I'm an MS2 and I think I've finally realized that med school makes me very unhappy. I was happy in high school, happy in college, and now I just feel like s**t every morning deciding whether to go to class. I have friends in programs like pharm, nursing, psych, etc and they all have free time for friends and hobbies, like I used to in college.
I don't think it gets any better until after residency, and I don't know if I want to waste 6+ years of my life to find out.
The main reasons I'm still here are :
1. Social pressure (friends, parents, siblings would be shocked b/c I'm doing well so far)
2. Don't know what else I would do
3. The tuition already paid (I guess that's a sunk cost though)
4. Knowing that I'm capable of doing well, getting a good lifestyle specialty with good pay & hours
The social pressure is probably the biggest one because I feel like I'm living to meet other people's expectations of me rather than doing what makes me happy.
Anybody else feel this way? What did you do...?
1) Yes, I feel this way. I think things will get better.
Adjusting to MSII myself. A lot of changes from MSI, so it's hard to tell how the work load will end up on average. Yes, the time suck began right away on day 1.
All in all, it still sucks. But I thought MSI would improve post-anatomy, and it did. I thought MSII would be better than MSI, and... hard to be sure, but I think it is.
I predict MSIII will be MUCH better than MSII... and I'm pretty confident in that. Just knowing myself, I knew what kind of courses I would hate or struggle with, and what kind of courses/tasks I would take to.
(For ex, there are ppl who claimed med school would only get harder after anatomy... and it never did for me. Anatomy was the height of difficulty in terms of raw memorization. Every other course- even micro- was tempered somewhat in that there were patterns I could glom onto, to memorize things within a framework.)
In terms of MSIII, I'm almost certain it will be great for me for 2 reasons: (1) A LOT of the complaints I've heard fr ppl who seem to dislike MSIII seem to be complaints that could apply to ANY job; i.e. "work is tiring/work hrs suck" (it's still not manual labor!), "my supervisor unfairly evaluates me" (interpersonal probs/social politics- again, present in every workplace). Having worked in the "real world" before school, I think I will be spared this particular aspect of the angst.
(2) Feeling useful. Whether it's interacting with patients or conversing with colleagues, every day will hold some degree of unpredictability, challenge, and value. Also, I like learning through being pimped... much easier to stay alert vs in a huge lecture... Better than pre-clinical yrs? I THINK SO.
So, that was long-winded. But basically it boils down to this:
Only you know yourself. Do you think things will improve for you in MSIII? How about MSIV and beyond?
Whether things will get better and better depends on your likes, your past experiences. Knowing things will improve is so important for me. If I wasn't on an upward trajectory, med school would be much less tolerable.
2) IT'S A HOOP!
That's all it is!
So, 2nd Q:
Do you want to jump through it and get the MD diploma?
Sometimes, I feel myself getting caught up in the whole "med school culture". There are ppl who are fascinated by minutiae I couldn't be less interested in... and they make me question myself, since I'm nowhere near as interested.
There is plenty of fluff busywork (aside fr actual relevant coursework) that adds to the stress of trying to learn the latter, and at first I tried to put 100% of my efforts into even the busywork. When the payoff wasn't that great (I realized I didn't actually learn that much or gain that much), part of my early idealistic enthusiasm for med school quickly eroded. Med school/medical education is this giant behemoth that struggles to change, to be "new", but really it doesn't. It's the same disorganized bureaucratic heap across the country (or so it appears, fr ppl's common complaints on here...). It's the same amt of material forcibly fed down our throats, no matter where we go. It's memorization. This ain't college or a time for exploration/creativity.
Let another previous poster said... all of it just wasn't as "epiphanic" as I had envisioned.
😉
Perhaps I was an idiot in thinking med school would be a place to get in-depth, "real" understanding/knowledge, satisfy intellectual curiosity, etc. But there you go. It is what it is.
And again, feeling as "let down" as I did, and seeing others who appeared on the surface to be quite "satisfied" with their education, that just made me feel worse. Like there was something wrong with me.
Then I withdrew myself from the whole culture of that environment a bit, and I realized... it doesn't matter how ppl front (or even if they actually truly enjoy the drudgery)... I'm getting the MD for myself, for my own future and what I want to do.
Like others have said, spending time in the "real world" with non-med school ppl helps in that realization. Don't feel a need to "live and breathe" med school. And to me, this doesn't necessarily relate to how much you study either. You could study a LOT, or most of the day, yet not feel "stressed" by the culture/expectations, as long as you ground yourself outside that environment.
Don't get caught up in your peers or in social expectations or pressures... even the "internal" pressures from thinking you're "supposed to" enjoy something just 'cuz your peers *appear* to be.
At the end of the day, I do want to jump through that hoop. There's a host of reasons for that. Don't forget all the benefits of the profession as well as any native interest you have/ever had for the work itself that you will be doing.
