Slacker, but still interested in medicine.

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preFP said:
I

Maybe I'm wrong here, but even the successful docs and med students I've spoken to are very clear in that med school isn't a complete nightmare that robs you of every waking moment, and there's plenty of time to do other things..
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It wont rob you of every waking moment. (although it will rob you of a whole lot of it, thats for sure) However, it is SURE to rob you of your soul which is more important then time in my opinion.
 
preFP said:
Duh! I thought I'd be rolling into class at midday and back at home drinking a beer by mid afternoon.
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that can be done, totally
 
TupacalipseT96 said:
If you do indeed go FP, it's a safe route for your style. My step-father was a regular ol' FP for awhile, and he told me he regretted ever trying to pay off his med school debt. Because sure enough, his first job paid off his debt for him...and the area wasn't that bad, it was in central california...not the greatest, but not North Dakota either.

Anyway, he worked the usual 9-5pm 5days a week... then he got sick <<I will leave details of his personal life out>>. He came back to work and arranged it so he only worked 3 days a week to lower stress. He was still making plenty of money (going to guess 120k at 3days a week work time). Then when he got bored of that, he studied a bit and took some test and now he's an Addiction Medicine specialist detoxing heroine addicts in SF. And if he gets bored of that, he can change around again.

So FP provides major flexibility in terms of how much you work, and what you are doing... for the rest of your career. This is a major draw of FP.

You'll be fine...the hard parts only last a few years, then you got a flexible/chill rest of your life if that's how you want it.
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I agree. FP is really flexible. i think it willpick up in competitveness in the years ahead because of that fact. I also think they should change the name of the specialty to "general Practice".

As an aside, Drew Pinsky is an Addiction medicine specialist. He is one sharp dude if you ever listen to him talk.
 
OP you could totally pull it off if you managed your time right, especially if you go to a medical school that doesn't have a lot of required classes.

I stopped going to class halfway through first year and it freed up so much time. Instead of spending 8 hours a day in lecture, and then trying to go home and spending another 8 hours a day studying, I would just study while all my other classmates were in lecture.

I'd be done by 4 or 5 and I would rarely study on weekends. A lot of my friends did the same exact thing. I actually did really well doing this, plus it helped a ton when it came to Step 1....there is a lot of material on Step 1 that they don't really teach you in medical school, and you definitely have to be able to learn on your own.

The only thing that is going to suck for you is third year....you're gonna be used to living life on your own terms and schedule, and it will be taken away from you...it's going to be very, very hard at that point. But if you can suck it up for a year, you'll be allright.

So to answer your question,ya it's definitely possible if you're just trying to do the bare minimum.
 
I know at UW (Wisconsin) there is a program specifically for people who want to practice "rural medicine" and other schools have some programs for people who want to practice in primary care. I'm not sure, but I think they provide some debt support or less tuition or something. You should look into these programs.

Why does it matter so much if you graduate with debt or not? Working part time during medical school isnt going to help you debt that much and youll be able to make that money in very little time as a physician (even a primary care one).
 
I think it depends where you go. My dad confessed to me recently that he did just the bare minimum in med school. He has sort of a slacker personality (dad, if you find this, I mean that in a good way!) and he likes to relax and enjoy life a lot. He didn't really go to classes, and just kind of learned the material at his own pace and did well on the exams.

That was at Ohio State, I think. At a large place with a lot of anonymity is the best place to take that strategy, if you're the "brilliant but lazy" type.

He's a radiologist now, which I think is a good specialty for his personality. He gets along well with people and everything, but he wouldn't be happy rushing patients (and himself) along in "normal" patient setting (rows of exam rooms, one patient each, doctor rushing along to all of them), I think.

He's also become very, very good at what he does, and has a lot of opportunity to travel to conferences and stuff, and he publishes a lot of case studies and has worked on a lot of textbook chapters, and really enjoys mentoring the residents assigned to him. His sharp eye reading imaging studies has also saved lives on more than one occasion.

So you can totally be a great doctor and still be a stop-and-smell-the-roses type of person. Hopefully I can pull off that balance as well as he has.
 
It's not like the "gunners" all chose to have 300K of debt because they wanted the extra challenge.
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You've clearly missed all the posts "Should I choose lowly State U or Uber Private College for $150k more?!?" Face it, most people on this website are too competitive and neurotic for their own good. (read: big tools)

kedrin said:
Get some nuts and actually challenge yourself.
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Some people don't like robbing themselves of 10 years of their life for the sake of "prestige" and "personal challenge". Forgive my blasphemy, but not everyone shares your zealotry and DO enjoy things outside of medicine. I am not, nor will I ever be, married to the pursuit of something so superfluous as a "prestigious career in medicine". Life's too short for that kind of short-sightedness, my friends.

Forgive my pre-med status, but I'm calling bull**** on 60 hours per week. 8 hours/day 7 days a week stuyding!? Are we including class time in that, or is that pure studying? Most people I know skip class and study what they missed much more efficiently than the lecturer presents while everyone else was in class.
 
Oh yeah, to the OP. Go osteopathic. I think for someone shooting for FP, OMM would be great. And there are tons of options for FP residences all over the country.
 
Slack3r said:
You've clearly missed all the posts "Should I choose lowly State U or Uber Private College for $150k more?!?" Face it, most people on this website are too competitive and neurotic for their own good. (read: big tools)



Some people don't like robbing themselves of 10 years of their life for the sake of "prestige" and "personal challenge". Forgive my blasphemy, but not everyone shares your zealotry and DO enjoy things outside of medicine. I am not, nor will I ever be, married to the pursuit of something so superfluous as a "prestigious career in medicine". Life's too short for that kind of short-sightedness, my friends.

Forgive my pre-med status, but I'm calling bull**** on 60 hours per week. 8 hours/day 7 days a week stuyding!? Are we including class time in that, or is that pure studying? Most people I know skip class and study what they missed much more efficiently than the lecturer presents while everyone else was in class.
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This is totally true. Every once in awhile, my medical school has some kind of talk where the current med students give advice to pre-meds and tell them what medical school is like.

Let me just tell you this, medical students like to complain like no other students out there. On top of that, most of them have huge egos. I remember some students saying outrageous things, like "I miss doing normal things like shopping for groceries," and "I spend about 16 hours a day studying." It kind of turns into a "look at me and how great I am" session, instead of a helpful session for pre-meds.

Look, nobody studies 16 hours a day. Sure, someone might spend 16 hours at school...8 hours in lecture and 8 hours in the library, but how much of that time is spent actually learning? I'd say my 6 hours per day are much more efficient than most of their 16 hour days. I don't need to go to lecture to have some A-hole talk about the intricacies of the cytochrome P450 system, and I don't need to hear about the history of Tuberculosis. I don't need to socialize with other people in the library for hours and complain about how much we have to do. Unfortunately, a lot of medical school is just a bunch of fluff. Half the problem is figuring out what is important and what isn't.

A lot of people, especially around here, just want to puff out there chests and talk about how hard things are. By doing so, they make themselves feel better. Don't let them intimidate you. Is medical school hard? Heck ya, but the material isn't anything new. It's just the volume. My medical school biochemistry class wasn't harder than my undergrad one, it's just that I had to take anatomy, physiology, histology, genetics, embryology, and biostats along with it. Throw on 30 hours of lectures per week, and you can definitely feel crunched. That's why it's so important to figure out what is important and what isn't. If you are spending 60 hours a week studying and it's not finals or Step 1 time, then I feel sorry for you. You are probably very stupid or very inefficient.
 
DarknightX said:
I remember some students saying outrageous things, like "I miss doing normal things like shopping for groceries,"
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LOL wut?

We had some med students come talk to us, and they were totally the opposite. One or two were non-science majors in undergrad, and didn't even decide to go for medicine until after they graduated. One was married and lived in another town, and two were engaged to each other. They said that there were a few single parents in their class, and one girl had to fall back a year when she unexpectedly got pregnant, but will still be completing her education, just one year later.

They never said it wasn't hard, but they all emphasized how you can do other things and still graduate from med school.

I think the people who stress all the time and have no life are really the pre-meds, honestly. I'm much more nervous about getting in than I am about being able to keep up once I'm in.
 
preFP said:
I doubt there's much I learn in medical school that will save someone's life during my family practice career. On the other hand, there's plenty I'll learn during residency that will save lives. Don't forget that you graduate medical school really not knowing a whole lot about practicing medicine. You learn the real stuff in residency and beyond.
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Law2Doc says it more eloquently, that the basic sciences are important as foundation to build on. Medical school doesn't train clinicians, that's what residency does. But if residency is all one needs to become a doctor, then we can train all doctors on the job straight from middle school (since no science background is needed).

Why do you think a nurse or PA still has to defer to a physician on certain medical cases? What differentiates us from midlevels? It sure has heck isn't the clinical skills since a nurse with 20 year experience will be better than a newly minted intern. In fact, in 3/4th year and residency, your nurse will teach YOU about how to do certain procedures.

But after 3-7 years of residency, an attending is able to make judgment calls that a nurse of 20 years may not understand. Therein lies the reason for having that basic science background: the depth of understanding of why we do the things we do.

preFP said:
I'm going to respectfully disagree with this remark too. I don't think there are many people here who actually know what a 60 hour week feels like. People in undergrad routinely toss those kinds of numbers around, but in reality, an undergrad (yes, even a competitive student) probably attends class and studies around 25 to 30 hours a week tops. The med students I've spoken to seem to go to lectures fairly regularly, then study, and it's still barely 30 hours a week. They're all passing.

There's a big difference between 60 hours of real study and 60 hours of "being at medical school, travelling to medical school, making coffee, watching TV while reading, etc." I have no doubt whatsoever that if students honestly kept track of actual study time, it would be half what they thought they were putting in.
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Most people work hard in med school, just as there are people who wear their 18 hour days as badge of honor, others wear their "I study nothing" as badge of honor. But I don't know of any med student that has time to put in 20 hour part time jobs, and even the biggest slacker pulls long hours near exams (of which there are numerous).

Also, studying for six hours every day is a lot tougher than it appears because studying requires mental focus, whereas everyday life does not. Hence it's easier to "do" stuff for four hours than to study for four hours. One can easily work 30 hours/week, but putting in 30 hours of studying is much harder.


LadyWolverine said:
This is a healthy outlook to have. There is absolutely nothing wrong with wanting a career that affords you the time to do other things besides your job. However, you will have to pay your dues during your medical training. To simply "pass" a course can be pretty difficult - there is not much opportunity to slack, even if you want just a P or a C. Unfortunately, there are some who need to put in tons of work just to barely squeak by. You will not know what type of student you will be until you get here.
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I think the OP needs to keep this in mind. Passing can be difficult and gauging where you stand in class even more so. Remember that everyone in med school was 'smart' at their old college, worked hard, is focused. You aren't going to find a bunch of dumb slackers to pull down your grade. If everyone studies to some extent, the passing mark is raised. And you won't know if you are the fortunate "smart" students who don't need to stress about passing.
 
There are A LOT of lazy people in medical school. At times I've been one of them.

Once you get into med school it really isnt all that hard to get through. They want you to pass. I've known a few people that the Dean liked and even though they failed a class they just let it go (usually they make you retake a test and if you fail too many you have to repeat). You also dont have to be all the smart. The work load is greater but you dont have to be smarter to do it, there is just more minumum work that has to be done. In fact, because so much material is blown through you actually learn a lot of it in less detail than you might have touched on it in undergrad.

I'm an Air Force HPSP student. This year they didnt get as many people going into psych as they wanted, so anyone applying for a residency was basically gauranteed one (although I guess they could have rejected you if you were really, really bad). If you go into Family Medicine (I wouldnt want to) the military is a good route because they don't get paid very well in civilian life but can still easily be sued.

I dont think people realize how hard it can be to pay off school loans. At my school, after all tuition and expenses, it costs about 50 grand a year. If you went straight from undergrad you can easily have 100 grand or more in debt from that. From what I hear you arent going to be able to defer loans anymore during residency, so if you are 300 grand in the hole you are going to have to start paying it off as a resident. So you are making maybe 40 grand a year (which comes out to like 7 dollars an hour), paying rent, paying for your car, and trying to pay off those loans. You are living like $hit. A couple of years later the salary goes up, but now you've gotta worry about malpractice issurance and probably want to settle down. You want to buy a house, maybe start raising some kids or put them through school if you already have them. That debt isnt dented yet and you now have a lot of expenses. This is why paying off those loans can easily take 10 years or more.

If you are interested in research (or want to pretend that you are) MD/PhD is another great way to go. The stipend for the Air Force is better than what it used to be (they gave us a tiny raise but also stopped rapping us so badly when it came to taxing us), but depending on where you live it alone is likely not going to be quite enough to live on. You still might want to take out a little bit of Stafford Loan money, but you will not need anywhere near as much.

I've said this in other threads and I will say it here. Give serious thought as to whether or not being a doctor is what you actually want. It isnt until your 3rd year of medical school that you do anything that remotely resembles what you will be doing for the rest of your life (and yes, 3rd year is a lot of work and stress). Before that you are a college student, and then a glorified college student that sees an occassional fake patient, or maybe a real patient every so often. When you finally get to the point were you realize what you have gotten into, you may hate it but are too far in debt to go back.

I at times have wondered if I should have gone the psychology route, but I am currently happy with my choice. I couldnt imagine doing anything else in medicine other than psychiatry though. For me it would be awful.
 
preFP said:
That's what I don't get. For most people here, life is black and white. Everything falls into either "medicine" or "everything else", and most posters think that anything in the "everything else" category is a waste of time.

I don't want to shoot for an average-to-low pass simply so I can have some free time. I would like that free time to do other, equally-worthy activities. Triathalon? That would be great.

True, I'll admit that I won't be trying my best at medicine.
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I think the question is: how willing are you to re-evaluate your plan as you go along? The clear thing that I glean from this thread is that people experience med school and residency differently, and not everyone holed up in the library is gunning for AOA - some of them just want to pass.

So sure, try working a bit your first year or two, but are you going to stay wedded to this plan if it puts you on a 5 year track because you start failing a course or two here and there? That would be as ridiculous and black and white as you accuse everyone else of being.

Also, if you end up in FP, there is tons of loan relief. NHSC, obviously, and also many schools have primary care loan forgiveness programs for their grads (and some hospitals for their residents). I don't know the whole list, but Pritzker and WashU have programs like this, iirc. Do some research - there are better ways to reduce your debt load than being constantly busy as a med student. You say you want work/life balance but working PT during med school sounds like a great way to destroy that balance to me.

I think you will find there are more people out there like you, or somewhat like you, then I think. Of the med students I know well, most of them work out a lot, have other hobbies etc, and they see these things as PART of what helps them do well, not a distraction.
 
Perrotfish said:
Um, I think you have a real problem with your impression of FP residencies. They're not easier, they're not fewer hours. They are shorter in terms of the number of years you work, but during the time that you're a resident you're going to be working quite hard.
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This is what I was thinking too. If you choose the right med school and are smart/efficient/not worried about getting honors, it sounds like you can have a good outside life, especially during the first two years (based on med students I've talked to). But in residency things aren't so flexible. Internship will still hit about 80 hrs/wk, and the second year of residency can be a lot too. Remember you're not doing all FP clinic- you'll be rotating through surgery, OB/GYN, ER, Internal medicine, and so forth for most of the first year and maybe second too. FP clinic is like one half day a week the first year, and around 3-4 half days a week second or third year depending on the program. Personally, I don't see why a family doc can't have more outpatient and less inpatient training than the way it is now, but that's another story.

You also don't have much control over your hours during 3rd and 4th year of med school, regardless of how efficient or smart or how much of a slacker you are. 50 hrs/wk on "easy" rotations, and around 80 hrs/wk on "hard" ones is what I've heard from most med students. These aren't optional studying hours- these are hours you *have* to be in the hospital. Most still study for shelf exams outside of that.

Besides clinical rotations and residency though, it sounds like getting loan forgiveness and then limiting your hours once practicing is reasonable. The FPs I've talked to say it isn't so easy to work part-time for a lot of reasons I won't go into. I know some who have been successful though, and I'm hoping to shadow one soon.
 
wait.

what if while you're doing your clinical rotations

you realize you absolutely love derm

what then?

where ya gonna take your barely passing grades?
 
OP, I think you are underestimating the difficulty of getting through med school and residency with your "laid back" attitude.
I also think you will have to study more than you think you'll have to study during med school...the problem as someone else has mentioned on here is that it isn't very easy to guess how much needs to be done "just to pass" and the bar is set high in med school. It is a whole different ball of wax than undergrad, whether you think so or not, and whether you want it to be or not.

If you attend one of the pass/fail med schools it is likely to be more laid back and that may make you happier. Still you should not expect a cake walk.

Psych residency tends to be pretty laid back, though you will have to do a few medicine months in your intern year where you take call. Psych takes some call too, but you only have to deal with the psych issues and not the medical ones, so aside from restraining/stopping any suicidal patients there is not really life threatening stuff to deal with. Fp is easier than some other residencies but I wouldn't call it easy. If you want to do one of these specialties, then I would choose the cheapest med school you can get into (unless you totally hate it and like a more expensive school a LOT better). I think when you get done there are a lot of career options in fp. You can do outpatient-only if you want to dodge ever having to do any call.

I don't think your plan to work part time throughout med school is very realistic, but I guess if your job has completely and totally flexible hours, there might be times that you can swing a part time job if you pick only certain med schools. I honestly don't know even one person in my entire med school class who had any type of paying job during med school,and I really don't think that one could have passed while trying to do that. I will say that my school was pretty gunnerish, though...in terms of the profs and the students both.
 
ejay286 said:
preFP-The much needed voice of reason of SDN.
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I agreed with this SO MUCH. Your post, OP, is completely self-realized and well thought out. I predict you will definitely get in to medical school.

And the super smash bros references were awesome.

Great thread, would read again.
 
medhearter said:
where ya gonna take your barely passing grades?
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To FP or Psych... Besides, most people "IN LOVE" with derm are in love with the lifestyle and the compensation. Psych and FP have decent lifestyles, minus the compensation (which he already says he's ok with).
 
EpiPEN said:
Thought this was in interesting quote to share in this thread:

"...You want to be a rebel? Stop being cool. Wear a pocket protector like he does and get a haircut. Like the Asian kids who don’t leave the library for 20 hours stretches, they’re the ones who don’t care what you think."
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House quote: PUKE.
 
MadEvans said:
I agreed with this SO MUCH. Your post, OP, is completely self-realized and well thought out. I predict you will definitely get in to medical school.

And the super smash bros references were awesome.

Great thread, would read again.
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OP is an awfully bad choice for a hero. And he is off to a great start by insulting his DO colleages.
 
preFP said:
Trying not to sound like a dick, perhaps the fact that I'm balanced and mature enough to realize that there's more to life than a prestigious neurosurgery career and making tons of money? Frankly, after reading most of the posts made by premeds on this site, there's some scary, angry, narrow-minded, unrealistic and inexperienced weirdos who I'd never want to have looking after me. I'm just easy-going, happy, and want a reasonable career at a reasonable cost. I think most people want a normal, educated, and down-to-earth family practitioner, rather than some kid who has never actually experienced what it's like to be out in the real world. So many docs have their heads in the clouds. While this works well for ortho, neuro, derm etc., it doesn't work for FP - an unapproachable doc is absolutely useless.
🙂
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You do sound like a dick, broseph. Seriously, I know just as many FP guys who are *******s as I know surgery guys who are *******s. People who become neurosurgeons, orthos, plastics, etc, are by no means "immature". They want different things out of their lives than you do, I'm guessing. I personally could care less if you want to slack. Infact, it seems you didn't even have a question in this thread. You just stated something in the hopes that other slacker pre-meds would admire your e-penis over this magical idea ,which I bet, no person has thought of in the history of medical education.

Congrats on your amazing feat of intelligence. I'm sure you realized that a large portion of D.O.'s go into family practice, by the way, and that you will be no more qualified than they are. I think it's fair to say that makes you an idiot.
 
To premeds (and some med students): Insulting DOs is not a great way to start your medical career. Some will be your teachers (even at MD schools---shocker!), many will be your colleagues. Medicine has enough stress without creating enemies!
 
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for the record i got bored of reading this thread by around post #60 but....

preFP said:
If there's one thing med students and pre-meds are great at, it's overinflating how "difficult" their work is, and how many hours they spend a week studying - it's like some kind of crazy badge of honor. Instead of boasting about the length of their you-know-whats or how much they can bench press, they boast about how many hours they study.
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:bow:

NAILED IT

to prove your point check out this thread: http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=617050 ....take note of my post 😉


...to those on SDN who insist on suggesting the military scholarship ....it shows spectacular naivete! a financial aid officer from a "top" private school was telling us that a girl signed up for it before first year of med school and then freaked out a couple years later when she realized what she had gotten herself into. the military is no joke....there is a reason they give you all that money...it sounds like people on this site are expecting to outsmart them somehow and make off like bandits.....that just won't happen! I'm sure the four years you'd spend in the military would make med school or a normal residency look like a walk in the park....especially since we are involved in two wars.

my suggestion for OP in terms of debt is consider taking a year or two off before med school to save up some money and then you can probably pull off 10 hrs/wk of work during the first two years of med school....that combined with going to your state school would probably land you with only subsidized loan debt and at worse not very much unsubsidized debt that you'd be taking out in third/fourth year and would not have accrued much interest

oh and get the hell away from SDN and don't look back.....i plan on starting to wean myself from it in the summer....though i must find out what happens to ONOY before i leave the site
 
tiedyeddog said:
You do sound like a dick, broseph. Seriously, I know just as many FP guys who are *******s as I know surgery guys who are *******s. People who become neurosurgeons, orthos, plastics, etc, are by no means "immature". They want different things out of their lives than you do, I'm guessing. I personally could care less if you want to slack. Infact, it seems you didn't even have a question in this thread. You just stated something in the hopes that other slacker pre-meds would admire your e-penis over this magical idea ,which I bet, no person has thought of in the history of medical education.

Congrats on your amazing feat of intelligence. I'm sure you realized that a large portion of D.O.'s go into family practice, by the way, and that you will be no more qualified than they are. I think it's fair to say that makes you an idiot.
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Goddammit, people just won't stop with the bro-slang. Makes me want to slap someone just like that twit on I Love You, Man.

I think the point of the quoted post, my tie-dyed canine, was that his priorities simply lie in having a relatively secure job without having to completely and utterly bust his ass to have a ridiculously well-paying position and then somehow feel like he's missing out on some of the rest of that thing we call life.

PreFP, feel free to correct me. If I'm more or less on target, well, that would be because I'm with you as far as that goes.

(Why, oh why, did this thread have to get resurrected?)
 
Slacker with a 3.8 gpa, and a 32 mcat...hmmm...doesn't sound like you were lounging around watching tv all day. As cool as it looks to be a "slacker" with these stats, the truth is....you probably worked pretty damn hard.
 
exi said:
Goddammit, people just won't stop with the bro-slang. Makes me want to slap someone just like that twit on I Love You, Man.

I think the point of the quoted post, my tie-dyed canine, was that his priorities simply lie in having a relatively secure job without having to completely and utterly bust his ass to have a ridiculously well-paying position and then somehow feel like he's missing out on some of the rest of that thing we call life.

PreFP, feel free to correct me. If I'm more or less on target, well, that would be because I'm with you as far as that goes.

(Why, oh why, did this thread have to get resurrected?)
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I understand the basic idea; he/she wants time to have hobbies, raise a family, chill out, etc. I have no problem with that idea. I also have no problem with doing the least amount of work possible in order to graduate medical school. I have plenty of friends, who are more intelligent that I am, who suscribe to the same idea. No big deal, I still respect them. I could care less how you live your life.

The problem I have is saying that all surgeons are *******s and their patients hate them yet need them. Seriously? Also, there is no need to bash people going to D.O. schools. This makes you no better than any of the neurotic pre-meds you have so much distaste for.
 
tiedyeddog said:
Also, there is no need to bash people going to D.O. schools. This makes you no better than any of the neurotic pre-meds you have so much distaste for.
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Well, not me -- I'm not bashing 'em. But yeah, I don't much agree with that, either.
 
londongal said:
Slacker with a 3.8 gpa, and a 32 mcat...hmmm...doesn't sound like you were lounging around watching tv all day. As cool as it looks to be a "slacker" with these stats, the truth is....you probably worked pretty damn hard.
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I understand what the OP is saying. For the first few years of UG I was a huge slacker but I always pulled good grades. I even procrastinated for the MCAT, which is why I had to prep in 3 weeks. I think that a key component of slacking is procrastination, which isn't necessarily bad if you can get away with it; after all, it takes intense pressure to make a diamond, right?
 
preFP said:
*DING DING!* We've got an osteopat ... er, I mean, we've got an idiot!
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What does this even mean? There was nothing related to osteopathy in the post whatsoever.
 
I really don't think the OP means slacker in the sense of not doing homework/essays till the last minute. Slacker =/= living your life. If anything, slacker means putting things off until the last minute and then maybe not getting a satisfactory amount of work done, or at least enough to pass.

The OP is probably better suited saying he/she wants to plan how much work to do and then get it done in a planned timeframe. The key is to not do more work than necessary. Not the same thing as slacking.
 
tiedyeddog said:
You also get intense pressure from constipation. Which ever analogy works better for you. 🙄
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yeah but that's backwards though

what you're saying is that I should become constipated first to build pressure if I really want to do well...
 
preFP said:
Here's my plan. I have close to a 3.8 from college, and an MCAT of 32. ECs are good (documented meaningful volunteer work, shadowing etc.)

Trouble is, I don't really want to graduate from med school with lots of debt, and I don't really want to graduate and then end up working 100 hours a week in some fancy schmantzy residency.

I want to graduate with as little debt as possible, and I want to go into something like psych or FP. I have no desire whatsoever to go into anything like surgery or some other competitive residency.

So here's my plan. Get into med school (yeah, I know, I'm not guaranteed a place, but let's pretend that this hurdle is already jumped, okay?) Then do about enough work as necessary to pass. That is, learn the material thoroughly and put in the effort, but not to the extent that I'm competing with the gunners and the pre-orthopedics people.

I also anticipate working part time through med school (except the third year, where it will be almost impossible). I have a nice job right now that will allow me to work as little or as much as I need.

Then after med school, I'll hopefully walk into a FP or psych residency, and I'll supplement that income with more PT work if need be. Then I'm done.

Thoughts? (And please, in advance, there's no need to give me a lecture about how I should not count my chickens before they've hatched, nor that I should step aside and let someone more worthy take my place in med school.)
Click to expand...

Thoughts? You will flunk out after 2 months.

There were two kinds of people in my class: those elite few who didn't study much and still were acing all exams, and everybody else, who studied nonstop and fell into bell curve.
 
Nilf said:
Thoughts? You will flunk out after 2 months.

There were two kinds of people in my class: those elite few who didn't study much and still were acing all exams, and everybody else, who studied nonstop and fell into bell curve.
Click to expand...

Any one who in med school "who didn't study much" sure as heck doesn't ace any exams. It doesn't matter how elite they are, unless they have a copy of the test before the test itself, they aren't going to ace anything.
 
gasdf1234567 said:
What a dumb comment. No one is going to die because he did not push himself more than he needed to in medical school. If I get into med school I plan on studying the least that is possible to get good marks. Same thing I did in undergrad. Of course its ok to get by with the bare minimum.
Click to expand...

Exactly, that's why they made it the minimum.
 
this might sound harsh...but it's the gung-ho military part of me coming out...but i swear i didn't swear throughout this...it's merely my way of encouragement...
hmmm...so you're a slacker...nothing wrong with that...but i would hope that you would change your ways...not for your sake but for future patients of yours...
as a possible patient of some other person, I hope that they didn't slack through undergrad/med school/residency/etc...why? because i want them to be self-driven enough to be constantly striving to deliver the best care for their patients...this means reading the newest materials, being aware of new protocol/tx, having the respect of the surrounding medical community so they'll listen to you when you have an issue with a pt, and the list goes on...
an issue with medicine today is that many slackers exist...i'm not one to say don't go into medicine, but i am saying, before you put on a white coat force yourself to ditch your current attitude...
 
they pay for your med school and give you a stipend...
you owe them 4 yrs...
during this time you must serve a GMO tour...after ,which if you apply to a residency and accept, your time in resident training does not count and you owe them year-for-year of your resident training time...

the end... but on the bright side as an intern you get paid well, have decent enough training (esp. if you are interested in FP, IM, Ortho), and the pool for people trying to get military residencies is easier to sort through than in the civi sector (most of the time that is) and you can also get picked for an out of service residency as well...
 
Perrotfish said:
Honestly if you had an interest in psyche, don't want do break 50 hours per week working, and hate debt, it seems like a psychology PhD might be your best bet...

Finally working part time in medical school sounds like a good plan for giving yourself some kind of breakdown. You're looking at 60 hours/week just to pass (varies with the person, I know, but let's assume you're not in the top 10% of your class). If you're working enough to make any sort of practical difference in you standard of living you're already aproaching the number of hours you've said you absolutely don't want to work...
Click to expand...

Sorry, you are wrong on both points. I have a very good friend in a psychology PhD program who works far, far more hours than I do as a third year. He is also a father of three and is intentionally taking an extra year to finish because he doesn't want to work as hard as the other whipper snappers who attend his program.
Also I know personally a handful of medical students who work part time jobs (and one who does so in third year) with no measurable detrimental effect to their grades or their career plans. If you are mature (and it sounds like the OP is), then balancing medical school and a non-demanding part time job is not difficult.

I know anecdotal evidence isn't proof, but you didn't offer -any- evidence for your opinion, so there you go.
 
Perrotfish said:
Honestly if you had an interest in psyche, don't want do break 50 hours per week working, and hate debt, it seems like a psychology PhD might be your best bet...

Finally working part time in medical school sounds like a good plan for giving yourself some kind of breakdown. You're looking at 60 hours/week just to pass (varies with the person, I know, but let's assume you're not in the top 10% of your class). If you're working enough to make any sort of practical difference in you standard of living you're already aproaching the number of hours you've said you absolutely don't want to work...
Click to expand...

Sorry, you are wrong on both points. I have a very good friend in a psychology PhD program who works far, far more hours than I do as a third year. He is also a father of three and is intentionally taking an extra year to finish because he doesn't want to work as hard as the other whipper snappers who attend his program.
Also I know personally a handful of medical students who work part time jobs (and one who does so in third year) with no measurable detrimental effect to their grades or their career plans. If you are mature (and it sounds like the OP is), then balancing medical school and a non-demanding part time job is not difficult.

I know anecdotal evidence isn't proof, but you didn't offer -any- evidence for your opinion, so there you go.
 
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