Repeating first year?

[pbaddiction]

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I'm wondering which residencies I would have no chance at or would be very unlikely if I repeated first year? I'm particularly interested in how it would affect EM or general surgery? Would it shut me out of any options for these two, especially if I go to a state school?

 

[SouthernSurgeon]

These kinds of threads come up periodically.

Basically...you're asking an unanswerable question. You're also asking the WRONG questions.

You need to be figuring out right now what you must do to academically succeed in medical school. Once you've done that, and been able to address your mental health concerns, and you've shown a track record of consistent success (including but not limited to passing M1 and M2 and your USMLE)...then we can start giving you advice about your match chances.

Now stop posting the same question all over the site. You've gotten plenty of answers the first time around.

Here's a much more eloquent post on this subject:

I feel a bit like a broken record on this, but it baffles me when people post some variation of:

"I failed X......can I still do Y residency/career/etc?"

What they SHOULD be posting is a variation of:

"I failed X...can you help me figure out why I failed at X so I don't make the same mistake again?"


OP, I know it sucks and you feel bad and I promise you I'm not trying to make you feel worse, but your first priority needs to be a complete re-evaluation of your study habits and time management going forward. M1 is one of the easiest parts of med school academically speaking and it will only get tougher going forward.

People who were qualified enough to be admitted to medical school only fail for a handful of really big reasons. Why else do you think it's such a red flag on an application even after you eventually pass? People will wonder: substance abuse? mental illness? burnout? immaturity? unhealthy relationships? illness? family instability? etc. Mostly, it's the first 2 of those that people are really wondering about, especially in someone who otherwise goes on to do very well. That may not be the case here and obviously those are very personal and very serious issues, but I would encourage you to seek help if there's even the slightest chance something like that could be going on.

You need to do some serious self-searching and have some private conversations with people you trust so you can fix whatever happened. There is also no guarantee you'll pass the remediation without changing your approach and then you'll be stuck repeating all of 1st year. Definitely take advantage of any and all tutoring or faculty-led reviews or whatever else is available going forward.

Long term, if this is an isolated thing and you address the underlying issues, you'll probably do just fine. You'll have no trouble matching radiology somewhere. I think the reason for the decline in stats has more to do with the proliferation of programs. You'll have to address the failure in your application and interviews, but if it ends up being isolated and your steps and clinicals are good, you'll probably do just fine in the match.

 

[pbaddiction]

You need to be figuring out right now what you must do to academically succeed in medical school. Once you've done that, and been able to address your mental health concerns, and you've shown a track record of consistent success (including but not limited to passing M1 and M2 and your USMLE)...then we can start giving you advice about your match chances.

I failed that course because of accidentally hurting the feelings of the Dean of Student Affairs, so it's not really that I couldn't succeed academically. I passed everything else and never received any warnings or concerns about my progress. Since the academic success issue isn't a major concern, I'm more preoccupied by the effects.

So what you're saying is that grades don't really matter?

The answers I got the first time were focused on LOA's, so I've still been unsure about the actual appearance of an F on my transcript. That part wasn't really addressed.

 

[rokshana]

I failed that course because of accidentally hurting the feelings of the Dean of Student Affairs, so it's not really that I couldn't succeed academically. I passed everything else and never received any warnings or concerns about my progress. Since the academic success issue isn't a major concern, I'm more preoccupied by the effects.

So what you're saying is that grades don't really matter?

The answers I got the first time were focused on LOA's, so I've still been unsure about the actual appearance of an F on my transcript. That part wasn't really addressed.

saying your failure was someone else's fault isn't the tack i would take...

 

[AdmiralChz]

saying your failure was someone else's fault isn't the tack i would take...

This times one million. Mistakes happen, and poor life choices can be learned from. It will show up on your transcript so absolutely be ready to discuss during interviews. If you use language like the above - blaming someone else - you will likely immediately be written off by that program. I understand being frustrated, but you need to remain a professional going forward.

 

[Crayola227]

One F is a blip if you don't have to repeat the year.

Repeating the year is no bueno. I can't advise you further. Just do the best you can and find some mentors in those departments or whoever should be doing residency advising for you.

 

[bannie22]

Its very interesting how in medicine we always are encouraged to twist the facts to blame ourselves for mistakes even when it has nothing to do with us.

 

[Crayola227]

Its very interesting how in medicine we always are encouraged to twist the facts to blame ourselves for mistakes even when it has nothing to do with us.

why do you think my title is boot licker?

I love the taste of leather, I do

 

[mw18]

Its very interesting how in medicine we always are encouraged to twist the facts to blame ourselves for mistakes even when it has nothing to do with us.

Honestly, that's just life. Nobody interviewing someone, who has any other options, will want to hire the person that blames other people for their shortcomings in any field. It isn't fair to the people who genuinely have bad things done to them, but if you're bringing someone onto your team you're going to want the person who takes ownership of things and not the person who instantly blames everyone around them for their situation. Because everyone knows those latter people and nobody wants to work with them. And the number of excuse makers who blame others vs. the ones who genuinely get screwed over is very high, in my experience. I would imagine residency is a perfect situation where someone who is whiny (not saying you at all, OP, just an example) will immediately make things worse for their co-residents. But that translates to all other fields where teamwork is necessary.

 

[hamstergang]

Its very interesting how in medicine we always are encouraged to twist the facts to blame ourselves for mistakes even when it has nothing to do with us.

Maybe that's true in general, but in this case you can read OP's explanation of what happened and decide if you really think it has nothing to do with him or if that's just the way he's twisting it:

I was led to believe that my score on a makeup exam would be averaged into my other grades for a course but was then told differently afterwards. I missed the original exam because of food poisoning. The Dean of Student Affairs got mad when I tried to talk to him about it and said that he didn't want to admit that he was careless because it would make him look bad. He said I couldn't appeal either. So I would have passed but I have to accept the consequences for the sake of his reputation.

 

[BusinessAndMedicine]

OP's story very much makes it sound like it is his own fault. It sounds like he aggressively confronted the Dean of Student Affairs..."he didn't want to admit that her was careless." Sounds like someone accused him of being careless.

 

[Law2Doc]

Reading OPs account actually raises a ton of questions and I'd bet there's another side to the story, even if we buy the fact that OP reasonably believed the make up test would be graded differently.

But putting that all aside, in any career you only go far if you learn to own your mistakes. Those that always seem to have an explanation or find someone else to blame never end up with a good track record for success. I don't consider this owning up "bootlicking", it's really just part of being a professional. The buck stops here. It's rarely other people out to screw you over. You need to own it, learn from it and figure out what to do differently next time. OP may have ended up in a bad place because of food poisoning, but it kind of sounds like he took a bad situation and made it worse thereafter, poisoning a relationship with a Dean in the process, a guy he may actually need going forward.

 

[Goro]

As a parent, even beyond being a 4 year+ member of SDN, I know that there are are always two sides to every story.

Its very interesting how in medicine we always are encouraged to twist the facts to blame ourselves for mistakes even when it has nothing to do with us.

 

[Donald Juan]

Its very interesting how in medicine we always are encouraged to twist the facts to blame ourselves for mistakes even when it has nothing to do with us.

But it almost always does have something to do with us. Even if you weren't the catalyst of a bad situation, 99.99% of the time if the outcome was bad for you, there was some way you could have handled it better.

 

[Ismet]

Closing cross-posted thread. Discussion can be continued in Allopathic forum where it is most appropriate: https://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/voluntarily-repeating-ms1.1215258/