Ms2 >>> ms1

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Elbowstoopointy

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POST YOUR EXPERIENCES!! :D

MS1: Basically an extension of undergrad. Felt like upper level biology classes, very little clinical detail. Low yield for clinic and boards. Tested on ridiculous details just to troll us. NO CLINICAL QUESTIONS ON EXAMS!!!! WTF Did not enjoy subject matter whatsoever....I used to like anatomy before ms1. Class was mandatory


MS2: 90% of everything we learn is clinical. Exams are about 95% clinical vignettes in board style, which IMO is about 10x easier than ms1 style questions. Path and pharm remind me that I actually like medicine. Never go to class, ever. Sleep 10 hrs a day yet still study like 8 hrs a day, mainly because I find it interesting. Scored avg ms1, oddly I'm near top of the class ms2 and don't understand why yet lol

EDIT: I'll bump this thread before step 1 and make sure to show how wrong I was in describing ms2 :D

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Definitely. In MSII you start actually learning medicine and clinical reasoning. Histology in MSI was just disgusting. Physiology much better, but still it's not really clinical reasoning. In MSII, you see medicine in its glory as clinical problem solving.
 
My experience: M1 was awful and basically useless outside of phys and very fundamental anatomy. M2 was full of skipping class and mostly enjoying myself. No comparison.
 
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My experience: M1 was awful and basically useless outside of phys and very fundamental anatomy. M2 was full of skipping class and mostly enjoying myself. No comparison.

This. Not sure why people say they are sleep deprived in MS2...if you skip class and podcast 2x speed theres not reason to get less than 7-8 hrs a night. Got a solid 9 last night myself.
 
Is it really going to get better? I've been thinking about quitting at least once a week since I started M1 earlier this year. Anatomy is killing me. It's not that I'm not doing well. I'm actually not working that hard and am somewhere in the top 25-50%.

I'm just sick and tired and burned out and I hate these classes.
 
IMO, MS2 has been much harder. I got absolutely destroyed on my first set of exams :( I have a much harder time memorizing the minute details, even though I've put in more time than MS1 last year
 
It depends on how your curriculum is set up. My school has an organ-based curriculum so you start off M1 year with clinical questions on every test and anatomy starting in the spring. Our first year material is actually relevant to the Step 1 because we cover immunology, cardiopulm, GI, renal-endocrine, and genitourinary in that first year.

MS2 is much harder than MS1 here because we do the hardest organ systems in 2nd year. Those hardest ones would be musculoskeletal and head & neck. We have anatomy dissection in every organ system module, so our anatomy is actually spread out over an entire year (spring 1st year and fall 2nd year). We did MSK already and head&neck has another month left. They are considered the hardest modules here, so yes 2nd year is definitely harder for me. It's mainly the anatomy that kills me this year. Anatomy is almost over though for good!!
 
My school is traditional but half the questions on the test are about basic pathologies are clinical correlates, even in MS-1.

I can't believe you don't enjoy histology... easiest class ever.
 
M1:
Pros: Every class except anatomy didn't take up much time so there was ample free time.

Cons: The material sucked. Anatomy lab was a terrible. Quite a bit of touchy-feely class


M2: More interesting material. Significantly less touchy-feely class. Having had a year to find your med school groove=being more efficient.

Cons: Step I looms over the second half of the year. Harder material.
 
Personally, I think 3rd year so far has been the best because it's an awesome roller coaster ride with highs and lows at unexpected (and sometimes expected) times! Not to mention, I'm developing more as a person and as a physician now than I had the first two years.

Developing more as a person because all the preconceived idealistic visions I had about helping sick people and people helping these sick people are constantly changing and fluctuating faster than I had anticipated.

And developing more as a physician because I'm starting to figure out which specialties demand personalities like mine and which ones don't.

It's a good thing though because I get to appreciate for what life truly is all about...that there is a greater power than us all working and guiding such a broken and hopeless world!
 
My school is traditional but half the questions on the test are about basic pathologies are clinical correlates, even in MS-1.

I can't believe you don't enjoy histology... easiest class ever.


At least with the way it's tested at my school, histology is far from easy. In fact, it's the most time-consuming course I've taken yet, and I'm still devoting ~90% of my study time to it. Exams are 4 hours long, and we are expected to know everything--and I mean everything--about every single tissue and cell type that we cover, down to signaling pathways, every one of its functions and how it is accomplished (at a molecular and tissue-wide level), every protein/cell/glycoprotein/etc. found in every region of the tissue, etc.

I suspect that this is the case for most histo courses, but if that's the case I'm not sure how you could call it easy. Nothing is difficult to understand, and it requires no reasoning, just rote memorization. But it's rote memorization in such large quantities that I believe it's literally impossible to retain more than ~60% of it. Histo is a bitch, and it's pretty boring to boot.
 
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Is it really going to get better? I've been thinking about quitting at least once a week since I started M1 earlier this year. Anatomy is killing me. It's not that I'm not doing well. I'm actually not working that hard and am somewhere in the top 25-50%.

I'm just sick and tired and burned out and I hate these classes.

Don't worry! It definitely gets better! This year is harder than last year (lots more material), but its much more interesting (so far) and I learned a lot about how to study last year so that helps. Definitely would not want to trade places with any first year!

I think wanting to quit a lot is a normal part of medical school--its tough. For me there are still plenty of days where I am ready to throw in the towel, but there are also a lot of days where I come home thinking I love this and I can't imagine doing anything else. Hopefully the I love this days outnumber the I hate this days.

The material gets better and better, so don't panic if anatomy is the bane of your existence. There isn't another class like it for all of medical school.
 
That really does sound more like a bit of Biochem integrated into Histo. All those cell biology questions / signal transduction are more of a Biochem type for me. Here Histo is just pretty pictures with 1st/2nd-order questions. It's so much of a joke course that the professors are trying to make it harder over last year by now incorporating 20% pathology into the slides, lol.
 
I honestly find MS2 easier in the sense that I can eat clinical vignettes for lunch, while I'm terrible at the rote memory MS1 type questions.

That being said, you are pretty busy, except since I skip class I'm not THAT busy
 
I honestly find MS2 easier in the sense that I can eat clinical vignettes for lunch, while I'm terrible at the rote memory MS1 type questions.

That being said, you are pretty busy, except since I skip class I'm not THAT busy

So you watch lectures at 2x speed?
 
My school is traditional but half the questions on the test are about basic pathologies are clinical correlates, even in MS-1.

I can't believe you don't enjoy histology... easiest class ever.

I believe that's the point.

I call it "anatomy for dummies". It's simple and stupid but there's so much of it. You have to sit hours memorizing that this cell is this and this cell is that. At least anatomy was still somewhat intellectually challenging in putting things into 3D in your head.
 
M1:
Pros: Every class except anatomy didn't take up much time so there was ample free time.

Cons: The material sucked. Anatomy lab was a terrible. Quite a bit of touchy-feely class


M2: More interesting material. Significantly less touchy-feely class. Having had a year to find your med school groove=being more efficient.

Cons: Step I looms over the second half of the year. Harder material.

Agree 100%. We have team based learning (2 hours of nonsense, used to be 3), coupled with mandatory classes and group discussions about "communcation"; give me a ****in break...
 
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My school is traditional but half the questions on the test are about basic pathologies are clinical correlates, even in MS-1.

I can't believe you don't enjoy histology... easiest class ever.

We have to memorize the netter's histology guide... It's been extremely difficult at my school. Totally ready for december
 
So now about 9 or 10 weeks in MS2 and its still 20x better than MS1.. but its starting to suck lol I am getting really tired of memorizing small minor details.. esp when it comes to microbio. Path and pharm not too bad.. microbio :thumbdown:thumbdown
 
So now about 9 or 10 weeks in MS2 and its still 20x better than MS1.. but its starting to suck lol I am getting really tired of memorizing small minor details.. esp when it comes to microbio. Path and pharm not too bad.. microbio :thumbdown:thumbdown

Is the memorizing as bad as Anatomy?
 
Hell yeah, 2nd year is awesome. 1st was fun too though. I regret not taking Histology very seriously (it's really easy at my school), because I'm learning new "non-pathology" facts about histology while also trying to learn pathology.
 
Don't worry! It definitely gets better! This year is harder than last year (lots more material), but its much more interesting (so far) and I learned a lot about how to study last year so that helps. Definitely would not want to trade places with any first year!

I think wanting to quit a lot is a normal part of medical school--its tough. For me there are still plenty of days where I am ready to throw in the towel, but there are also a lot of days where I come home thinking I love this and I can't imagine doing anything else. Hopefully the I love this days outnumber the I hate this days.

The material gets better and better, so don't panic if anatomy is the bane of your existence. There isn't another class like it for all of medical school.

Yeah, anatomy was by far the worst. Although in our school Neuro module approached anatomy in terms of difficulty; fortunately it was by far more interesting than anatomy.
 
2nd year is better (more interesting/relevant material) but harder (more material) I think its a worthwhile trade-off.

That being said, its hard to argue anatomy isn't relevant. MSK issues are the most common complaints people have, and are extremely under-taught in most med schools. Even if you're going into something completely different, you're going to have a lot of people come up to you with their bumps and bruises. My problem with first year was the biochem, genetics, cell bio, etc. The difference in relevance going to second year is just amazing.

In my limited clinic time (I'm an MS-2), I've seen a lot of heart failure, liver failure, kidney failure, strokes, MRSA, diabetes, HTN, etc. I've yet to see all the 1 in a million enzyme deficiencies.
 
Yeah, anatomy was by far the worst. Although in our school Neuro module approached anatomy in terms of difficulty; fortunately it was by far more interesting than anatomy.

really? i don't think anatomy is THAT bad, i mean learning origins, insertions and functions suck, but it's definitely more interesting than biochem and genetics.
then again, i haven't hit head and neck yet...
 
really? i don't think anatomy is THAT bad, i mean learning origins, insertions and functions suck, but it's definitely more interesting than biochem and genetics.
then again, i haven't hit head and neck yet...

Head and neck is horrible for us...

We're doing carbs/lipid metabolic pathways at the same time.... its been quite an experience
 
Is the memorizing as bad as Anatomy?

I'd say its different..

I didn't find anatomy memorization that tedious because its visual.. micro is not visual at all. Theres a lot of pathogens.. OK easy, what disease they cause, easy. Viruelence factors.. ok now theres a little more to know, but still not bad. Morphology, ehh...staining techniques, diagnoses, culture, treatment, epidemiology.. ok now I'm pulling my hair out. I can see them testing on very small details too which they alrdy have done for our first exam. Sure there are some mnemonics here and there but it's a lot and not everything works perfectly into them.
 
really? i don't think anatomy is THAT bad, i mean learning origins, insertions and functions suck, but it's definitely more interesting than biochem and genetics.
then again, i haven't hit head and neck yet...

Yes it's mildly interesting, but memorizing all the minute details was painful.
 
2nd year is better (more interesting/relevant material) but harder (more material) I think its a worthwhile trade-off.

That being said, its hard to argue anatomy isn't relevant. MSK issues are the most common complaints people have, and are extremely under-taught in most med schools. Even if you're going into something completely different, you're going to have a lot of people come up to you with their bumps and bruises. My problem with first year was the biochem, genetics, cell bio, etc. The difference in relevance going to second year is just amazing.

In my limited clinic time (I'm an MS-2), I've seen a lot of heart failure, liver failure, kidney failure, strokes, MRSA, diabetes, HTN, etc. I've yet to see all the 1 in a million enzyme deficiencies.

Everything you named is more path than the stuff we learned in anatomy. All of those are in robbins in detail
 
1st year was like dry humping with your jeans on all year. I liked Anatomy lab only. But don't miss being soaked in formaldehyde.

2nd year is more interesting. At my school it's also possible to arrange your own time to a large extent. When looked at as the last time we'll be able to do this. It's kind of nice.

The other cool thing about M-2 is that the phd circle jerks are less tolerated by by the people responsible for making sure the school has a decent USMLE pass rate. So at least here. The curriculum finally starts to drift towards a definable and practical goal--STEP1.

That and your just more used to the game. Your expectations have met what's on your plate. For me at least. I'm much, much happier as an M-2.
 
Everything you named is more path than the stuff we learned in anatomy. All of those are in robbins in detail

That's true. But remember this is a hospital setting. Anyone working in outpatient will have more MSK complaints. Also anything involving procedures is heavily dependent on anatomical landmarks, and just having a 3d understanding of how body structures relate to each other is extremely helpful in understanding path. Like why does that guy with chronic mitral stenosis have a hoarse voice (left atrial dilation compressing the recurrent laryngeal). Why would a pre-ductal coarc present differently from a post-ductal? What type of shoulder dislocation will take out the axillary vs. the musculocutanous, or what type of humeral fracture will damage the radial vs. the median? For neuro understanding innervation patterns is essential. You may want to super-specialize in neonatal nephrology, but for the vast majority of career paths, anatomy is a relatively high yield subject, especially when compared to the rest of first year.

And when I rag on path, I'm talking about the worthless "how this one disease looks via H&E, silver stain, trichrome, IF, and EM" path, not the extremely useful "understanding how the body goes wrong and how to fix it" path.
 
In terms of enjoyment of the material and satisfaction that comes from kicking butt M2 won hands down.

But the difference in free time especially when I started studying for Step 1 made M1 overall a much more enjoyable experience. Less tests and less pressure with the tests and easier material. 1st year I could get away with not studying at all for 4 or 5 days at a time.

We went out so much and played a lot of PS3 and went on several memorable trips.
 
In terms of enjoyment of the material and satisfaction that comes from kicking butt M2 won hands down.

But the difference in free time especially when I started studying for Step 1 made M1 overall a much more enjoyable experience. Less tests and less pressure with the tests and easier material. 1st year I could get away with not studying at all for 4 or 5 days at a time.

We went out so much and played a lot of PS3 and went on several memorable trips.

Doing it right :)
 
I'm only a couple of months in my first year and I'm bored out of my mind with most of the material thankfully this is not an abnormal feeling
 
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