life of the first two years ?

Of course this varies greatly among schools, but if you are in a post-bacc program you have a good idea of how hard first year classes are and how much time you have to put in to study. It varies a lot among individuals and background and motivation to study. Regardless, at any school there will be people who study all the time, and people who are at the bar the night before exams.

I don't study every hour that I'm awake, don't sweat it. I do try to study every single day, and weekends before exams are all studying. Our first year we had lectures 8-12 every day with labs every afternoon. We had exams every Monday. This is pretty standard I believe, more or less. Second year we have mostly PBL so lectures are only 3x/wk. Exams are now once every 3 weeks and test on an entire system (we are systems based 2nd yr.)

 

how many classes do you take for the first year? !
1st. sem: Anatomy, Biochem/Genetics, Physiology, Histology, Intro to Patient interviews, Some clinical correlative course.

2nd Sem: Immunology, Micro, Path, Physical Exam, Physiology, Histology. Same clinical correlative class..

Summer: Pharm and Embryo, more physical exam too.

How many hours do you have to spend for each hour of class? It really did work out to be about 3 hours/hour of lecture 1st year.

If you literally spend the whole day taking classes, you certainly won't have much time left for studying late at night. I go to bed at 11 every night and have never stayed up all night. My hours from 6-8 in the morning are my best study time too.

I just find that it is hard to memorize so many things in such a short time.
Me too! But it just happens, you will get through Neuro (lots of pure memorization) and Pharm(another one). Some people are very good at it, I'm not. Lots of stuff is just pure repetition: Notecards, etc. The encouraging thing is that you get good at it really quick! Anatomy taught me what I needed to do to go over huge chunks of info in short periods of time. (Anatomy isn't really that hard by the way, I thought it would be). Anything else? Just ask...

 

LR6SO4, you paint a very realistic picture of the 1st two years. I guess a person has to decide if they think lots of rote memorization amounts to an education. If you are one of those people that likes to think and reflect, or really get inot a topic in depth, then this approach to learning may be a miserable experience. If, on the other hand, your goal is to just get through it, or this is how you got through undergrad science, you may be okay with this. Someone on another thread talked about complex Orgo mechanisms. I did a hell of a lot more thinking about how to synthesize some compound from a few starting materials than anything so far in med school.

 

Youngjock, I honestly think that the answer to your questions is based on the medical school that you attend. I know some that *require* 8-5 classes. I know some that offer 8-5 classes, but only some are required (labs and such), I know of at least one that limits your hours in instructor-led learning to 22 hours a week at MOST (my school).

If you are fabulous at rote memorization, go for the studying all hours of the day approach (and a traditional curriculum). If you learn better through studying clinical scenarios, go for a PBL-based curriculum.

At UTMB, we have 5 classes the first year and...I think 7 or 8 the second. We have an integrated curriculum, so its not as "bare bones" as it sounds.

First year: Gross Anatomy and Radiology (8 weeks), Molecules Cells and Tissues (pharm, genetics, histology, molecular and cell biology, biochemistry and some other stuff) (8 weeks), Pathobiology and host defenses (path and immunology) (8 weeks), Neuroscience (psychiatry and neurobiology) (8 weeks), and the 1st year of a 2 year "Practice of Medicine" class - which deals with clinical skills, ethics, biostatistics, etc. We also do clinic visits and family visits for this class. It also incorporates the OSCE (clinical skills exam).

Second year, we take the organ-based systems classes and the second half of POM. First year, we're in class from 8-12, then second year, in class from 1-5. That leaves a LOT of time for having a life. BUT we also have to study a lot on our own - as our curriculum includes PBL. It's do-able, it just depends on figuring out HOW you learn best.

Star

 

Star's right, it varies a lot from school to school. At my school, we take all the standard courses of the first two years in ONE year. They try to boil it down into the essential info, but it still makes for a very intense first year...classes/labs pretty much all day, every day, though it varies. Some people decide they learn better on their own (or they are so brilliant they don't need to study - how do those people do it???). I'm too chicken to skip a lot of class and I do need to study a lot just to pass, so I get home in the evening and end up studying late into the night, and then wake up in the morning to do it all again. If I were more disciplined and wanted to get honors, I would probably study literally every hour I'm awake (and not spend so much time on SDN!), but I do find time for fun and study breaks.

Our second year is the rotations year, which is awesome because we get to jump right into what most people came to med school for in the first place. This is where the real learning takes place because you can actually put all that basic science knowledge to use. Of course the rotations year, as at any school, is intense, with very long hours...but you get through it, and the MSIIs at my school who are going through it right now say that's it's tough but really satisfying.

If our first two years sound like hell, I guess we're rewarded in the third year, when we do research or earn a dual degree. But in the end, med school is intense whether the schedule says you get out at noon every day or 5 pm. It's just a matter of choosing the system that suits you best.