not making honors

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heisenberg

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i am pretty pissed that i didn't make honors in two classes by less than half a percent. and the thing that sucks is that the standardized patients and subjective comments screwed me up. i talked with the faculty and they are adamant that my grade will remain the same. this seems crazy to me since one of the exams is a complete outlier and defnitely the patient screwed me up. how to suck it up and remain neutral. i feel that putting hard work does not translate into good grades in medical school. also, faculty evaluations are so subjective and you have to basically suck up to them to get honors.
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Damn, heisenberg, I thought you'd be comfortable with uncertainty by now.
 
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A lot of the frustration of medical school is the transition from a world of objective test scores to subjective evaluation. You feel like you have far less control than you once had, and indeed, that's true to a certain extent. It is less true, however, than you initially feel.

All of that said, there are two mental tricks you can play to get yourself out of the funk you are no doubt in right now:
1. Focus on objectives other than grades. You have complete control over how much you learn, what you learn, etc. In the end, these things are more important than your grades for all but the most competitive residencies. Step I is the ultimate in objective.
2. Decide everything is your fault. If everything is your fault, you can, by definition, fix it. This puts you into a problem solving mode rather than a learned helplessness mode. It's a bit harder on your ego (because you really do have to internalize it in order for it to work), but it will keep you from getting depressed. To keep yourself from getting discouraged, another risk of this approach, remind yourself that you're very new to being a medical student, and you just need to find a solution to your problem.

Best,
Anka
 
My 2 cents...

Life is unfair.
And isn't sucking up like a 12 year rite of passage for med students?

But I feel for you. Been in similar situations before.
 
Anka said:
A lot of the frustration of medical school is the transition from a world of objective test scores to subjective evaluation. You feel like you have far less control than you once had, and indeed, that's true to a certain extent. It is less true, however, than you initially feel.

All of that said, there are two mental tricks you can play to get yourself out of the funk you are no doubt in right now:
1. Focus on objectives other than grades. You have complete control over how much you learn, what you learn, etc. In the end, these things are more important than your grades for all but the most competitive residencies. Step I is the ultimate in objective.
2. Decide everything is your fault. If everything is your fault, you can, by definition, fix it. This puts you into a problem solving mode rather than a learned helplessness mode. It's a bit harder on your ego (because you really do have to internalize it in order for it to work), but it will keep you from getting depressed. To keep yourself from getting discouraged, another risk of this approach, remind yourself that you're very new to being a medical student, and you just need to find a solution to your problem.

Best,
Anka
Click to expand...

:thumbup:
 
Well first off, sorry about your grade, that does suck. We're on the ABC/F system here. I fell culprit to the same crap on the final. Our system is block, and at the end of each block we do a week of the mock doctor crap. Five blocks first year, final is 1/3 the grade. Complete crap. Dropped from an A to B (in one of only two classes where I was going to get an A, or a B, this stuff is harder than I thought). However, I'm non-traditional, and that's the way the world actually works. A lot of it is really subjective, how a client sees you and interacts with you. There are a lot of crappy docs out there who don't get sued because they have a great rapport with their patients, now everything about their family, friends, etc. There are docs out there who get sued because they are perceived as being too detached. That's life, just kick butt on Steps. You can't change it, stop thinking about it, and move on.
 
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I am worried that I will have the same problem... I get along very well with some people... but I have difficulty connecting with people in the short meeting/greetings that you have as a doctor... I'm about to start my 1st year ... so I've really got to work on this ... any advice?
 
brewmeistervi said:
I am worried that I will have the same problem... I get along very well with some people... but I have difficulty connecting with people in the short meeting/greetings that you have as a doctor... I'm about to start my 1st year ... so I've really got to work on this ... any advice?
Click to expand...

It's a lot of the same skills your worked on for your interview. The interview was as much about your hand shake, your eye contact, your voice presentation, the "aura" you exuded as it was about your answers. Many of the same techniques will help you in all areas of your life.

I know I used to suck at introductions and small talk until I worked on my public speaking of all things. The skills just translate over subconsciously.
 
brewmeistervi said:
I am worried that I will have the same problem... I get along very well with some people... but I have difficulty connecting with people in the short meeting/greetings that you have as a doctor... I'm about to start my 1st year ... so I've really got to work on this ... any advice?
Click to expand...

well, if your concerned about grades for this reason, not all school's grade on subjective things in the first two years. Mine doesn't. I think the only subjective grade will be at the end of second year when we do a complete H&P. All of our clinical grades until that point is attendance grades (although they do give us a "grade" to let us know how we're doing, but it doesn't count).

You should get lots of practice, I'm sure your skills will improve dramatically.
 
I missed my honors by 2 thousands of a point ... which boiled down to getting a B- in a class half semester class that I didn't go to mostly because of graduate interviews...
By the way the class was elective ...

And my honors thesis was already written, presented and signed when the registrar's office shot it down...

I was pissed off for a solid 6 months.
 
heisenberg said:
i am pretty pissed that i didn't make honors in two classes by less than half a percent. and the thing that sucks is that the standardized patients and subjective comments screwed me up. i talked with the faculty and they are adamant that my grade will remain the same. this seems crazy to me since one of the exams is a complete outlier and defnitely the patient screwed me up. how to suck it up and remain neutral. i feel that putting hard work does not translate into good grades in medical school. also, faculty evaluations are so subjective and you have to basically suck up to them to get honors.
Click to expand...

4 shizzle doggy dizzle. I'm assuming you aren't in third year yet, cuz of the SP stuff. Just wait until your on the wards the subjective evals from attendings and residents blows. The learned helplessness theory of derpression, discribes it all for me. Would rock the shelfs but my evals were mediocre. About half way threw 3rd year was like there goes my chances of making aoa. In the end it wasn't that bad still matched pretty good without honoring most of my rotations or aoa. So stick it out and such it up, you'll be okay in the end.
 
you know, I clicked on this thread ready to pull out a "suck it up you whiner", but then once I read your post, I totally agree with you and I would be pissed too. We have a HP/P/F (90&70) cut offs, it's a nice system when you score a 73, but a really crappy system when you score an 89. But I guess the cutoff has to be somewhere... in the end, it's all about taking care of patients, and if you can learn your info well enough to take care of your patients properly, then that's what's important (at least that's what i tell myself when I freak out that I feel like I failed stupid step I). ;)
 
Anka said:
A lot of the frustration of medical school is the transition from a world of objective test scores to subjective evaluation. You feel like you have far less control than you once had, and indeed, that's true to a certain extent. It is less true, however, than you initially feel.

All of that said, there are two mental tricks you can play to get yourself out of the funk you are no doubt in right now:
1. Focus on objectives other than grades. You have complete control over how much you learn, what you learn, etc. In the end, these things are more important than your grades for all but the most competitive residencies. Step I is the ultimate in objective.
2. Decide everything is your fault. If everything is your fault, you can, by definition, fix it. This puts you into a problem solving mode rather than a learned helplessness mode. It's a bit harder on your ego (because you really do have to internalize it in order for it to work), but it will keep you from getting depressed. To keep yourself from getting discouraged, another risk of this approach, remind yourself that you're very new to being a medical student, and you just need to find a solution to your problem.

Best,
Anka
Click to expand...

And on a more serious note, Anka speaks the truth. :thumbup:
 
post of the year.:bow::bow::bow::bow::bow::bow:
 
Anka said:
A lot of the frustration of medical school is the transition from a world of objective test scores to subjective evaluation. You feel like you have far less control than you once had, and indeed, that's true to a certain extent. It is less true, however, than you initially feel.

All of that said, there are two mental tricks you can play to get yourself out of the funk you are no doubt in right now:
1. Focus on objectives other than grades. You have complete control over how much you learn, what you learn, etc. In the end, these things are more important than your grades for all but the most competitive residencies. Step I is the ultimate in objective.
2. Decide everything is your fault. If everything is your fault, you can, by definition, fix it. This puts you into a problem solving mode rather than a learned helplessness mode. It's a bit harder on your ego (because you really do have to internalize it in order for it to work), but it will keep you from getting depressed. To keep yourself from getting discouraged, another risk of this approach, remind yourself that you're very new to being a medical student, and you just need to find a solution to your problem.

Best,
Anka
Click to expand...

This, and in particular the latter point, is some of the best advice I have ever read on SDN.
 
beegeforty4 said:
what's sad is i didn't get it and had to wikipedia who heisenberg was...and now i get it less
Click to expand...

The Heisenberg uncertainty principle is one of the CORE basis for quantum mechanics. Not sure if you remember this from physics, but in quantum mechanics (i.e. dealing with mechanics of particles the size of an electron and smaller), it is impossible to find both the position and the momentum of the particle at the same time. The more precise you get in measuring one, the less precise your measurement of the other gets. This is essentially Heibenberg's uncertainty principle (as a grossly basic description). From a humor standpoint... what Heisenberg illuminated is that you cannot have ultimate control over all measurement on the quantum level. Translate that to the first post and see if you laugh :)
 
lilnoelle said:
well, if your concerned about grades for this reason, not all school's grade on subjective things in the first two years. Mine doesn't. I think the only subjective grade will be at the end of second year when we do a complete H&P. All of our clinical grades until that point is attendance grades (although they do give us a "grade" to let us know how we're doing, but it doesn't count).

You should get lots of practice, I'm sure your skills will improve dramatically.
Click to expand...

Yeah, subjective grading is not an issue for the first two years at my school, either. We did get graded on a videotaped history, but we were graded by the course instructor and it was only worth 10% of our grade. We have to do a complete physical by the end of second year, but I think it's pass/fail. Other than that, everything is just based on attendance.

Did I mention this is something I really like about my school? :)
 
heisenberg said:
i am pretty pissed that i didn't make honors in two classes by less than half a percent. and the thing that sucks is that the standardized patients and subjective comments screwed me up. i talked with the faculty and they are adamant that my grade will remain the same. this seems crazy to me since one of the exams is a complete outlier and defnitely the patient screwed me up. how to suck it up and remain neutral. i feel that putting hard work does not translate into good grades in medical school. also, faculty evaluations are so subjective and you have to basically suck up to them to get honors.
Click to expand...


Man, you'd absolutely love dental school. We used to have practical exams where the available grades were 4,3,2, and 0, which equated to A, B, C, and F. The grading of these exams were highly subjective. There was very little standardization. Moreover, the grading was not anonymous (despite the faculty's claims). They used to hand out grades of zero like it was nobody's business.

Just imagine, getting a zero on an exam you spent an hour and a half taking. That's the same grade you'd have received had you simply stayed home and watched TV. To make it worse, you may very well have received that zero simply because that particular faculty member didn't like your work, or because he/she didn't like you.

Count your blessings, friend!
 
Long Dong said:
4 shizzle doggy dizzle. I'm assuming you aren't in third year yet, cuz of the SP stuff. Just wait until your on the wards the subjective evals from attendings and residents blows. The learned helplessness theory of derpression, discribes it all for me. Would rock the shelfs but my evals were mediocre. About half way threw 3rd year was like there goes my chances of making aoa. In the end it wasn't that bad still matched pretty good without honoring most of my rotations or aoa. So stick it out and such it up, you'll be okay in the end.
Click to expand...

Agreed. The first couple of years you still feel like you should have some control over your grades (not that they matter a whole lot), but that mindset will be shattered soon enough. You will find that some dude you don't recall ever being your attending hands in an eval about you, or someone who gave you positive feedback repeatedly seemed to focus on negatives in his final grade. And it's all opinion so nothing you can discuss or dispute. These later year subjective grades are what is going to matter to residencies, and what will appear in your dean's letter. So learn to have a thick skin and get used to subjective bashing for no apparent reason. It happens to everyone. At least it's happening to you at a time when it doesn't count much yet. Wait till the wards.:smuggrin:
 
heisenberg said:
i am pretty pissed that i didn't make honors in two classes by less than half a percent. and the thing that sucks is that the standardized patients and subjective comments screwed me up. i talked with the faculty and they are adamant that my grade will remain the same. this seems crazy to me since one of the exams is a complete outlier and defnitely the patient screwed me up. how to suck it up and remain neutral. i feel that putting hard work does not translate into good grades in medical school. also, faculty evaluations are so subjective and you have to basically suck up to them to get honors.
Click to expand...

How can you expect objectivity in the system if the only objective component (the grade scale) is expected to be modified to fit your needs? I know it stinks, but the same thing happened to me- you just have to move on and try to do better on the next tests. And hard work does translate to good grades. Think about how you would have performed if you had not studied as much. Also, patients don't "screw you up"; take it as an opportunity for learning, so that you may not make the same error(s) again.
 
I feel like the subjective grades should collectively be a pretty fair representation of your performance. Sure you might get an attending that doesn't like you here and there. However, if you aren't honoring the majority of your rotations is it more likely that every attending is trying to screw you, or that you just aren't performing as well as some of your classmates?
 
cpants said:
I feel like the subjective grades should collectively be a pretty fair representation of your performance. Sure you might get an attending that doesn't like you here and there. However, if you aren't honoring the majority of your rotations is it more likely that every attending is trying to screw you, or that you just aren't performing as well as some of your classmates?
Click to expand...

Well, this would be true if the folks you worked with most were the ones evaluating you. But a lot of time, often most of the time, you will get evals from attendings who spend maybe a half hour a day with med students. Hard to say they can differentiate the better from worse med students in that interval. So a lot of it is going to be luck -- you get a good attending, you do well, you get an SOB you don't.
 
Law2Doc said:
Well, this would be true if the folks you worked with most were the ones evaluating you. But a lot of time, often most of the time, you will get evals from attendings who spend maybe a half hour a day with med students. Hard to say they can differentiate the better from worse med students in that interval. So a lot of it is going to be luck -- you get a good attending, you do well, you get an SOB you don't.
Click to expand...

or, you can kill your boards, get a couple shining letters of rec, and let the attendings shove the evals up their asses. :cool:
 
heisenberg said:
i am pretty pissed that i didn't make honors in two classes by less than half a percent. and the thing that sucks is that the standardized patients and subjective comments screwed me up. i talked with the faculty and they are adamant that my grade will remain the same. this seems crazy to me since one of the exams is a complete outlier and defnitely the patient screwed me up. how to suck it up and remain neutral. i feel that putting hard work does not translate into good grades in medical school. also, faculty evaluations are so subjective and you have to basically suck up to them to get honors.
Click to expand...
Maybe you should try harder next time. People dont just give bad evals to give bad evals (especially std patients). You perhaps deserved these bad evals. Just work harder next time. You said they were subjective? Not reallty the school gives stdn patients a form and instructions how to grade students. Unless this stnd patient gave these to all the students then you probably deserved them.

Just my 2 pesos!
 
zahque said:
or, you can kill your boards, get a couple shining letters of rec, and let the attendings shove the evals up their asses. :cool:
Click to expand...

The evals count bigtime, and become part of your deans letter. You need good ones even with good board scores. Actually especially with good board scores (because you aren't going to be going for something uber competitive without either).
 
I feel your pain but unfortunately it is a part of third year that is not likely to go away anytime soon. It is also a part of life. Subjective evals are frustrating as is the lack of consistency across rotations (not every student has the same attending etc so if there is an outlier it can bite you in the butt). Every resident, attending and team has a different dynamic and they look for different things in students.

Personally, I think it sucks even more when students who have excelled in every aspect of the clerkship (patient care, clinical knowledge etc) but do not meet the arbitrary set percentile on the shelf exam do not get a certain grade (be it honors or high pass etc). Usually in these cases it is because they do not finish the exam due to time not a knowledge deficit. This has happened to a number of people I know where they got knocked down not one but two letter grades.

My plan this year has been to work as hard as I can and let the chips fall where they may. This is not to say that I have not been all over my evaluations and grades. I just want to be personally satisfied with my performance and assess my progress. My midterm evals are not the first time I hear from my team how I am doing. I try to ask as much as is not annoying so I can improve any areas that need to be. LOL.
 
Pembleton said:
Damn, heisenberg, I thought you'd be comfortable with uncertainty by now.
Click to expand...

:laugh::laugh::laugh: This is definitely one of the best post I ever came across on SDN. Who'd ever think a good joke would result from Heisenberg's uncertainty?

That was a Hall of fame posting!!
 
Unbelieveable, almost an entire year later and still getting laughs.

Perhaps the OP was just a sockpoppet? That comment was just too witty and perfectly timed.
 
zahque said:
or, you can kill your boards, get a couple shining letters of rec, and let the attendings shove the evals up their asses. :cool:
Click to expand...

sounds good but there are some specialties out there that require the sparkling evals and Honors grades

AOA membership in many schools may also place a heavy emphasis on clinical grades/evals
 
heisenberg said:
i am pretty pissed that i didn't make honors in two classes by less than half a percent. and the thing that sucks is that the standardized patients and subjective comments screwed me up. i talked with the faculty and they are adamant that my grade will remain the same. this seems crazy to me since one of the exams is a complete outlier and defnitely the patient screwed me up. how to suck it up and remain neutral. i feel that putting hard work does not translate into good grades in medical school. also, faculty evaluations are so subjective and you have to basically suck up to them to get honors.
Click to expand...

It's good that you realize that getting honors requires sucking up. You have mastered the all important Pauli's Exclusion Principle: Those who do not suck up to the evaluator are excluded from getting Honors.
 
Try and accept that life can sometimes be unfair. And that the honors don't mean as much as your overall picture. I have seen people with tons of honors and high step scores and not match to programs because they have the personality issues.
 
I was under the impression that even though a system may be P/F, most schools still keep records of your numerical grades and ultimately rank you. Is this true? If so, then the absolute numerical score would matter more than whether you made the honors cut-off. What actually goes on the transcript?
 
heisenberg said:
i am pretty pissed that i didn't make honors in two classes by less than half a percent. and the thing that sucks is that the standardized patients and subjective comments screwed me up. i talked with the faculty and they are adamant that my grade will remain the same. this seems crazy to me since one of the exams is a complete outlier and defnitely the patient screwed me up. how to suck it up and remain neutral. i feel that putting hard work does not translate into good grades in medical school. also, faculty evaluations are so subjective and you have to basically suck up to them to get honors.
Click to expand...

Well its a good thing that standardized patients can't screw up your board scores and your grades from your residents/attendings during 3rd year because those are probably going to be the only things that matter when you apply for residency... As long as you don't fail, making a "satisfactory" vs "high satisfactory" vs "honor" or however they break it down at your school probably wont make a bit of difference. Good luck
 
Cmercury1 said:
I was under the impression that even though a system may be P/F, most schools still keep records of your numerical grades and ultimately rank you. Is this true? If so, then the absolute numerical score would matter more than whether you made the honors cut-off. What actually goes on the transcript?
Click to expand...

This is partly true at my school. Rankings are determined numerically for AOA membership, but only if you want to be considered for AOA. On transcripts all that shows up is the letter grade (P, F, H).

Ultimately I don't think letter grades in the first two years matter as much as your performance on the boards and the wards. At least that's what I tell myself when I miss Honors by one exam question, which has happened multiple times...
 
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