So when does the suck start?

[bcat85]

At some point... it was about 3 weeks in for me... having the preserved poop of some old guy in your hands quickly stops being cool. After anatomy though... everything is pretty sweet.

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[45408]

First year sucks... No no no second year sucks... Definitely not it's third year... etc.

Don't believe any of it. It is what you make of it. If you can deal with lack of sleep then all of med school is easy. Working isn't easy but the rest of the world has to do it. At least in medical school you have very little real responsibility.

Even if I never slept, med school would still be hard. I dunno where you're getting that idea.

And lots of work is pretty easy. I've done plenty of easy work. And if you're married with children in med school, you'll still get to enjoy real responsibility.

 

[DocPsychosis]

If you can deal with lack of sleep then all of med school is easy.

Yeah well I can't, so there. If God had wanted me to sleep for 4 hours a night he wouldn't have made it dark for 12.

 

[TupacalipseT96]

I think it becomes easier as you age/lose the youthful, energy-wasting enthusiasm for life outside of work.

Or so it goes.

Until then, I will continue to sacrifice time spent with significant others, family, friends, leisure, food, exercise, hygiene, self-respect, etc, when necessary to secure those glorious 8hrs of sleep/night. It can be done (except maybe during 3rd year/residency/first-years-in-practice).

 

[Black Surgeon]

When you realize you're no longer one of the smartest in your class. Undergrad days were the good ones.

 

[MilkmanAl]

The suck starts immediately. I was not a fan of the 1st year classes, for the most part.

 

[Random Anesthesiologist]

Usually about week 2. That's pretty much when they're done reviewing everything you've ever learned and ready to water you down with a fire hose of new information.

Relax though. No one will learn it all, and you'll forget most of the minutia you learned after you are tested on it. If you can retain concepts, you're in good shape.

 

[sprinkibrio]

The first day of biochem... you're like, did I really spend all this time and effort just to go back to college again (without all the fun)? Or you could hate anatomy if you hate new information and change. People tend to fall into one camp or the other.

 

[Samus Aran]

After a few weeks, esp. right before exams.

so true. also, realizing that there is a very real possibility that you will study harder and longer than you ever have in your life and may still fail.

one of the big suck moments for me was knowing that pretty much everyone in my class was used to being at the top 10% of the class, then realizing that half of them were now going to have to get used to the idea of being below average.

 

[Random Anesthesiologist]

so true. also, realizing that there is a very real possibility that you will study harder and longer than you ever have in your life and may still fail.

one of the big suck moments for me was knowing that pretty much everyone in my class was used to being at the top 10% of the class, then realizing that half of them were now going to have to get used to the idea of being below average.

I was never happier to be so average in my life!

 

[mq123]

I love sleep and I really need to figure out a way to not feel so on edge with less than 6

Is it possible to actually get used to only having 4 hours of sleep? Please tell me it is.

I don't know about sustaining 4hrs/night all week, but I slept 4-5 hours on weeknights. If I got any less then that, I'd add in an evening nap of 1.5-2 hours. Weekends were for catch-up. Worked fine for me all year Not great or good, just fine

 

[a winner is you]

The suck started when second year ended and step 1 studying started. Everything before that wasn't too bad.

 

[Perrotfish]

so true. also, realizing that there is a very real possibility that you will study harder and longer than you ever have in your life and may still fail.

Really? For me one of the wierdest things about medical school is that everyone studies so hard even though it seems pretty much impossible to fail. In my Ugrad engineering classes I was deperately trying to beat the average because I knew that anyone below the average could, depending on the prof's mood, fail the class. In my first Calc class the average was a 1.5 and more than half the class needed to take it twice. In my later engineering classes I was lucky if the average was above a 2.5. Now in med school the average is always around 90% and passing is either 70% or even 65%. And the system is pass/fail, so they don't even record your class rank. It's sorta hard to stay motivated, especially for subjects that you don't think are particularly relevant to either boards or your future career.

 

[Samus Aran]

Really? For me one of the wierdest things about medical school is that it seems pretty much impossible to fail. In my Ugrad engineering classes I was deperately trying to beat the average because I knew that anyone below the average could, depending on the prof's mood, fail the class. In my first Calc class the average was a 1.5 and more than half the class needed to take it twice. Now in med school the average is always around 90% and passing is either 70% or even 65%. And the system is pass/fail, so they don't even record your class rank. It's sorta hard to stay motivated, especially for subjects that you don't think are particularly relevant to either boards or your future career.

i was talking about failing any one particular exam, not failing an entire class or med school.

 

[Perrotfish]

i was talking about failing any one particular exam, not failing an entire class or med school.

Even still. In the majority of my classes we had no one fail, including Anatomy, Biochem, and Histology. In the few that had failures, the school failed either one or two students. In a class of 180. You have to be in the bottom 0.5% of whatever class your taking to fail. That's pretty good odds and I don't think that anyone managed to fail while studying 'harder and longer than they ever had in their lives'.

 

[Samus Aran]

i'm at a pass/fail school and my class averages anywhere from 82-87% on most exams. failing is scoring below 75%. i don't know what percentage of students fail any given exam but it does happen. this was especially true in med pharm. as i stated in another thread, it varies by curriculum and person to person. no med school wants their students to fail, they've invested too much time and money into training/teaching us.

 

[Random Anesthesiologist]

i'm at a pass/fail school and my class averages anywhere from 82-87% on most exams. failing is scoring below 75%. i don't know what percentage of students fail any given exam but it does happen. this was especially true in med pharm. as i stated in another thread, it varies by curriculum and person to person. no med school wants their students to fail, they've invested too much time and money into training/teaching us.

Wow, fail is < 75% at your school? Yikes.

 

[mq123]

i'm at a pass/fail school and my class averages anywhere from 82-87% on most exams. failing is scoring below 75%. i don't know what percentage of students fail any given exam but it does happen. this was especially true in med pharm. as i stated in another thread, it varies by curriculum and person to person. no med school wants their students to fail, they've invested too much time and money into training/teaching us.

We're pass/fail too, but failing is somewhere aroung 1.5-2 standard deviations below the median for that test. Great system

 

[rahulb]

i just started 3rd year and i haven't lost any sleep yet.

 

[psipsina]

Wow, fail is < 75% at your school? Yikes.

My school is similar. Its up to the course director but fail is usually <70-75%.

 

[TopSecret]

The suck started when second year ended and step 1 studying started. Everything before that wasn't too bad.

I went skydiving after Step 1. Those were good times.

The suck started during internship when I had my Hep B booster shots and got shingles. Fun times. I was also mugged twice during residency with one strong arm robbery resulting in a black eye, assaulted by a Latino gang while on the way to a grocery store, had my car broken into, and got into a car accident post-call with one of the vice-presidents of the hospital. A fellow resident was also killed in a car accident because the driver was DUI. Residency was full of drama.

 

[KnuxNole]

After you dim the lights and the mood is right, you lean in an-

Oh, you mean THAT kind...

Probably when Gross Anatomy starts. Some people fall in love with that class. I personally found it to be a major PITA the first month. But you'll find your way amongst things, and you'll find it's really not that much different than undergrad. Except that classes are 10x more voluminous, and blindly memorizing will get you nowhere.

 

[Neuronix]

I went skydiving after Step 1. Those were good times.

Same here!

I look back fondly on most of my first two years of med school, and I was happy for most of that time until clinics. Even my unhappiness in clinics had a lot more to do with personal situations and not med school itself. The first year of med school was probably the second best year of my life. I even took extra classes for grad school on top of med school.

I think SDNers love to complain, then again my life has been extremely difficult. My point is that it's all about perspective. An exam has nothing on being lonely, sick, abused, hungry, cold, living in a crack house, etc... You're in a very privledged position. Med school isn't usually that much work. Enjoy!

PS: I almost always sleep 8-9 hours/night.

 

[Nanon]

Same here!

I look back fondly on most of my first two years of med school, and I was happy for most of that time until clinics. Even my unhappiness in clinics had a lot more to do with personal situations and not med school itself. The first year of med school was probably the second best year of my life. I even took extra classes for grad school on top of med school.

I think SDNers love to complain, then again my life has been extremely difficult. My point is that it's all about perspective. An exam has nothing on being lonely, sick, abused, hungry, cold, living in a crack house, etc... You're in a very privledged position. Med school isn't usually that much work. Enjoy!

PS: I almost always sleep 8-9 hours/night.

Word. Haven't started yet (that happens in a few weeks), but if it's harder than what I've already been through, I'm gonna quit. And if I get less sleep than I currently do with a newborn, that won't be compatible with life.

And Neuronix, I miss you! Hope all is well on your end...

 

[spicedmanna]

Well, I guess I've done my share of complaining, although I do check myself and try to keep it real. Everyone is going to have a different experience with respect to medical school, but just like the rest of life, it's going to have it's ups and downs. Depending on your predilection, you may choose to focus on one more than the other.

In retrospect, the past two years were bearable (most things have a way of seeming that way in retrospective analysis). It was certainly very difficult and it challenged me to the core. I spent more time studying than I have ever (or probably ever will again) in my entire life. First year was more traumatic than second year, because I didn't quite yet know how to study and had to figure it out. There was a constant flood of information and it seemed like the pressure wouldn't let up. It always seemed as if I were an all-nighter away from failing, no matter how much I tried to keep up with things. That's part of what made it stressful. The other part that made it more stressful for me was that often as soon as I adapted, things would change a little. It was challenging to develop a level of comfort with my environment.

Eventually, I discovered how to study (a method that worked for me, anyway), how to game the system, and how to become comfortable with, ground myself in, the unknown. Things became a bit easier, especially during second year. I started to loosen up and found out just how much extracurricular activities I could do without compromising on my academics. Did I lose some sleep? Yeah, but not as much as I did during the first year. It was a balance, sometimes more precarious than others. Then boards happened and that was a bona fide stressful time. For whatever reason, I didn't feel as prepared as I wanted to be, coming into the board preparation time and the academic situation wasn't at all ideal, so I had to teach myself a lot during a very short period of time under the pressure of scheduled classes (because of how school was arranged for my class). It was crazy-making. It was a new record for me in terms of continuous, dedicated studying time. I would never want to repeat the pain of that period. It was the most painful academic period of my life.

Now here I am about to start year number three. Let's see how that goes.

Medical school is one crazy ride. Fasten your seat belts.

 

[Neuronix]

And Neuronix, I miss you! Hope all is well on your end...

I'm so happy to see you got in to a great school with scholarship and all. You deserve it. In my opinion, you're exactly the kind of mature, experienced, and insightful person we need more of in the medical field. Good luck with your studies and your family!

As for me, never been better

 

[smq123]

Sow how long into med school does the excitement and newness wear out and the overwhelming kick in the crotch that is medical school kick in? A day, week, month?

I look back fondly on most of my first two years of med school, and I was happy for most of that time until clinics. Even my unhappiness in clinics had a lot more to do with personal situations and not med school itself. The first year of med school was probably the second best year of my life. I even took extra classes for grad school on top of med school.

OP - you're going to get wildly varying answers, all of which will probably frighten you to some degree. My experience was the COMPLETE opposite of Neuronix's.

About a month into MS1, I was extremely miserable. Overwhelmed, uncertain, and unsure why I went into medical school. About halfway into MS1, if a week went by where I did not contemplate quitting, that was a gooood week. If there was a month where I didn't contemplate suicide, that was a pretty darn good month.

So, let's just suffice it to say that MS1 and MS2 suckkkkkkked.

MS3, however, was one of the best years of my life. It was like a revelation - THIS is why I went into medical school. I was suddenly useful, and actually saw where the stuff you learn in MS1 and MS2 became applicable. I got to see patients with amazing stories, and it's always a cool priviledge when they trust YOU, the ignorant MS3 who feels like an idiot all the time, enough to tell you some of their most private information. It's a tremendous feeling to realize that you're learning how to do things that will eventually save a life, start a new life, or help people ease out of this life gracefully. While 4th year definitely had its rough and stressful spots, MS3 and MS4 were infinitely better than MS1 and MS2, for me.

During MS3 and 4, you get to do stuff that VERY few people in the population get to do: I put scopes into people's stomachs. I cut into the skin of their neck to insert a trach. (If you're a really helpful student on some surgery services, they let you make the incision. ) I used a tiny retractor to hold the carotid artery out of the way as the ENT resident dissected out lymph nodes. I delivered babies. I inserted small cameras into bladders and took pictures of bladder tumors. I got to feel what tumors feel like right after they've been cut out of the body. I got to examine little babies literally hours after they were born. Yeah, it's probably a little geeky, but these things are cool to me.

(You also walk away with a ton of cool stories about the weird/funny/bizarre things that patients do. )

Yeah, I was horribly sleep deprived during most of MS3, but it was worth it to me. I can manage just fine on 5 hours a night anyway.

OP - there are good and bad things to be said about every year. Don't be scared - if you keep the big picture of why you're doing this in mind, you'll survive it all. And you might even walk away with cool stories that you'll still want to share 10 years from now.

 

[Neuronix]

Things might be very school dependent. Smq attended a school that has a reputation for being very hard during the pre-clinical cirriculum. Several students a year are failed from first year.

My school fails almost nobody. There's a ton of hand holding, few people fail exams, and even if you do fail it's remediated unless you fail a lot of things or multiple times. I never failed anything, but I passed a number of exams with the minimum passing score. I'm either an expert at getting the minimum score, or there was some rounding going on. Note before I get criticized that my step I score is exactly one standard deviation above the national mean for that administration. Step I is IMO about studying for that, not the random trivia they throw at you in first and second year.

Note by contrast that I really can't function well on 5 hours of sleep a night. MS3 at my school offers far less student autonomy and opportunities for hands-on procedures. The competition for grades is very intense. So I did not like MS3 as much.

 

[AK_MD2BE]

"The suck" is highly variable. In the first 2 years, if you are at a Pass/Fail school you should be able to enjoy life (relatively speaking). If you are at a Honors/Near Honors/Pass school (or letter grades, etc.) then there is as much "suck" as you want there to be. By that I mean that if you are gunning for Honors, then school will be mentally and emotionally draining (I know, I was there).
"The suck" is highly variable in 3rd year as well. Unfortunately, a significant part of your learning experience and enjoyment of a particular rotation is dependent on the setting (e.g. Geriatric Psych where you can be done at 1 p.m. versus Consult & Liason Psychiatry where you are at the hospital until 6 p.m. every day). Additionally, you rotation is INCREDIBLY influenced by the attitude, disposition and demands of the residents and attendings on that service.
In the end...my best advice is to just tell yourself..."Man up (or whatever you ladies say to yourselves) and make the best of this situation. There is nothing I can do about being assigned to this team and it will be over in x weeks."

 

[smq123]

Things might be very school dependent. Smq attended a school that has a reputation for being very hard during the pre-clinical cirriculum. Several students a year are failed from first year.

It wasn't that so much, as I just hated what we were learning. I hated listening to lecture after lecture after lecture. MS1 and MS2 are very passive, with little-to-no emphasis on DOING. Even the fairly decent amount of clinical exposure I got during MS1 and MS2 still didn't make me feel much better.

It all got very monotonous after a while - you know what each day is going to bring, and it's pretty much the same as it was yesterday. Compare that to MS3, where each day is totally different. Patients do their best to keep things from getting dull.

And the touchy-feely classes in MS1 were....just nauseating. There's no other way for me to describe them.

Paradoxically, they felt incredibly disrespectful. These lectures, in many ways, seemed designed to push some sort of agenda, instead of being designed to actually teach us something. How else can I explain why they spent so much time teaching us how to overcome cultural difficulties with Hmong patients, and spent almost ZERO time teaching us how to deal with narcotic seeking patients! Because, Lord knows, drug seekers are SOOO rare, while the Hmong are becoming more numerous than Mexicans! [/sarcasm ] And yes, you have to listen to these classes because they actually TEST you on this crap. Not just at my school; everywhere.

I'm glad that that's all over and done with. Those touchy-feely courses made me not want to be a doctor anymore. Fortunately, I learned soon enough that they don't accurately reflect the reality of the doctor-patient relationship.

 

[Jolie South]

It wasn't that so much, as I just hated what we were learning. I hated listening to lecture after lecture after lecture. MS1 and MS2 are very passive, with little-to-no emphasis on DOING. Even the fairly decent amount of clinical exposure I got during MS1 and MS2 still didn't make me feel much better.

It all got very monotonous after a while - you know what each day is going to bring, and it's pretty much the same as it was yesterday. Compare that to MS3, where each day is totally different. Patients do their best to keep things from getting dull.

And the touchy-feely classes in MS1 were....just nauseating. There's no other way for me to describe them.

Paradoxically, they felt incredibly disrespectful. These lectures, in many ways, seemed designed to push some sort of agenda, instead of being designed to actually teach us something. How else can I explain why they spent so much time teaching us how to overcome cultural difficulties with Hmong patients, and spent almost ZERO time teaching us how to deal with narcotic seeking patients! Because, Lord knows, drug seekers are SOOO rare, while the Hmong are becoming more numerous than Mexicans! [/sarcasm ] And yes, you have to listen to these classes because they actually TEST you on this crap. Not just at my school; everywhere.

I'm glad that that's all over and done with. Those touchy-feely courses made me not want to be a doctor anymore. Fortunately, I learned soon enough that they don't accurately reflect the reality of the doctor-patient relationship.

Some of the information from the touchy feely classes was necessary, but at my school I felt like really common-sensical topics were repeated over and over while harder topics were not even addressed. These included things like what you mentioned above: drug seeking behavior, patients that lie, etc. Now, I realize not all patients do these things, but I think it's much easier to figure out how to just be a normal person and be considerate on your own than learn how to deal with the other side of the coin.

 

[stringjim]

I felt the excitement leave quickly (less than 1 month) in the preclinical years but it seems better in 3rd year. Starting to see how the things we learned earlier comes together. Hope it keeps getting better.

 

[VoiceofReason]

And the touchy-feely classes in MS1 were....just nauseating. There's no other way for me to describe them.

Paradoxically, they felt incredibly disrespectful. These lectures, in many ways, seemed designed to push some sort of agenda, instead of being designed to actually teach us something. How else can I explain why they spent so much time teaching us how to overcome cultural difficulties with Hmong patients, and spent almost ZERO time teaching us how to deal with narcotic seeking patients! Because, Lord knows, drug seekers are SOOO rare, while the Hmong are becoming more numerous than Mexicans! [/sarcasm ] And yes, you have to listen to these classes because they actually TEST you on this crap. Not just at my school; everywhere.

I'm glad that that's all over and done with. Those touchy-feely courses made me not want to be a doctor anymore. Fortunately, I learned soon enough that they don't accurately reflect the reality of the doctor-patient relationship.

Amen. Jesus Christ. Those topics really do make you feel insulted as a student.

 

[engineeredout]

Week 2 Day 1:

Hour long embryo/histo "Quiz".
2X Gross Anatomy Lectures
3X Histology Lectures.
1X Embryology lecture.

Teh suck has commenced.

 

[coldweatherblue]

Because, Lord knows, drug seekers are SOOO rare, while the Hmong are becoming more numerous than Mexicans! [/sarcasm ] And yes, you have to listen to these classes because they actually TEST you on this crap. Not just at my school; everywhere.

goodness don't tell me they made you read "the spirit catches you falling down" etc too??!!! I thought we were the only ones...

 

[Deferoxamine]

While I haven't been the biggest fan of the B.S. some classmates throw around, especially the way they rationalize performance, exams, etc. relative to other students, I think it's intensified bigtime now that third year has started.

Once Step 1 scores were released, it seems like a lot of people's inner douchebag was let out of his/her shell. Some of the crap I have to listen to when oot and aboot on weekends is absolutely ridiculous. People who think a 230 puts them in the 95th percentile. People who didn't hit their goal score and have to compensate by talking smack about the students in our class who scored 250+ and claim that these top students will still be "horrible clinicians", and that they "have a life" and therefore are better people. People who say "so-and-so did good, but I would have expected her to do better". People who have to give elaborate stories of "well I stopped studying the week before the exam" blah blah blah. Is there really nothing else to talk about on a Saturday night? Give me a break.

I just hold my beer tight, keep sipping, and don't tell anyone about how I did. It's no one's business. However, I really do believe that people who go out of their way to trash talk or gloat are in for a swift kick in the arse from karma one of these days.