Smart enough to be a cardiologist?

[danishdoctor22]

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I am a danish medical student currently 1/4 into the danish MD degree. It should be noted that the danish MD program is quite different from the US by beginning straight after highschool, and it contains a preclinical undergraduate part ( 3 years) and a clinical graduate part ( 3 years).

so far i have received 2 As in cell biology and biophysics ( excitable cells) and in genetics and unfrotunately only a B in gross anatomy, which i thought was very, very hard. ( Also B in ehalth psychology, but not the most improtant of course). I guess this is okay, but it is early in the program and those marks are nothing special.

Entry to medical school is very competetive and requires a highschool GPA of what is equavalent to 3,75. I received a GPA of 4+ in high school ( there are bonuses for starting university quick which allows you to multiply your gpa with some quotient, which is how a gpa higher than the highest mark is achievable) but as we know, this does not at all correlate to any kind of intelligence, since high school is so, so easy. I basically played away my HS with world of warcraft and graduated with a satisfactory result anyway, so this is irrelevant.

I have browsed the forums and it seems that many of you have vastly superior iqs to 99,9% of the populaiton, with most people stating 140+ as it was nothing, with a quite many of you boasting 160, which to me is godlike. I am very, very good at math, my HS math teacher stating i was the best pupil he had seen for 20 years as a teacher at a matehmatical/physical high school, but my iq is only around 130, so i really cannot be that intelligent.

I fear that i will not be intelligent enough to make it in a very competetive field such as cardiology? I hope, should be that i am intelligent enough, to do research in cardiology attmepting to model electric wave propagation and fluid dynamics in heart tissue using mathematical and physical modeling, as my great passion is matehamtics and physics besides medicine, which is why i plan to spend my summer breaks doing mathematics and physics courses, starting with traveling to US for calculus 1+2 at harvard summer school this summer.

I guess what i am trying to figure out is if i should adjust my plans and aim lower, perhaps for less competitive specialties or jobs if my plans are too unrealistic? My peers at medical school see me as very smart, but i dont understand, because i really dont think i am that smart: not everytihng in medical school comes easy to me, and i have abselutely zero academics in my family, so my genetical makeup cannot be anything special : more than half the students in my class has doctors for parents, they are practically born to be good enough. I need to start taking steps and to plan in case my current goals are very unrealistic, given i do not posses an enourmous intellect or anything else out of the ordinary. I have no one to turn to or ask for guidance or mentorship, so please, if you are a trained cardiologist, or any other doctor for that matter, did you have the same doubts about your intellectual power and potential, or perhaps came from the same background as me yet managed to make it in a world occupied by geniusses? I am of course willing to work very hard for my goals, but what use is it to run against a very capable sprinter, if youre missing one of your legs? 🙂

thank you for spending time reading this sort of miserable and self-loathing thread, haha.

 

[MaxPlancker]

No no you will be fine as long as you put in the effort. Medicine is more about hard work than innate intelligence. Not even the smartest person in the world can be a successful doctor without the effort. Ya don't know what ya don't know. After a few years of experience, the work of many doctors become almost monkey work (perhaps not politically correct to say this).

 

[eteshoe]

Dude, not sure if this was the best forum to put this thread on but moving onwards. I just wanted to say that becoming a physician doesn't require that one be some savant-level genius (even cardiologists). You need slightly above average intelligence, a good memory, and a strong work ethic. That is all - becoming a physician isn't rocket science, theoretical physics or math.

 

[rilte4]

I am a danish medical student currently 1/4 into the danish MD degree. It should be noted that the danish MD program is quite different from the US by beginning straight after highschool, and it contains a preclinical undergraduate part ( 3 years) and a clinical graduate part ( 3 years).

so far i have received 2 As in cell biology and biophysics ( excitable cells) and in genetics and unfrotunately only a B in gross anatomy, which i thought was very, very hard. ( Also B in ehalth psychology, but not the most improtant of course). I guess this is okay, but it is early in the program and those marks are nothing special.

Entry to medical school is very competetive and requires a highschool GPA of what is equavalent to 3,75. I received a GPA of 4+ in high school ( there are bonuses for starting university quick which allows you to multiply your gpa with some quotient, which is how a gpa higher than the highest mark is achievable) but as we know, this does not at all correlate to any kind of intelligence, since high school is so, so easy. I basically played away my HS with world of warcraft and graduated with a satisfactory result anyway, so this is irrelevant.

I have browsed the forums and it seems that many of you have vastly superior iqs to 99,9% of the populaiton, with most people stating 140+ as it was nothing, with a quite many of you boasting 160, which to me is godlike. I am very, very good at math, my HS math teacher stating i was the best pupil he had seen for 20 years as a teacher at a matehmatical/physical high school, but my iq is only around 130, so i really cannot be that intelligent.

I fear that i will not be intelligent enough to make it in a very competetive field such as cardiology? I hope, should be that i am intelligent enough, to do research in cardiology attmepting to model electric wave propagation and fluid dynamics in heart tissue using mathematical and physical modeling, as my great passion is matehamtics and physics besides medicine, which is why i plan to spend my summer breaks doing mathematics and physics courses, starting with traveling to US for calculus 1+2 at harvard summer school this summer.

I guess what i am trying to figure out is if i should adjust my plans and aim lower, perhaps for less competitive specialties or jobs if my plans are too unrealistic? My peers at medical school see me as very smart, but i dont understand, because i really dont think i am that smart: not everytihng in medical school comes easy to me, and i have abselutely zero academics in my family, so my genetical makeup cannot be anything special : more than half the students in my class has doctors for parents, they are practically born to be good enough. I need to start taking steps and to plan in case my current goals are very unrealistic, given i do not posses an enourmous intellect or anything else out of the ordinary. I have no one to turn to or ask for guidance or mentorship, so please, if you are a trained cardiologist, or any other doctor for that matter, did you have the same doubts about your intellectual power and potential, or perhaps came from the same background as me yet managed to make it in a world occupied by geniusses? I am of course willing to work very hard for my goals, but what use is it to run against a very capable sprinter, if youre missing one of your legs? 🙂

thank you for spending time reading this sort of miserable and self-loathing thread, haha.

Discipline > Motivation
Hard work > Intelligence

 

[Lost in Translation]

Echoing. A head surgeon at the hospital I volunteered at told me that to be a doctor, you just need to be smart enough. The rest is hard work. We all go into this knowing very little about the field, so your intelligence means nothing if you're learning from scratch.

 

[memory tcells]

Joined today, first message.
And this:

I have browsed the forums and it seems that many of you have vastly superior iqs to 99,9% of the populaiton, with most people stating 140+ as it was nothing, with a quite many of you boasting 160, which to me is godlike.

Troll alert.

 

[danishdoctor22]

Joined today, first message.
And this:


Troll alert.

I am no troll. I joined today and asked this question because i am, in some way, looking for a kind of mentorship or opinions/experiences from people who "got out on the other side". I live far from school and do not interact very much with fellow students, and having 0 academics and knowing 0 doctors it feels very intimidating to move around in such a competetive and highly intellectual environment that medical school is. All i see are brilliant professors doing genius research and seem like they never had to work to understand or learn anything lol. I have no scale of reference as to how a certain medical student doing so and so good will turn out on the otherside "succes-wise", if i make myself understandable. I apologise if i seem inaccurate in my description, but english is not my first language.

It is good too hear that a certain threshold of intelligence is all that is required and rest can be made up for by hard work: question is though, how high is that threshold?

 

[eteshoe]

I am no troll. I joined today and asked this question because i am, in some way, looking for a kind of mentorship or opinions/experiences from people who "got out on the other side". I live far from school and do not interact very much with fellow students, and having 0 academics and knowing 0 doctors it feels very intimidating to move around in such a competetive and highly intellectual environment that medical school is. All i see are brilliant professors doing genius research and seem like they never had to work to understand or learn anything lol. I have no scale of reference as to how a certain medical student doing so and so good will turn out on the otherside "succes-wise", if i make myself understandable. I apologise if i seem inaccurate in my description, but english is not my first language.

It is good too hear that a certain threshold of intelligence is all that is required and rest can be made up for by hard work: question is though, how high is that threshold?

Stop focusing on the 'threshold' so much. Even if someone could give you some metric (they can't) by which one had to be at to be successful, how could you rise to that level? You're intelligent enough to have gotten into med school so you might as well focus on picking up good studying habits and succeeding in school. Take the journey one step at a time.

 

[candbgirl]

Do people really talk about their IQ on here? I've missed that entirely. Being trained as a cardiologist in the USA is most likely vastly different than in Denmark. So I'm not sure most of us can really help you!


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[ojy77511]

Neural plasticity. Make those connections with hard work?


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