number one most loathed part of an ms1?

[iMD]

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for me, it's twofold. one, it's these god forsaken extra classes/pointless meetings in the afternoons that have nothing to do with the sciences, EVERY week. two, this is all compounded by idiotic questions from some of my fellow ms1 classmates (no offense to their intellectual prowess, a lot of offense to their common sense)

seriously, common sense tells me i shouldn't sleep with my patient or my patient's mom. you don't need to spend an hour telling me this and then make me spend another hour talking about hypothetical situations involving it.

to other ms1's: when it's 30 minutes past the allotted time and you've already been in this discussion panel for 2 hours, don't ask the speaker dumb questions like "how did it make you feel when disease X caused Y to you?" well **** genius, if you were listening to the speech, you'd realize the person spent 20mins talking about their feelings. even if you didn't listen to the lecture, common sense tells you it sucks having the disease X, how about you come up with a better question or keep it shut..

end rant, am i being out of line here?

 

[xanthomondo]

I agree, I really hated the ridiculous mandatory meetings that usually weren't worth much.

The thing I hated most from MS1 was the smell of formaldehyde. Bleh

 

[MilkmanAl]

Anatomy lab. Worst experience ever.

 

[Dral]

On the topic of questions: If it's 30 minutes past the end time, then yes, you are justified in being annoyed.

However, if there is a guest speaker or someone presenting other than the instructor, it's good to have questions at the end of the talk in general. I don't know if that sort of thing annoys you or not, but I took grief from fellow classmates for asking questions at the end of such talks during MS1 and MS2.

The format of 'questions at the end' is standard for talks. I was taught that if nobody asks questions at the end of such a talk, it means people were not paying attention, or your talk/research sucked.

Even if either of those were the case, it's customary to acknowledge the speaker for their time and effort by asking (hopefully) pertinent questions.

I feel ya though...there IS such a thing as a dumb question. heheh.

 

[VoiceofReason]

for me, it's twofold. one, it's these god forsaken extra classes/pointless meetings in the afternoons that have nothing to do with the sciences, EVERY week. two, this is all compounded by idiotic questions from some of my fellow ms1 classmates (no offense to their intellectual prowess, a lot of offense to their common sense)

seriously, common sense tells me i shouldn't sleep with my patient or my patient's mom. you don't need to spend an hour telling me this and then make me spend another hour talking about hypothetical situations involving it.

to other ms1's: when it's 30 minutes past the allotted time and you've already been in this discussion panel for 2 hours, don't ask the speaker dumb questions like "how did it make you feel when disease X caused Y to you?" well **** genius, if you were listening to the speech, you'd realize the person spent 20mins talking about their feelings. even if you didn't listen to the lecture, common sense tells you it sucks having the disease X, how about you come up with a better question or keep it shut..

end rant, am i being out of line here?

nope, good rant.

i think we cover all the common sense involved in human interaction so taht the school can't be liable in any way for the few people they graduate who are social ******s.

 

[SirGecko]

Anatomy lab. Worst experience ever.

I love anatomy lab. I don't understand why some people don't.

 

[MilkmanAl]

The smell and the time investment. I'm very jealous of my free time and can't stand wasting it. When I figured out that I could get through 20+ hours of lab time in 3 hours of review, it started bugging the hell out of me. I also realized very quickly that dissecting was absolutely nothing like surgery, so technique wasn't particularly important or even usable. Yeah, not a fan.

 

[xanthomondo]

The smell and the time investment. I'm very jealous of my free time and can't stand wasting it. When I figured out that I could get through 20+ hours of lab time in 3 hours of review, it started bugging the hell out of me. I also realized very quickly that dissecting was absolutely nothing like surgery, so technique wasn't particularly important or even usable. Yeah, not a fan.

Haha I absolutely loved all of the people who "definitely are going to be a surgeon" so it's imperative that they have as much cutting experience as possible.

 

[corbis11]

mine is how obvious it is of some people that put on fronts to make them seem like someone they are not. I don't know if they are trying to make up for having a bad high school/college experience, but it's pretty lame. Also, The good looking girls in class who only talk to you; you don't talk to them because their **** don't stink...and it don't

 

[jonessoda1212]

Biochemistry

 

[DrYoda]

PBL sessions. Damn near useless and they drag me out of bed early.

 

[Perrotfish]

PBL sessions. Damn near useless and they drag me out of bed early.

+1

Also, does anyone else have half a dozen nearly identical variations on PBLs with different names? With have TBLs, PBLs, 'Just in time teaching' sessions, Tutorials, and small groups sessions. See, because if they called them all the same thing you could only feel let down once.

 

[Pianoman32]

The smell and the time investment. I'm very jealous of my free time and can't stand wasting it. When I figured out that I could get through 20+ hours of lab time in 3 hours of review, it started bugging the hell out of me. I also realized very quickly that dissecting was absolutely nothing like surgery, so technique wasn't particularly important or even usable. Yeah, not a fan.

I couldn't agree more! I just finished up anatomy lab the other day and I am so glad. The aura of it faded after the first week. After that, I realized it was just a waste of time. Yeah, and I also hate the dbags who think that dissecting is like surgery.

 

[engineeredout]

This is gonna be school specific for me, but mandatory lectures. 😡.

Some lecturers are great and worth the time spent there. Others are absolutely horrible and the time would be better spent studying on my own, or working out, or drinking alcohol.

And I didn't find anatomy lab that bad at all. Yeah there were a few occasions when all I wanted to do was sleep instead of standing in lab for two hours, but overall it was a pretty cool experience.

 

[thepoopologist]

First semester. I really have to improve my time and money management. I also have to figure out how to study more efficiently.

 

[username456789]

The knowledge that despite how annoying/time consuming/etc M1 was, this year (M2) was gonna be worse (albeit somewhat more interesting), as well as Step I.

HOUSE OF GOD RULE #8: THEY CAN ALWAYS HURT YOU MORE.

 

[genswim24]

For me, it's when I go to a talk with free lunch and they are out of food.

I actually like anatomy lab, but the smell does get old. I will not miss that when anatomy is over in a few weeks.

 

[jonb12997]

knowing I still had 3 more years of tuition to pay...

 

[bleeker10]

This is gonna be school specific for me, but mandatory lectures. 😡.

Some lecturers are great and worth the time spent there. Others are absolutely horrible and the time would be better spent studying on my own, or working out, or drinking alcohol.

Agreed. It's gotten to the point where I study in class because we have random attendance taken and I don't want my grade suffering because of it, though I think my grade is gonna suffer by being in class and not learning it on my own. Even if I can do one lecture every two hours, then it's one less thing I have to do that nite.

 

[greatnt249]

Going into an exam expecting to be asked reasonable questions about the topics having been discussed up to that point and, instead, getting hammered with a hodge-podge of semi-specific trivia with even less specific answers.

 

[shiftingmirage]

This is gonna be school specific for me, but mandatory lectures. 😡.

Is it me, or are the lectures that are mandatory usually the most useless?

 

[Revilla]

I love anatomy lab. I don't understand why some people don't.

I think anatomy lab is useful, but I hate standing up and leaning over a cadaver for four hours. The smell bothers me a lot (it's getting better now) and our lab is very cold so I'm freezing half-way through. I just don't like it, though I understand why it's important to our education.

 

[Revilla]

+1

Also, does anyone else have half a dozen nearly identical variations on PBLs with different names? With have TBLs, PBLs, 'Just in time teaching' sessions, Tutorials, and small groups sessions. See, because if they called them all the same thing you could only feel let down once.

LOL, that's pretty funny. We don't have PBL, but one thing we have at my school that I enjoy is these Friday sessions where they bring in a lecturer from each department to integrate the information from that week and put it in clinical context by focusing on a particular disease/illness. The first week or two of a section, it's a bit hard to follow because it includes material we haven't learned yet, but by the end, it's really cool. I also love our patient presentations. I go to a school that does a systems-based curriculum from first-year so I find the majority of what we're learning very interesting.

As for things I don't like, for me, it's just learning to adjust to med school. I haven't learned an affective study method yet (but I am working on it) and it's driving me crazy.

 

[KeyzerSoze]

though I understand why it's important to our education.

Nice, could you enlighten me?

 

[Revilla]

Nice, could you enlighten me?

About why anatomy lab is important? I guess because anatomy is important. The lab just helps put things in visual context. What good does it do to memorize where the median nerve is or what muscles it innervates if you can't visualize it on a cadaver?

Don't get me wrong, I don't like the lab. I just think it's that useful.

 

[MilkmanAl]

Learning on a cadaver: useful. Doing the dissection: not so useful after you've done it once or twice. The fact that schools are trending towards providing prosections indicates they at least sort of agree.

 

[DrJD]

Nice, could you enlighten me?

I think it depends on how you use it... If people go to Anatomy lab expecting to learn for the first time, then it could be not very helpful or boring. I've found that previewing in the text book the night before, then attending lecture the next day is super helpful. By that point, I can essentially spend the three hours in lab memorizing. Means that as it gets closer to the test I barely have to study for the lab practical because I spent 3 hours per day memorizing the material while looking at the cadaver.

It really does smell terrible though, bleah!

 

[SirGecko]

Is it me, or are the lectures that are mandatory usually the most useless?

It isn't just you. If they weren't useless why would they need to make them mandatory?

 

[engineeredout]

Agreed. It's gotten to the point where I study in class because we have random attendance taken and I don't want my grade suffering because of it, though I think my grade is gonna suffer by being in class and not learning it on my own. Even if I can do one lecture every two hours, then it's one less thing I have to do that nite.

Yeah I gotta try to make that time more productive. If I just end up going home and spending the time going through the day's lectures to learn the material I might as well not show up in the first place. The problem is that I have trouble concentrating when someone is lecturing, and theres also not that much room to spread out. Pretty hard to keep your laptop and the physio textbook and a notebook open at the same time (without pissing off the guy next to you). I end up playing skifree.

 

[Perrotfish]

Yeah I gotta try to make that time more productive. If I just end up going home and spending the time going through the day's lectures to learn the material I might as well not show up in the first place. The problem is that I have trouble concentrating when someone is lecturing, and theres also not that much room to spread out. Pretty hard to keep your laptop and the physio textbook and a notebook open at the same time (without pissing off the guy next to you). I end up playing skifree.

For productive lectures, I recommend store-bought flash cards and an Ipod. Requires very little room and it's like you're in your own little world. Don't even bring the laptop.

 

[phospho]

Learning on a cadaver: useful. Doing the dissection: not so useful after you've done it once or twice. The fact that schools are trending towards providing prosections indicates they at least sort of agree.

👍

80% of my time in lab was spent either removing fat or looking for something. 80% is a lot of time that I could have spent memorizing the crap out of netter's or rohen's. This whole dissecting thing is stupid and the schools know it. Almost everything I've retained from anatomy lab was from the prosections they gave us to look at before complicated dissections.

 

[sunset823]

Biochem...and the fact that my biochem grade is the one thing preventing me from having a relatively easy sailing rest of the semester (being well over MPL in my other classes, which I mostly enjoy).

Anatomy lab is all right, not a big fan, and would have preferred prosections, but sometimes it's cool (like when we found a heart that literally filled only half of my palm - I have large hands, but really now).

I also echo the person who says the worst part is having to pay tuition. For me, the worst part besides biochem is loans.

 

[unsung]

👍

80% of my time in lab was spent either removing fat or looking for something. 80% is a lot of time that I could have spent memorizing the crap out of netter's or rohen's. This whole dissecting thing is stupid and the schools know it. Almost everything I've retained from anatomy lab was from the prosections they gave us to look at before complicated dissections.

I will second the gripes about anatomy lab in this thread. Most. Traumatic. Experience. Ever.

Although, I will temper this by saying that I did learn a lot. Both in terms of material and study skills. And by the time we got to head & neck in the class, I was doing a lot better. So all the gloom & doom over that unit did NOT pan out. Again, one of those ymmv things... so anyone reading this thread who hasn't taken anatomy yet, just realize that the things that may be hardest for someone else you might find the easiest/most enjoyable (and vice versa).

Back to complaining. 😉 What I personally found most annoying about anatomy was that oftentimes we did not locate a particular structure in our bodies that was on our checklist of things we had to know.

This would've been not a prob if the prosection showed us the structure. Prob was, oftentimes, the prosection also did not dissect out the structure. In fact, oftentimes, NO ONE in our lab had a good example of the structure!! Then come exam time, and all of a sudden the dissections are all beautiful and I'm forced to ID things I had never seen before, even once, on a body.

Does that make any sense?? 😕

This is in addition to the spending hrs digging through fascia and not learning much out of doing so, of course. So after hours digging through fascia, we get a few min only to go look at a prosection. We had great TAs, so don't want to complain about the prosection. But even tho' they were good, we still 1) only had a limited time to look over the actual structures, and 2) sometimes did not show structures we were supposed to know. Chalk it up to the body, chalk it up to just what happens during dissection.

But bottom line is, before every test, we had to spend copious amounts of times "in search" of particular structures on different bodies, and that just felt like time that could've been much better spent.

Eh. Not sure what the solution is, but really those 2 parts were really what made anatomy so difficult for me. That, and the whole formaldehyde seeping through my pores thing.

In fact, I wouldn't mind retaking anatomy, since I feel I could have done a lot better and it is something that is essential to know. But... yeah I just can't stand the thought of spending more hours around formaldehyde and digging through stuff.

 

[MossPoh]

How no matter how empty and productive my day might seem, there will always be some randomly inserted mandatory thing I have to attend to screw it all up.

 

[Jolie South]

It isn't just you. If they weren't useless why would they need to make them mandatory?

Agreed.

I especially hated the small groups where you talk about your feelings or ethical cases. Thank god they did away with those for second year.

I'd make my token comments during the sessions to get credit for participation, but would otherwise zone out and not pay attention.

 

[chiz2kul]

Biochemistry

For me, it's when I go to a talk with free lunch and they are out of food.

I actually like anatomy lab, but the smell does get old. I will not miss that when anatomy is over in a few weeks.

I LOVE free food. I sometimes try to go to such random meetings, JUST for the food..yea I know, i'm a bad person. But yea, u gotta go EARLY..thats key! I usually dont have time to pack lunch in the mornings, so I just scout around for these such talks/meetings...I dont mind trading 30-45 mins of my time for free lunch.

Going into an exam expecting to be asked reasonable questions about the topics having been discussed up to that point and, instead, getting hammered with a hodge-podge of semi-specific trivia with even less specific answers.

YES.


Biochem is a waste of my time. Who cares about latest discovery of protein's X domain?? And all those stupid factos and cofactors and xfactors that you have to memorize. STUPID!!!

Anatomy lab - I dont mind it so much...except from ofcourse the smell (when its overwhelming), and the pelvic region. That has been the WORST so far!!
And oh, when your lab partners INSIST that they just have to find every little nerve, and artery and vein and fascia and muscle and tendon and ligament and...oh my goodness people! We spend like over half the time looking for stuff that even the prof's wont find when the come over.

IF YOU CAN'T FIND IT, THEN MOVE ON!! That shld be the #1 rule in anatomy lab.

 

[hypnix]

I go to a school that's part of an undergrad campus and we have a ton of amazing professors that teach subjects they are very knowledgeable in. However, they teach us detail that is not necessary for us to be good physicians and I doubt those details will be tested on the Step 1. I hate looking up something found on a powerpoint that I can't find in books and only comes up in journal articles when I search in google.

 

[RoyBasch]

and the pelvic region. That has been the WORST so far!!

I love anatomy but the pelvic region is a bitch.
-Roy

 

[ChubbyChaser]

For me, it's when I go to a talk with free lunch and they are out of food.

I actually like anatomy lab, but the smell does get old. I will not miss that when anatomy is over in a few weeks.

👍

 

[DrJD]

IF YOU CAN'T FIND IT, THEN MOVE ON!! That shld be the #1 rule in anatomy lab.

👍👍👍👍👍

 

[Mace1370]

The only thing I don't like about anatomy lab is the fact that some cadavers are have a really high rate of anatomical variance. Just spent 3 hours dissecting the celiac trunk, SMA + branches, and IMA + branches only to discover that only half the arteries are where the should be. Now I have to spend even more time learning how they are "supposed" to be on a prosection.

 

[BlondDoctor]

Going into an exam expecting to be asked reasonable questions about the topics having been discussed up to that point and, instead, getting hammered with a hodge-podge of semi-specific trivia with even less specific answers.

wow you saw right into my mind...We had an exam where a question was obviously not discussed but was in the background of one of the 498540690947 ppts we had during the semester. Then the next semester the same teacher comes back and lectures us on the subject (when we were supposed to learn it...) When he was done he said "Now you could all answer that question from last semesters exam huh?"
Douche

 

[virusgirl]

For me, it's when I go to a talk with free lunch and they are out of food.

I actually like anatomy lab, but the smell does get old. I will not miss that when anatomy is over in a few weeks.

Genswim, I think we are classmates, so I am going to venture that FIM makes me want to jam a pen into my eye! Especially nutrition TBL. I hate it with the burning fury of a thousand suns!!!!!!!

Also, people who don't change out of their anatomy scrubs after lab/before coming to class. Seriously, folks. You're covered in cadaver goo and you smell.

 

[genswim24]

Genswim, I think we are classmates, so I am going to venture that FIM makes me want to jam a pen into my eye! Especially nutrition TBL. I hate it with the burning fury of a thousand suns!!!!!!!

Also, people who don't change out of their anatomy scrubs after lab/before coming to class. Seriously, folks. You're covered in cadaver goo and you smell.

haha, you are spot on with both those points. FIM as a whole is annoying, especially the Nutrition part. That essay we have do this week is just another example of the way that class annoys me.

I totally agree about the scrubs too. I don't know why people feel it is acceptable to walk around with pieces of dead people on them for the whole day.

 

[Perrotfish]

...

 

[cheasus]

Anatomy lab. Worst experience ever.

completely agree

 

[spootbat]

I loved anatomy lab!

For those of you who say it is useless, you are so wrong. Lab is the most useful way to learn anatomy, at least for me. There are two reasons for this:

1) By requiring us to actually find the structures and then dig and pull apart the organs and tissues to get to the structures, anatomy lab gives the most tangible sense of the relationships between structures as they course through body in all sorts of complicated ways.
I am in an exam and there is a question about a particular vessel as it passes between two layers of fascia and muscle, and I simply get the image in my head of my experience dissecting that area, and I remember. Hmmm....what structure forms the posterior boundary of the Foramen of Winslow? Well, I remember sticking my index finger right through that sucker and feeling that big inferior vena cava behind it. There you go, no memorization, just remembering what I did, touched, and saw.

2) Anatomy lab really demonstrates to us the sheer variety of morphologies found in people. People aren't static pictures in a textbook. It is quite the opposite. In fact, the normal healthy morphology of people are just variations on a them in order to complete an objective. For example, the whole area around my cadaver's superior pancreaticoduodenal artery was very, very different from Netter's version, yet it accomplished the same goal--get blood to the stomach, liver, pancreas and the like. This concept reinforces ideas from embryology as well.

So yeah, I guess I enjoyed gross anatomy lab.

 

[sylvanthus]

"For those of you who say it is useless, you are so wrong"

Im going to be that guy and say the obvious....Lab is not useful for everyone. Personally, I learn the material far far better and faster looking at an atlas.

 

[MilkmanAl]

I don't think anyone has said anatomy lab is useless. It is an exceptionally inefficient use of time, but learning on a cadaver is crucial. Note that you can do everything spootbat mentions other than the actual dissection with a pre-dissected specimen. You can manipulate and touch and poke stuff all you like. That's how I learned every time.

 

[greatnt249]

I don't think anyone has said anatomy lab is useless. It is an exceptionally inefficient use of time, but learning on a cadaver is crucial. Note that you can do everything spootbat mentions other than the actual dissection with a pre-dissected specimen. You can manipulate and touch and poke stuff all you like. That's how I learned every time.

I learned a few things from our cadaver once we got to the neck/head, but most of the time was spent digging through fascia looking for structures only to discover that we had a) destroyed said structures in the process of removing fascia or b) discovered that the cadaver lacked the structures in question (usually veins/arteries).

I agree that it's important to study cadavers, but certain cadavers only seem to instill a sense of learned helplessness after so much failure in the process of dissection.