Nobody is saying medical school is amazing and easy. But it isn’t as bad as SDN makes it out to be. Nothing is as bad as SDN makes it out to be. And honestly playing soccer isn’t like this because at the end of the day that’s a game. This is a job. And when you come in to this having crap jobs, you’re a hell of a lot more thankful for this opportunity because the young professional life looks good on Facebook but it’s nothing incredible either.
Depends on the person.
I
love medical school. Personally, the kinds of work I have to do here are easier than I've had to do before. I suffered far more with the academic structure in college (where I also think the content was harder) and even high school (purely from schedule and constant oversimplification). I don't feel like I'm drowning in the amount of content, I don't feel like the pace is crazy high, and I find the content fascinating enough that I accidentally study more often than intentionally. I have more free time, a better social life, and a better support network. My mental health has overall improved since I've been here (though it's had its ups and downs, like always).
I'm not always happy. That's not how humans work, and it's especially not how my brain works. But medical school hasn't been the source of unhappiness for me.
AND YET, I'd have to have zero empathy to not understand how, for different people with a different set of skills and values, the equation is much different. People would probably laugh at me for how much I struggled in college, but I legitimately did, and it had nothing to do with my ability to learn, and all to do with my specific weaknesses (time management, social skills, mental health, self care).
I love medical school. But for someone who finds the content dry and is purely interested in the clinical aspect, or for someone for whom memorization is a struggle and requires constant work, someone less familiar with the content to begin with, someone who requires homework and other practice material to learn, or simply someone who had a much kinder and easier path in undergrad because it fit them better...med school could easily suck. Someone whose school curriculum involves pointless busy work and MC exams on research minutiae...is probably gonna think it sucks. Someone with other priorities in their life that they feel they are sacrificing for medical school...is going to suffer more. And so on.
Let's stop talking about this like it's a one-size-fits-all, yes or no answer, "is med school difficult?" question. It's not. Humans are more complex than that. Different people are going to struggle with different parts of the path, and that doesn't mean any of them are less suited to be physicians. We NEED that diversity.
