Reflections after my first semester of med school

[alwaysaangel]

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Can't help myself. Perspective changes as you go through the process. Here are paralleled thoughts from a 4th year applying for residency. And I'm sure they would be different for a resident and attending as well.

1. I stopped measuring time by a normal 40 hour work week. No more. Instead I often start at 6am and am thankful when I get off "early" at 4pm. Thankful for 10 hr work days 6 days a week. I miss the days of studying and creating my own schedule.
2. Weekends don't exist. When they do they are called golden because you have them off. 4th year is full of them as a wonderful vacation prior to intern year.
3. Balance is essential and is established overtime. Its a process. First year is undergrad on steroids and takes adjusting - more efficient studying. Then once thats done second year comes and its ALL new material, new adjustment - even more efficient studying and tying concepts together. Third year is the first true challenge as you have a rigid schedule with little time off and are still expected to study for shelf examinations. Residency is the final test as the time expectations and responsibilities max out. Balance is ESSENTIAL and it is something you must learn for yourself. There is not "waiting for it to be over" - this is your life - learn it now or forever be waiting for the "next thing."
4. That I am still special. If I work hard and most importantly work hard doing the things I love then I will succeed in life. Or more immediately, I will be rewarded with successful application, interviews and match. To be commended for my achievements in medical school still makes me feel special. No being smart won't cut it anymore (but then it never did, there was always more to be done even in undergrad) - do what you love in addition to school and do it well and you will not only enjoy life but will be rewarded for your achievements.
5. I realized how fragile life is. During an OB rotation we admitted a 25yo woman who had lost the 38 week fetus. She was induced to give birth to the stillborn and was recovering in the hospital. Over the next 24 hrs she developed HELLP syndrome, supportive care was provided and she seemed stable. 1 hr after a conversation with a perfectly normal woman who was my own age, she coded. After a 1 hr resuscitation her time of death was declared. I didn't care what grade I got on my OB shelf later that week.
6. I work hard but its the norm now, its amazing how quickly our bodies adjust to strange schedules. Stress is a given, however, you learn ways to cope - this is the rest of your life...you have no other choice. It just gets worse from here on out.
7. P=MD. P also equals the vast majority of specialties (IM, Peds, EM, PM&R, G-surg, FM, Anesthesia, etc. etc. etc). When Honors=10% of the class its easy to accept your pass and enjoy just learning for the sake of learning.
8. There came a point when I realized that next year I will write orders and those orders will be carried out on innocent human beings...its a terrifying thing.
9. I accepted the fact that I will have responsibility over people's deaths. I accepted this fact as not just some abstract nebulous theoretical idea, but as the reality of why I am pushing myself so hard.
10. I realized, surprisingly, how little respect some people outside of medicine have for me. At times its frustrating because I know how much I have put of myself into this "job" and yet patients refuse to take care of themselves or acknowledge their own responsibility for their well-being.

 

[alwaysaangel]

So I thought this may help some of you still in the premed phase and not yet in med school. Mostly, I just needed to vent and collect my thoughts:

1. I stopped measuring time by how much time a day I spent studying and started measuring time by how much time a day I didn’t spend studying.
2. My weekends were not weekends anymore. I spent more time studying on a typical Saturday or Sunday than most Americans spend working in a typical workday.
3. That all this rhetoric about “balance” is a bunch of bull****. The administration likes to talk about the importance of balance, but that same administration will show no ounce of compassion if I actually maintain such “balance” and fail one of my classes as a result. Likewise, the administration will provide all these stress management seminars to try to help, but in reality, each of these seminars are just 1 hour time sunks that take away precious time from studying.
4. That I’m no really not that special. All my life, I’ve been told how smart I am, and now I’m surrounded by people who are all just as smart if not more.
5. I realized how fragile my academic success is. In undergrad, I could fall behind and catch up relatively easily. Worst case scenario I might have to stay up all night studying before a test and get a B instead of an A. In medical school, the worst case scenario is that I fall behind and end up pulling 4 all nighters in a row on exam week and end up failing and needing to retake a whole semester’s worth of material.
6. I am working harder and am under more stress than ever before
7. That even though I’ve gotten mostly As my whole life, I am now in a situation where I have to bust my ass to just pass.
8. There came a point when I stopped seeing myself as simply a kid in medical school and start seeing myself as a future doctor. This only happened after I suffered a little bit in med school first. It’s a beautiful thing.
9. I accepted the fact that I will have responsibility over people’s lives and well-being. I accepted this fact as not just some abstract nebulous theoretical idea, but as the reality of why I am pushing myself so hard.
10. I realized, surprisingly, how much respect some people outside of medicine have for me just for being a medical student.

Whoa - how did my response to you end up ahead of your post? The forum is being wacky today.

 

[Stronghopeful]

Thanks for the insight!

Could you tell us how you were in college, stats, etc.?


Do you think I have a chance?

http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?p=10417588#post10417588

 

[Mithril]

.

 

[fastboyslim]

So I thought this may help some of you still in the premed phase and not yet in med school. Mostly, I just needed to vent and collect my thoughts:

1. I stopped measuring time by how much time a day I spent studying and started measuring time by how much time a day I didn’t spend studying.
2. My weekends were not weekends anymore. I spent more time studying on a typical Saturday or Sunday than most Americans spend working in a typical workday.
3. That all this rhetoric about “balance” is a bunch of bull****. The administration likes to talk about the importance of balance, but that same administration will show no ounce of compassion if I actually maintain such “balance” and fail one of my classes as a result. Likewise, the administration will provide all these stress management seminars to try to help, but in reality, each of these seminars are just 1 hour time sunks that take away precious time from studying.
4. That I’m no really not that special. All my life, I’ve been told how smart I am, and now I’m surrounded by people who are all just as smart if not more.
5. I realized how fragile my academic success is. In undergrad, I could fall behind and catch up relatively easily. Worst case scenario I might have to stay up all night studying before a test and get a B instead of an A. In medical school, the worst case scenario is that I fall behind and end up pulling 4 all nighters in a row on exam week and end up failing and needing to retake a whole semester’s worth of material.
6. I am working harder and am under more stress than ever before
7. That even though I’ve gotten mostly As my whole life, I am now in a situation where I have to bust my ass to just pass.
8. There came a point when I stopped seeing myself as simply a kid in medical school and start seeing myself as a future doctor. This only happened after I suffered a little bit in med school first. It’s a beautiful thing.
9. I accepted the fact that I will have responsibility over people’s lives and well-being. I accepted this fact as not just some abstract nebulous theoretical idea, but as the reality of why I am pushing myself so hard.
10. I realized, surprisingly, how much respect some people outside of medicine have for me just for being a medical student.

 

[fastboyslim]

Sounds like your school sort of sucks.
:

Well...I don't know how much of it is my specific school as opposed to just med school in general. I mean, I don't know how different my experience would be had I gone to a different school with respect to what I posted about.

 

[fastboyslim]

Thanks for the insight!

Could you tell us how you were in college, stats, etc.?


Do you think I have a chance?

http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?p=10417588#post10417588

3.85 overall gpa w/ 3.81 or 3.82 bcpm gpa
33R: 11ps 10vr 12bs

So I only quickly skimmed your thread, but it seems like your gpa is on the low side. Don't view getting solid undergrad grades only as a means to getting into medical school. View getting good undergrad grades also as a way to establish solid learning habits that will help you throughout medical school. Hope that helps w/ motivation.

 

[476515678234896]

thank you for this

any regrets about medicine/medical school yet? thinking about any specialty yet?

 

[swamprat]

I'm really bored, so heres my opinion, which I think drastically differs from the OPs...

So I thought this may help some of you still in the premed phase and not yet in med school. Mostly, I just needed to vent and collect my thoughts:

1. I stopped measuring time by how much time a day I spent studying and started measuring time by how much time a day I didn’t spend studying.

I really disagree, I study a lot but if theres no exam in sight all I really do is go to class 9-2/3 and hang out after maybe reread my notes maybe not, depending on my mood.

2. My weekends were not weekends anymore. I spent more time studying on a typical Saturday or Sunday than most Americans spend working in a typical workday.

This differs from undergrad because if I decided not to reread my notes all week, I usually use the weekend DAY to catch up.. not necessarily learning all the material as if I had an exam, but making sure to familiarize myself with it, the terminology, big picture concepts - thats all.

3. That all this rhetoric about “balance” is a bunch of bull****. The administration likes to talk about the importance of balance, but that same administration will show no ounce of compassion if I actually maintain such “balance” and fail one of my classes as a result. Likewise, the administration will provide all these stress management seminars to try to help, but in reality, each of these seminars are just 1 hour time sunks that take away precious time from studying.

I agree with this, it really is ******ed.

4. That I’m no really not that special. All my life, I’ve been told how smart I am, and now I’m surrounded by people who are all just as smart if not more.

Yeah, def a reality check - esp. when you first get accepted and you can go around feeling like the man with the golden dic* because most people aren't going to MD school.

5. I realized how fragile my academic success is. In undergrad, I could fall behind and catch up relatively easily. Worst case scenario I might have to stay up all night studying before a test and get a B instead of an A. In medical school, the worst case scenario is that I fall behind and end up pulling 4 all nighters in a row on exam week and end up failing and needing to retake a whole semester’s worth of material.

I guess this depends on your previous background with science and your studying habits/intelligence/ability to grasp material quickly.

6. I am working harder and am under more stress than ever before

I agree

7. That even though I’ve gotten mostly As my whole life, I am now in a situation where I have to bust my ass to just pass.

I disagree - but again I think it depends on multiple factors. I don't think passing is difficult, but it sucks when your in a pass/fail school and your getting high 80s and you'll get the same grade (P) as someone who just passes with a 73.

8. There came a point when I stopped seeing myself as simply a kid in medical school and start seeing myself as a future doctor. This only happened after I suffered a little bit in med school first. It’s a beautiful thing.

Nothing to say here, still seems really far away. Although I do want to add that the whole "OMG IM A MED STUDENT" thing wears off somewhere in late september, early october - then it just sucks.

9. I accepted the fact that I will have responsibility over people’s lives and well-being. I accepted this fact as not just some abstract nebulous theoretical idea, but as the reality of why I am pushing myself so hard.

Still too far away for me to feel justified learning some of the small BS details they expect us to know - but whatever I do know it is important eventually.

10. I realized, surprisingly, how much respect some people outside of medicine have for me just for being a medical student.

Agreed, its pretty cool - and damn the white coat has some power (even tho its short) when your in the hospital.

 

[Forthegood]

To Doxy and Fatboy...

I felt the same way that time freshmen year midway through. What you should know is first that it gets worse. By March I was burnt in a way I could not have imagined in December. And second, and most important, it does get better after first year. Second year is much more interesting, and you will have adjusted to your new routines in classwork and it will feel 100% better. Very few people are as miserable second year as they are during the first year (except for Step 1 prep). My whole perspective changed b/w first and second years, and now I really enjoy what I am doing. It is more interesting, exciting (at times), and challenging than anything I have ever done. I wouldn't trade it for the world.

 

[PreMedder]

Nice thread 👍 thanks!

 

[bacalaca]

To Doxy and Fatboy...

I felt the same way that time freshmen year midway through. What you should know is first that it gets worse. By March I was burnt in a way I could not have imagined in December. And second, and most important, it does get better after first year. Second year is much more interesting, and you will have adjusted to your new routines in classwork and it will feel 100% better. Very few people are as miserable second year as they are during the first year (except for Step 1 prep). My whole perspective changed b/w first and second years, and now I really enjoy what I am doing. It is more interesting, exciting (at times), and challenging than anything I have ever done. I wouldn't trade it for the world.

the end of second year during step 1 prep was for sure the depths of med school. third year has been interesting.....completely different from the first two, but don't think that just cause you are out of the class room you arent studying and taking tests....

 

[45408]

5. I realized how fragile life is. During an OB rotation we admitted a 25yo woman who had lost the 38 week fetus. She was induced to give birth to the stillborn and was recovering in the hospital. Over the next 24 hrs she developed HELLP syndrome, supportive care was provided and she seemed stable. 1 hr after a conversation with a perfectly normal woman who was my own age, she coded. After a 1 hr resuscitation her time of death was declared. I didn't care what grade I got on my OB shelf later that week.

Ouch. That's close to home. Some of my fellow residents have coded trauma patients who were young children or young pregnant women, but I haven't had anything quite that close to me. Saw the autopsy photos of a teenager who got blasted in the head with a shotgun the day before on my trauma/injury rotation. Saw a code get called off on a young man who had been murdered (came in dead, stayed dead...)

 

[Forthegood]

Ouch. That's close to home. Some of my fellow residents have coded trauma patients who were young children or young pregnant women, but I haven't had anything quite that close to me. Saw the autopsy photos of a teenager who got blasted in the head with a shotgun the day before on my trauma/injury rotation. Saw a code get called off on a young man who had been murdered (came in dead, stayed dead...)

When I was a premed, I had this gig as a surgical scut laborer, and I saw this 20yo M w/ uncontrolled DMII who got necrotizing fascitis... I saw him every other day for a month getting debridements and whatnot, the last time he was in the ICU with all the bells and whistles, he died that night. That one really knocked the wind out of me. He must have had 15 I&Ds... what a terrible way to go out.

 

[MedStudentWanna]

I'm really bored, so heres my opinion, which I think drastically differs from the OPs...

I really disagree, I study a lot but if theres no exam in sight all I really do is go to class 9-2/3 and hang out after maybe reread my notes maybe not, depending on my mood.

This is all dependent on you and on your school. I can't just go to class and reread my notes. I go to class, listen to the lecture, but rarely take notes during lecture because it's all in our powerpoints. If something supplemental is said, then I jot it down. At night, I try to get through all the lectures of the day and re-write the notes and condense them (60 powerpoint slides is just too much to keep re-reading over and over again). This takes me an hour or so per lecture and we have anywhere from 4-6 lectures a day, so figure 4-6 hours outside of class each night. On days that we have labs in the afternoon, that means I have no free time. But on the weekend, all I do is re-read my condensed notes. Sometimes, that takes a while and will blow my entire Saturday, but unless it's a test week, I usually take Sunday off. On test weeks, I study non-stop on the weekends, with little breaks here and there.

I disagree - but again I think it depends on multiple factors. I don't think passing is difficult, but it sucks when your in a pass/fail school and your getting high 80s and you'll get the same grade (P) as someone who just passes with a 73.

Again, I think this depends on you and on your school. At my school, it's easy to fail since our averages hover in the low to mid 70's. If you're just a few points below average, you failed. But most of the class clusters around the average. The thing is, you can't relax and think you'll skate by with a P the way you can at some schools I've heard of where their averages are in the upper 80's and you can be 18 points below the average and still pass.

We also have letter grades, so most people aim for A's or B's, but only those lucky few get the A's.

 

[swamprat]

This is all dependent on you and on your school. I can't just go to class and reread my notes. I go to class, listen to the lecture, but rarely take notes during lecture because it's all in our powerpoints. If something supplemental is said, then I jot it down. At night, I try to get through all the lectures of the day and re-write the notes and condense them (60 powerpoint slides is just too much to keep re-reading over and over again). This takes me an hour or so per lecture and we have anywhere from 4-6 lectures a day, so figure 4-6 hours outside of class each night. On days that we have labs in the afternoon, that means I have no free time. But on the weekend, all I do is re-read my condensed notes. Sometimes, that takes a while and will blow my entire Saturday, but unless it's a test week, I usually take Sunday off. On test weeks, I study non-stop on the weekends, with little breaks here and there.

Yeah I agree its very depending on the person. Most of my friends that I study with rewrite the notes which is a lot more time consuming than just rereading them over and over and doing practice questions (which is what I do). For biochem, I found myself starting to write out a pathway only to say to myself "fu** this" and just stare at it a little bit longer..altho I guess some pathways I did write out. But yeah, basically everyone studies differently and what works for one person won't for someone else.

Again, I think this depends on you and on your school. At my school, it's easy to fail since our averages hover in the low to mid 70's. If you're just a few points below average, you failed. But most of the class clusters around the average. The thing is, you can't relax and think you'll skate by with a P the way you can at some schools I've heard of where their averages are in the upper 80's and you can be 18 points below the average and still pass.

We also have letter grades, so most people aim for A's or B's, but only those lucky few get the A's.

Yeah I go to one of those schools where the average is usually in the low 80s, so plenty of leeway to be below average and still pass.. although how is it possible for your average to be so low and still have the majority of your class passing? What is it like 80% of the class is at the average or slightly above with the remainder raping the exams?

w

 

[MedStudentWanna]

The majority of the class is usually around the average. If our average is a 73%, you'll see about 70% of the class in the 70-75 range. Some will score higher and some will fail.

Basically, they curve the exams where more than 10% of the class outright fails. We had one exam where the average was in the upper 60's. They curved to make the average an 80 and only a couple of people still failed that one.

Personally, I'd rather have easier exams than curves, but over on the allo/osteo boards, some students say that each block is curved and their individual exams averages are pretty low as well. How demoralizing to fail some of the exams, even if you pass the block in the end. Makes me envy the people who go to schools with high averages. Plenty of wiggle room to still pass.