the official "i hate my medical school" thread...

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FNU LNU said:
I mostly love my school, but I find the enforced ultra-liberal bias kind of grating some times (I am a moderate who usually votes Dem). It's like you can believe whatever you want, but you better not open your mouth about patient personal responsibility or doctors or drug companies deserving to be paid for their services. The phrase, "most close-mindedly open-minded place in the world," comes to mind a lot.
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What year are you? We must go to the same school 😉
 
FNU LNU said:
I mostly love my school, but I find the enforced ultra-liberal bias kind of grating some times (I am a moderate who usually votes Dem). It's like you can believe whatever you want, but you better not open your mouth about patient personal responsibility or doctors or drug companies deserving to be paid for their services. The phrase, "most close-mindedly open-minded place in the world," comes to mind a lot.
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My school isn't like that, but I used to work in San Fran. I love the city, the people are great for the most part, but a lot of times their amazing amount of "tolerance" ended if you didn't agree with them. They have crazy gay pride type parades and festivals, but were all up in arms when a youth Christian organization had a festival at the Giant's baseball stadium. Fortunately for me, I enjoy irony.
 
McMD said:
I didn't even notice your screen name until after I posted, but assuming SoFla means "South Florida"...sorry to offend your home/hometown...it's just very different from North Florida.
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:laugh: Haha no worries...Yeah, I'm from South Florida and your post really resonated with me. I just got into UF and I honestly can't wait to get away from the obnoxious snowbird transplants from up north, the constant dreadful feeling that I could be hit with a stray bullet at any instant and the urban sprawl devoid of any real culture that is the corridor from West Palm Beach to Miami. I was really gung-ho about UM for the longest time but I just need to try something new. In addition, the cost of living is bordering on pornographic down here. My sister just got into FSU and some other music conservatories up north for undergrad and my parents are desperately planning their escape from the violent crime, $4/gallon gas, rising property taxes, insurance rates, constant threat of hurricanes and traffic that resembles old people porking-slow and sloppy...Don't get me wrong, it's my 'home' and I'll always love it, but everytime I go back down there it feels like the only reason people are there is b/c they can't get out, to make money or to die.
 
i61164 said:
This thread should be "the official what I hate about med school thread."

What I hate is that I work my ass off and still perform way below the average in my class. When I see a class average of 91% I just get really demotivated. I spend hours on end painfully hunched over my laptop trying to memorize all this crap and the affirmation I get is more like a kick in the nuts. I have never felt so inadequate in my life.

It will get better right? No. Third year OBGYN rotation will probably be even more demoralizing. Even now I am preparing myself to assume the fetal position and cry myself to sleep.

I shouldn't feel this way. I am passing my classes. I wish they wouldn't tell us the mean and SD for the tests. Ignorance is bliss.

If only I could just fast forward and be a 4th year right now.
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AMEN to this. It's as though you can read my mind. (Apparently my mind is a lot less mysterious than I though.) Thank you for saying this though. I am glad I am not the only one. I do sort of feel also as though I will wake up one day and be 40. Med school feels like a little isolated island where the rest of the world is out having a great time and you are alone with some lymph nodes/adrenal glands/the world's entire supply of flashcards as your only friends. At least when we are getting worked to death at the hospital in year three we can get worked to death together. But I have to go now I think I hear the lymph nodes calling....
 
SoFlaKnight said:
:laugh: Haha no worries...Yeah, I'm from South Florida and your post really resonated with me. I just got into UF and I honestly can't wait to get away from the obnoxious snowbird transplants from up north, the constant dreadful feeling that I could be hit with a stray bullet at any instant and the urban sprawl devoid of any real culture that is the corridor from West Palm Beach to Miami. I was really gung-ho about UM for the longest time but I just need to try something new. In addition, the cost of living is bordering on pornographic down here. My sister just got into FSU and some other music conservatories up north for undergrad and my parents are desperately planning their escape from the violent crime, $4/gallon gas, rising property taxes, insurance rates, constant threat of hurricanes and traffic that resembles old people porking-slow and sloppy...Don't get me wrong, it's my 'home' and I'll always love it, but everytime I go back down there it feels like the only reason people are there is b/c they can't get out, to make money or to die.
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I went to FSU for undergrad (LOVED IT!!)...there were alot of people from South Florida there who would always talk about how GREAT South FLorida was....HA!! Wish I hadn't believed them!! :laugh: Yeah, it will be a freak paintball accident if you see some stray "bullets" go by you in Gainesville or Tallahassee. Good luck! :luck:
 
I'm sitting in a PBL lecture right now. Boring to the extreme. This dude is getting way into the weeds and I've been looking up guns and cars for the last hour.

My medical school is pretty good, but I wish we were pass/fail like some of your schools. It really blows to study very hard for an exam only to get a B.

I also think medical schools should teach for these board exams. Let's face it, all of our learning happens after we graduate anyway. What matters is doing well on standardized tests. It makes the school look good and it makes the students look good.

I also feel that in studying for boards, you end up learning a lot of good science anyway.

While I'm complaining, I wish my profs would stick to the book and quit sending us these 100Mb power points. If you learn by the book, you are learning science to the national standard.
 
This has been such a waste of time. Lecture only prevents me from studying (i.e., learning). Huge waste of student time and j.o. professors. Such a wasteful introduction to medicine, can only imagine how our lives, time, and skills will be wasted in the future. How does one become a bench-warmer? Life would be easier to have the goal of sitting on a** and doing nothing.
 
GRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!

I am really frustrated at my school right now. I don't think I would have come here had I known what the curriculum was about. 7 hrs of Lecture a day (just until Spring Break, then we start systems curric), Weekly quizzes that combined can count up to 40% of your grade in some classes. boring PBL and Small group that I get nothing out of. Stupid Online quizzes...we are so overtested. Sometimes I feel like I'm doing work just to do work. Stupid Paternalistic School (OK, I'm done)
 
I definitely don't like my medical school. Out of the three interviews I received this was the only school that didn't wait-list me. So I got stuck.

I don't like this med. school because there is no clinical experience in the first year. We have several pointless classes (course work that is overemphasized relative to its appearance on the boards).

Our facilities are lousy and we have several pointless labs, which equates to too much class time.

If there is a way to get out lemme know. I am desperate to transfer.
 
100% agree with the fact that early clinical experience is next to worthless. I hate giving tours and having all the pre-meds act like they are ENTITLED to getting into the hospital as fast as they can, and then grimace when I say thye won't get there until January (the horrors!). Should you learn how to do a physical and take a history the first two years? Absolutely. Interview some benign patients? I guess so. But beyond that the yield drops way off. We all know shadowing is worthless, and any "cool" procedures you get to do that I hear so many first year preen about are just a way to stroke your ego since most of that stuff you do over and over third year anyway. Putting staples in some drunk's head in the ER may seem awesome in your first year, but by graduation have you gained anything from doing that? No, you have probably just wasted time you could have been learning about basic science--ie something that you are supposed to learn the first two years and something you will never have time to study again.
 
The Buff said:
100% agree with the fact that early clinical experience is next to worthless. I hate giving tours and having all the pre-meds act like they are ENTITLED to getting into the hospital as fast as they can, and then grimace when I say thye won't get there until January (the horrors!). Should you learn how to do a physical and take a history the first two years? Absolutely. Interview some benign patients? I guess so. But beyond that the yield drops way off. We all know shadowing is worthless, and any "cool" procedures you get to do that I hear so many first year preen about are just a way to stroke your ego since most of that stuff you do over and over third year anyway. Putting staples in some drunk's head in the ER may seem awesome in your first year, but by graduation have you gained anything from doing that? No, you have probably just wasted time you could have been learning about basic science--ie something that you are supposed to learn the first two years and something you will never have time to study again.
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I agree 100%. Are we going to be worse doctors if we don't spend much time in the first two years getting clinical experience? Probably not because doctors traditionally didn't get it and yet still managed to perform physicals, etc.. IMO, spending significant time in clinical activities cuts into time I could use to do things I really need to do. I have plenty of time next year to get down the pelvic exam.
 
I absolutely agree that clinical experience in the first two years is not valuable for teaching you medicine, but I did find that it was valuable for keeping me motivated. I spent a half day every other week with a preceptor in private practice who is very knowledgable about basic science, and he showed its application to clinical care. Seeing that he actually used some basic science and having the clinical experience helped me to motivate myself to study better for the traditional first and second year classes. For that reason, I think that there is some value to offering early clinical experiences.
 
I too hate my school. While the list of reasons is enough to fill several volumes on how not to mismanage an academic institution with practically limitless case studies, here is the abbreviated version:

  1. Weak faculty (partly because we pay at the bottom quartile as far as academic salaries are concerned) and location is the other part. The basic sciences faculty are largely clueless as to how to teach even the most basic of concepts, don't post their lectures prior to their incoherent mumblings, don't want to teach (we actually had a professor say "we have better things to do than teach you" to my class during a lecture), and can't even publish in a reputable journal. Clinical faculty aren't that much better, and those that are worth something were disgruntled enough to take better job offers elsewhere.
  2. Constant implementation of utterly useless courses & programs designed to "make us better physicians" but only hurt us by detracting us from our goals and eating up my study time.
  3. Constant "revamping" of the academic schedule with no prior warning (our school actually holds all meetings of significance during the summer when we are least likely to be around). All of our 3rd year rotations are now 8 wks long, including IM which has a notoriously rough shelf exam. Given no time to study and having to be compared to other students who get 12 weeks to prepare for the same exam, its no wonder that our shelf scores are in the gutter. When this little factoid was raised at one of the educational pow-wows by the student body, the faculty just laughed (literally).
  4. Absolutely no leadership at the administrative level. Those that are making all the decisions have long ceased making any rational thoughts concerning our education and let the aforementioned happen day in and day out. They're only goal is to make the institution "look" good and have endless surveys dispatched to the student body which are mandatory to fill out lest you want your grades held. The institution actually held a broad survey across all the study disciplines asking what we thought of our place of study...it was terminated after the feedback was universally negative. In classic bureaucratic fashion, the institution is now willing to reward someone substantially for coming up with a plan to improve the place because the administrators are totally clueless as to how to do it.
 
Alteran said:
I too hate my school. While the list of reasons is enough to fill several volumes on how not to mismanage an academic institution with practically limitless case studies, here is the abbreviated version:

  1. Weak faculty (partly because we pay at the bottom quartile as far as academic salaries are concerned) and location is the other part. The basic sciences faculty are largely clueless as to how to teach even the most basic of concepts, don't post their lectures prior to their incoherent mumblings, don't want to teach (we actually had a professor say "we have better things to do than teach you" to my class during a lecture), and can't even publish in a reputable journal. Clinical faculty aren't that much better, and those that are worth something were disgruntled enough to take better job offers elsewhere.
  2. Constant implementation of utterly useless courses & programs designed to "make us better physicians" but only hurt us by detracting us from our goals and eating up my study time.
  3. Constant "revamping" of the academic schedule with no prior warning (our school actually holds all meetings of significance during the summer when we are least likely to be around). All of our 3rd year rotations are now 8 wks long, including IM which has a notoriously rough shelf exam. Given no time to study and having to be compared to other students who get 12 weeks to prepare for the same exam, its no wonder that our shelf scores are in the gutter. When this little factoid was raised at one of the educational pow-wows by the student body, the faculty just laughed (literally).
  4. Absolutely no leadership at the administrative level. Those that are making all the decisions have long ceased making any rational thoughts concerning our education and let the aforementioned happen day in and day out. They're only goal is to make the institution "look" good and have endless surveys dispatched to the student body which are mandatory to fill out lest you want your grades held. The institution actually held a broad survey across all the study disciplines asking what we thought of our place of study...it was terminated after the feedback was universally negative. In classic bureaucratic fashion, the institution is now willing to reward someone substantially for coming up with a plan to improve the place because the administrators are totally clueless as to how to do it.
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and what school might this be?
 
I'm not sure if anyone will even reply to this, but I need a rant! I can see what people say about why you go in to medicine and how it doesn't live up to it. I'm feed up of the horrible feeling you get each year at the end when exams come. The thing is it's never going to end.

Once you finish med school, probably the easier of exams you then have to go on and do college exams. Will this pressure ever go? What if you want a family. That to me is the most important thing in life. I chose medicine to work with people and make people feel at ease and hopefully make some impact on their life.

How long does it take to get that satisfaction. It seems all house officers are, are glorified pen pushers. With our training programme it seems that the unsociable hours will now be done when you are a registrar and hopefully starting a family.

Why didn't they make it clear when you joined med school the whole package that the life encorperates?

I'm in my fourth year, a year from graduating, I feel no closer to that drive that is going to make me a doctor. Maybe some responsibilty and more one to one patient contact will improve this?
 
I'm not sure why everyone's so reluctant to post their institution's name (I go to MCV/VCU), but I have a few complaints about mine. Nothing major though, as overall I feel that the courses are run pretty well. Some of the things that need some tweaking though are:

1. over-stressing of board material. My school is very heavy on board-preparation (we do, after all, have BRS's Dr. Costanzo on staff here). Sometimes I feel that this over-stressing leads to a deficit in some of the more esoteric or deeper material. While this makes it easier to study for tests as well as the boards, it can make the material seem a little superficial. Someone here mentioned them not having ran into genetic enzyme-deficiencies until they were studying First Aid, well my genetics course stressed all of those big time. I guess I didn't realize how much variety there was between schools.

2. The entirety of our population medicine course. Jesus Christ what a boring ****ing class this was. It was essentially an introduction to epidemiology, but good Christ it sucked. I get that there are concepts we need to understand for the boards, but a four week course devoted to the subject seemed like overkill, especially when we started diving into derivations of statistical concepts like chi-square.

3. The grading system. We are a traditional H/HP/P/LP/F school. I didn't realize until a semester in how much having a P/F system would improve the overall experience. I don't care how well I do compared to everyone else, but having it shoved right in my face is a little annoying, even if I do well. Granted our system is based purely on the percentage you achieve, ie a 92% is H, an 86% is HP, and a 68% is a P. But just having that is annoying, plus they always throw your percentile and the mean up on everything anyway.

4. Our course on early clinical stuff is called Foundations of Clinical Medicine and seems like an annoying zit that won't go away more than anything. While learning how to do an H&P is pretty damn helpful, I don't want to take a test on superfluous medical **** that I don't even learn in lecture and am supposed to pick up on a careful study of Bates. Plus going to a private pre-ceptor's office every other week can at times be painful when you don't know a goddamned thing about a differential diagnosis, even on something simple like a cold. But it has useful parts so I guess I'll just consider it annoying and not hate it full-out like the other stuff I mentioned.

Alright, that's all I can remember for now. Oh and the medical school's computer lab is laughably unprepared to deal with 200 new students every year. We have 50 computers that are supposed to serve the entirety of the M1 and M2 classes. They fill up in two seconds so I'm relegated to the health sciences library a quarter mile away full of dental and pharmacy students. And no one likes dental or pharmacy students.
 
I know most of the posts making this point are older, but I have to say I'm pleasantly surprised by the number of people who agree on the uselessness of clinical experiences during MS1/MS2, especially since the idea that you need extensive clinical experience before medical school is so sacrosanct. I'd much rather spend the 1st week of 3rd year getting a crash course in the physical exam than practice it (or parts of it) on standardized, and later real, patients during the first two years when we don't have the knowledge base to do anything more than blindly go through the motions they've described to us.

I wish I could take back 90% of the time I've spent in these experiences (not to mention our touchy-feely/soft-skills course, which is only seldom a serious discussion of medical ethics and more often an attempt to indoctrinate us with the view that you must be a leftist to be a good doctor). I'd much rather have had more time to dedicate to what the first two years are supposed to be for, namely studying the basic sciences, which, as others have pointed out, we're never going to have the time to do again. Unlike seeing patients, which we're going to do for the rest of our lives.
 
The above is found by me to be most agreeable. The paltriness of learning medical ethics is not a joyous experience and is, as was previously alluded, nearly an abasing experience for those indifferent towards left wing ideals.
 
Sure, I hate my medical school.

1. Location sucks.
2. Dislike clinical in first year. I'm borderline OCD/germaphobe and I try to minimize my contact with patients as much as possible. I have to clean up my stethoscope with alcohol everytime I go home. I even clean up my school binders with alcohol everyday. Naturally, I wash my hands often. Purell is my best friend. I don't even touch door handles. I don't even hug (healthy) people... so heck yea, I'm uncomfortable examining sick people.
Med school makes my phobia gets worse and I've developed new obsession. Now I have to do stuff at least twice, sometimes repeatedly.. like locking my car, pressing buttons, etc.
Sometimes I just want to quit medical school.
3. Food here sucks. Blue-collar town... sigh...
4. Did I mention the location sucks?
 
loganhayes said:
I'm borderline OCD/germaphobe and I try to minimize my contact with patients as much as possible. I have to clean up my stethoscope with alcohol everytime I go home. I even clean up my school binders with alcohol everyday. Naturally, I wash my hands often. Purell is my best friend. I don't even touch door handles. I don't even hug (healthy) people... so heck yea, I'm uncomfortable examining sick people.
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You're either a troll, or someone who has made a very bad career choice.
 
Great thread 👍 I wish u guys wld hav put up the name of your school tho..
 
gemmashef said:
I'm not sure if anyone will even reply to this, but I need a rant! I can see what people say about why you go in to medicine and how it doesn't live up to it. I'm feed up of the horrible feeling you get each year at the end when exams come. The thing is it's never going to end...Why didn't they make it clear when you joined med school the whole package that the life encorperates?
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The real question is why your interviewers didn't tease out your perceptions about med school during the application cycle. I'm not sure who "they" are, those who are supposed to somehow open your eyes to what medicine's about, but no one I've asked has ever described medicine as anything but a hard slog with many concessions along the way.
 
Seriously, who the hell thinks it's going to be a breeze with no concessions? I was always told to basically be prepared to sacrifice my 20s for my 40s.
 
Seriously, I am just starting to get so sick and tired of the way of life. Its not that I ever have doubts about wanting to be a doctor, its just the process that can get so...eh, tiring and irritating. Mainly, I'm talking about tests.
I'm in my second year and still find myself walking out of exams disgruntled about vague, RANDOM questions and not totally prepared. Not that I didn't studied, just taken by the random questions that appear on exams. Its almost like I havent figured out how to study yet - some blocks are better than others. I spend way too much time reading textbooks and sources and I've found that questions seem to mostly come from random points that lecturers arbitrarily emphasized (or didn't emphasize).
Ugh, am i the only one that feels this way?
 
I'm only a first year, but I feel exactly the same way.
 
It sounds kinda cold (and I used to feel a lot more like you did) but you just have to prepare harder until you reach the point where you have a good mastery of the material. If that means going balls-to-the-wall all day studying, then that's what it takes . . . .
 
This may sound lazy but I get past that by going to a school thats H/P/F and Hs in the first 2 years don't matter too much.

So I study major points and use board review books to ensure I emphasize what really matters and I ignore the useless random research that lecturers throw in. The result is comfortably passing and not killing myself with minute details that will never affect my ability to be a doctor.

It doesn't work for everyone, but if you can let go and embrace P/F it will really help your sanity.
 
Heck, I go to a A/AB/B/BC/C/F school, and still ONLY STUDY the highpoints. That's all I have time for. I mean sure, I end up SEEING/READING the little details (which are hardly tested anyways), but I only learn the important big picture stuff. Of course, with pharm and micro, there are details to be learned, but those tend to be necessary evils. I don't think we have had any prof's ask us research related q's.

About study methods, I think I finally understand my own study method (up until now I have felt like I just start studying without a plan, although there was one all along, but after 3 gruiling med school semesters, it's finally clear):

Study in layers. Don't expect to learn everything in your first or second pass of the material. Don't even try to learn everything (in those initial passes). Try to get main ideas and things that need understanding in your first pass or two through the material. Then, try to learn a few details here and there in your remaining time with the material. Here is the catch, you need to balance a way to get through ALL the material (aka all the chapters), and at about the same depth. So, going to quick you don't learn enough, and too slow and you never get through all the sections.

Hope this helps, and congrats on being done with yet another semester! (or 14 hours away from being done in my case).
 
macbook00 said:
Seriously, I am just starting to get so sick and tired of the way of life. Its not that I ever have doubts about wanting to be a doctor, its just the process that can get so...eh, tiring and irritating. Mainly, I'm talking about tests.
I'm in my second year and still find myself walking out of exams disgruntled about vague, RANDOM questions and not totally prepared. Not that I didn't studied, just taken by the random questions that appear on exams. Its almost like I havent figured out how to study yet - some blocks are better than others. I spend way too much time reading textbooks and sources and I've found that questions seem to mostly come from random points that lecturers arbitrarily emphasized (or didn't emphasize).
Ugh, am i the only one that feels this way?
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I totally agree. At least at my school, the professors will spend 15 min. going over a certain topic (which may or may not be important) and ask no questions about it, while another factoid (which may or may not be important) will just be written on a slide and not even mentioned in class and they will ask questions about it and expect us to have it memorized perfectly.

I feel like the expectations for what we need to know are just so poorly laid out, in addition to the professors being poorly organized (typos abound, and are rarely corrected).
 
Just to give both sides. I really like my school. I go to UCONN.

Quick points.

We have a true P/F system with no internal rankings for the first 2 years, and because of that we have a great cooperative student body.

The faculty are generally awesome. There are a few duds but I'm sure its the same at most schools.

I started seeing patients within the first month of school which is great reminder of why I'm studying soo much.

Talking to friends at other schools, I LOVE that we have a system based curriculum. I cannot imagine doing anatomy in the first 2 months of school when I have no idea of the physiology of many of the structures you are identifying.
We have a organ/system based curriculum. Right now we are doing Head and Neck, and learn everything from anatomy, physiology, cell biology, histology, neurology, all at the same time for that body system. It makes it much easier to integrate everything.

I really expected a lot worse going into med school, both school wise and classmate wise. I am very happy that I have been proved wrong thus far.
 
I go to a 6 yr med program that takes students right after high school. My school makes us take 20+ credits a semester year round. Since the first of 6 years you see patients with a physician from a mental health hospital as well as a traditional hospital who teaches you basic presentation, Plan and Assessment, and signs/symptoms of common diseases, and makes you interview patients. It is fairly get because you get exposure is how you develop your own pt/doctor dialogue as well as the fact that most of the doctors you get assigned to genuinely care and even take calls if you are having problems with your course work.

Now I'm a Yr 3 which is equivalent to a normal first year. Perhaps my school is much different but in the beginning of this year you are assigned to a team. I'm on Gold 8, there are 2 yr 3's, 3 yr 4', 4/5 yr 5's and 4 yr 6's. Each team's numbers are a little different. We are assigned an office at the medical school which is attached to the hospital. All of our offices for the team are next to each other and we have our own central room. Our docent doctors office is also here. There are four teams: Gold, Green, Blue, Red and each one has 8 units. All of the offices are interconnected so people are always around to relax with, study with, or get help from. Which they do. It is very supporting and educational. I was assigned a senior partner and for the first two months of clinic I observed her, then I started seeing patients on my own. So every thursday I see 4/5 patients on my own. I then present to my docent doctor who usually throws in some tidbits of knowledge, approves or disapproves my assessment and plan, then goes and sees the patient for a little bit to make sure everything I said was true. I then write up my note and prep for my next patient. All throughout clinic everyone is bouncing around ideas, talking about lab results and their meanings. Only a few times have I gotten a patient who was WAY over my head, but I talked to him, then decided I couldn't handle the case then got my senior partner to see him as I observed. Also, whenever we find some relatively rare signs or diseases, whoever has that patient will take the younger yr students or if someone hasn't seen it and present it with analysis and conclusions. This isn't required but it does assist in the learning process.

To date, I feel competent in my diagnosis and treatment of patients. So, honestly. I cherish my patients because they teach me a lot. Since no matter how you might memorize a treatment plan from the book, you really know it when you are responsible for treatment of a patient.

One thing I hate about my school is the fact that it is hard. We rarely get breaks and when you go to school year round it can break you down a little bit making it appear harder. The course load can seem overwhelming at times and a lot of people will extend a year. The program only accepts about 100 people a year. And about 15-20 people will leave the first two years (GPA can't drop below 3.0), and in Spring semester of 2nd yr MD only students join up. For the most part it is fun, everyone is very supportive, and willing to help you out. My docent frequently goes out together and gets drinks. I recommend this program, but be forewarned, you will have to work your ass off, and realize you will NOT be like other people your age. I'll be a doctor when I'm 24. No way, I go out all the time to the bars and actually have much of a social life.
 
I resent having no life besides this sometimes...especially on those long study days or when I see my friends getting married.
I despise cliques...it is amazing how 20 something year olds can still be as superficial and petty as middle schoolers.
I especially don't like people pretending to be smarter than they are, or lying about how hard they have to work in medical school.
 
macbook00 said:
Seriously, I am just starting to get so sick and tired of the way of life. Its not that I ever have doubts about wanting to be a doctor, its just the process that can get so...eh, tiring and irritating. Mainly, I'm talking about tests.
I'm in my second year and still find myself walking out of exams disgruntled about vague, RANDOM questions and not totally prepared. Not that I didn't studied, just taken by the random questions that appear on exams. Its almost like I havent figured out how to study yet - some blocks are better than others. I spend way too much time reading textbooks and sources and I've found that questions seem to mostly come from random points that lecturers arbitrarily emphasized (or didn't emphasize).
Ugh, am i the only one that feels this way?
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+1

I love how my nearly $30,000 a year tuition doesn't cover a means of simply eliciting WHAT TO STUDY FOR ON THE #@*&%!&* TEST...
 
Instead of all those pointless lectures with famous scientists talking about their oh-so-interesting research on the configuration of Protein 235JK9820, maybe we could have had a few more lessons on pharm, or on the genetic enzyme-deficiency disorders that most of us hadn't heard of until we read First Aid for Step 1.



lmao! You just made my day!!! Too funny!
 
Mateodaspy said:
i don't hate my medical school, but i was wondering if anyone out there hates theirs and, if so, why?
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Intentional or not, that sounds a little egotistical or schadenfreude - given that you are going to one of the most elite med schools.
 
does anyone go to rush want to tell us some bad/good?
 
Thankfully, most of the second page is wailing on Cornell so I have a pretty good idea of the bad now 😀
 
i am extremely depressed about medical school. i go to an international med school, because i realized after having 1 year of undergrad with extremely bad grades (due to depression), i'd be unable to get into an american school. here at this med school we have to have class all day long (from 8-5 with a one hour lunch). there are two types of people in my class...those who are intelligent and screwed up in ugrad but seem to have the capabilities to become a physician and then there are those who screwed up but are idiots. there are more of the latter category. i just started having these feelings and don't want to go on antidepressants again. anyone able to offer some advice? i've always wanted to go into medicine, but feel that this environment is not right for me. i would love to be able to transfer to a stateside med school (my grades here are above average as we grade on a scale from 6-10), but need some help in surviving the semester, which ends in early june. any help would be appreciated.
 
Just wanted to bump because I can TOTALLY relate to this thread!!! I would have never chosen my med school if I had known how much it sucks.

We are less than 2 months from boards and have been given an extra humanities course (1 of the many we have already had) with projects, papers, busy work etc. Wtf? Who is designing these curriculums????? :scared:
 
absolutjag9 said:
i am extremely depressed about medical school. i go to an international med school, because i realized after having 1 year of undergrad with extremely bad grades (due to depression), i'd be unable to get into an american school. here at this med school we have to have class all day long (from 8-5 with a one hour lunch). there are two types of people in my class...those who are intelligent and screwed up in ugrad but seem to have the capabilities to become a physician and then there are those who screwed up but are idiots. there are more of the latter category. i just started having these feelings and don't want to go on antidepressants again. anyone able to offer some advice? i've always wanted to go into medicine, but feel that this environment is not right for me. i would love to be able to transfer to a stateside med school (my grades here are above average as we grade on a scale from 6-10), but need some help in surviving the semester, which ends in early june. any help would be appreciated.
Click to expand...

I start school in July, so it's easy for me to give advice, not being in such a stressful situation myself. It would be hard to be in that situation. However, you are in control. If you are able to distinguish the idiots from the intelligent people, that probably means that you're one of the intelligent ones, haha. And you can be proud of that - like you said, your grades are above average. Based on this, it sounds like you've learned from some of your past mistakes, and are trying hard to not make the same mistakes again - that sounds like an intelligent person in my book.

In fact, that's probably why seeing those idiots is so agonizing for you, because that WAS you, in undergrad. (I made a lotta mistakes too, so I can relate as well.) You know how they're going to feel when they fail, and that is painful. That said, don't worry about everyone else. You can control yourself, not them, and while you'll move away from the clowns after a short amount of time, you'll continue with your life, based on decisions you have made.

Remember why you went into medicine. Nobody goes into medicine to go to medical school - you go into it for the patients or for the sense of achievement or whatever it is - and all of that stuff comes after medical school. Your situation is temporary. It may seem like it will last forever, but it won't. You will complete school, you'll get good grades, and you'll graduate. And you'll be a doctor! That is awesome, and the road to being a doctor should not be easy. The fact that you're having a hard time will make the achievement all the more sweet at the end of the road.
 
CaptainZero said:
This thread is great...
I think i agree with everyone on this board...I don't hate my school, but there's a ton of frustrating things to deal with - but after reading this thread, i realize that these frustrations are surprisingly universal.
So the things I hate about med school (specifically the MS2 year):

1) Famed Professor X gives his lecture on...say "thyroid disorders" - which he talks about for 5 minutes before delving into his "grounding breaking" research involving the thryroid receptor kinase phosphorylase promotor response element 2nd messenger that will aparently cure every disease known to man, for the next 90 minutes.

2)the Pre-clinical years "clinical skills" teaching. Like someone else said, when you're a starry eyed premed trying to pick a school, you want to go to a school that gives "clinical experience" in MS1 & MS2. I was this way. Now that i have it I realize its a waste of time - time that i need to be memorizing professor X's thyroid research for the F'ing exam. You seriously don't know **** as a first or second year med student, and allowing you to play doctor a few times a week only proves this. Great, I can do a complete H&P on a standardized patient or some poor soul that gets corned in the ER to act as my guinnea pig - I definately could've waited until 3rd year to learn that. I give tours at my school and the perspective applicants always ask about how much clinical experience you get in the 1st two years...I grit my teeth and answer.

3) My school barely teaches pharm or micro either...i feel like its going to be a huge hole to fill during my step 1 studying. Despite this, we have dozens of lectures on surgical therapies/techniques, EKG interpretation etc (all of which get forgotten shortly after the exam) and countless other things that aren't tested on the boards.

4) The daily feeling that all the work i do is valueless because i forget most of what i learn w/in a week after any given exam. We have a organ system based curriculum and in any given section, we're given a mountain of info to learn in a rediculously short period of time ...so we study countless hours a day and all night trying to cram it all in. But then we take the exam, may or may not do well, but either way move on and end up forgetting everything. It's very frustrating.

5) I hate this whole self study kick my school is on. What they do is cut out lectures and instead just assign the corresponding chapters in Harrison's for us to read. Harrison's is a bit much as a second year med school text...and if I'm teaching myself, what exactly is my $40K a year in tuition going to??

Wow...that was a bit like a therapy session...
Click to expand...





wow lol i love you man
 
this is my kinda thread

I haven't started med school yet (August isn't too far...), but I'm sure I'll have something to contribute in the future.

Anyone got any good ideas for the summer before med school? What should I do?
 
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