice?
I’m an MS3 and I’ve have a pretty crappy 3rd year so far. It started off with a mediocre step 1 score due in part to concurrently separating from my emotionally abusive spouse and also learning that I had been living with a severe case of undiagnosed ADHD my whole life. I actually started my medication the day after I took step 1, and I instantly realized how distracted/restless I’ve been my entire life…and I really wished I could have started the regimen a bit earlier (childhood would have been nice). I ended up with a 211…and my adviser keeps telling me my score is just fine (easy for her to say, as she’s Harvard trained in an uber-competitive surgical subspecialty and the type who could have just walked into any residency of her choosing) but I know this will be a hindrance for me.
Anyway, so I was just glad that I passed with >200 score as I was almost sure I was going to have to fail and retake. I started my internal med rotation early on in third year after taking a few electives (at my school you can take electives whenever during third/fourth year). It was at a particularly malignant site with site director who would often pick favorites among the students based on past reviews I obtained from our medical student website. I rotated through it doing my best to try to deal with the mean, indifferent residents and the very odd site director (DEFINITELY has a personality disorder), who bullied/humiliated me a few times during the rotation. I finished the rotation with average-to-above average evals, and solid shelf score. My last attending even offered to write a letter of recommendation for me…saying that I was working at the level of an intern in many ways.
So, I finish my internal med rotation and start my peds rotation. 4 weeks in, I receive an email from the site director saying that I failed the med rotation and will need to retake it due to multiple low scores throughout the rotation. Completely shocked as I kept actively seeking weekly feedback from everyone (including this site director) that I worked with at that rotation.
In trying to get a straight answer as to why I failed I uncovered several emails that the site director sent to my adviser---basically painting me a unstable and unwilling to respond to feedback, which was odd because every single one of my evals praised the fact that I sought out and acted on feedback often. Anyway, I spent several weeks contacting people in the dean’s office who all kept passing the buck as the school actually had no specific policy in place for when students disagree with a failing grade. Eventually, I was told that I would have to contact the medicine rotation clerkship director to ask for a re-grade. I email her, and she never responded to me (I waited over a month for a response). I had to go to the Dean to get her to respond, and when I was finally granted an interview I laid out all the evidence of bullying and the weird, unsubstantiated emails from the site director to my adviser and then the surprise fail. During this meeting, I was still not given a straight answer as to why I failed.
I then do not hear from her for almost a month and I start getting emails stating that I would soon have to go before a committee that oversees failing students. My adviser also said that she tried contacting the clerkship director for some news on my status, but never got a response. I also ran into this clerkship director a few times at noon conferences but she would quickly walk/look away from me when she saw me.
Getting worried, I decided to go to the university wide conflict resolution center but I was told that they do not get involved in the professional school grading policies and that based on prior cases, I will have to basically take all of the blame when I go before the committee and that I will have to retake the rotation and will most likely only be given a “pass” no matter how well I do, and that the original fail will stay on my transcript. Feeling utterly defeated, I was contemplating just quitting medical school. A week later, I get an email from the clerkship director saying that they will remove the fail from my transcript and that I don’t have to go before any committees. I will have to redo the entire rotation at a different site but I wouldn’t have to retake the shelf.
This whole process took up a majority of my third year, and now I have to move things around to retake internal medicine (which is going to take a huge chunk of time away from taking career exploration electives)….but I know my outcome was better than the vast majority of people who had to deal with this before me (I basically think it was only because I had those emails as evidence), so I’m not complaining.
One good thing that came out of this, is that the Dean’s office is going to investigate some of the ways that sites evaluate/treat students as apparently no one in the office knows exactly how the internal medicine sites are grading people. I also proposed an actual grade appeal policy (based on policies from other med schools) with deadlines (for both parties) which will hopefully be added to the student policy handbook.
But I am now exhausted, jaded, very worried about retaliation at the new site when I redo the rotation (as the school basically admitted that they have no oversight), and disheartened by the attitudes of faculty in the dean’s office (though there seems to be a glimmer that things are changing). I still have no idea what I want to do with the rest of my life either and really have been put off by how unhappy, overworked, and mean residents seem to be at many of the rotations (like…wow, do I really want to jump from one cluster**** right into another cluster**** for 3 to 5 more years?).
Can anyone offer any advice for me? Has anyone had a similar experience? I’m wondering how I should finish out my med school experience. Should I take some time off?
