The Unofficial 2014 I Hate Med School Thread

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TheWeeIceMan said:
Yep
http://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/i-love-medical-school.732102/
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Wow. Amazing to see different people's thought processes (note: My understanding is the OP of that thread went to Columbia and then UPMC for Neurosurgery).

Reading, but my favorite so far:
sideways said:
The pattern you'll notice on SDN is as follows:

Most med students telling you how medical school sucks the humanity from you, with a smattering of med students, like the OP, giving their hoorah fist pump about how amazing it is. The pre-meds then jump in and defend the OP, using a lot of 😍 and :soexcited:, because in essence they are just defending their own decision to pursue medicine. The reality is these pre-meds are entirely ignorant to what it feels like to be in medical school, and their decision to join the team of the isolated OPs while ignoring the chorus of other medical students that are generally in hell is nothing more than selective listening and self-justification.

The reality is that medical school IS enjoyable for a select group of people. And these people, almost by definition, have personality disorders. You'll see them when you get to medical school. Excited about things they really should not be excited about . . . preferring to shovel random lists of facts into their heads rather than just enjoying the mental space of relaxation . . . having no sense of intellectual creativity or capacity to discuss something other than biochemical pathways.

If you then ask me, why am I putting myself through this, well, it's because I have an end-goal. Medicine happens to allows me to meet this goal. But make no mistake, if you have even an inkling of normal in you, you'll be a year into med school, read the OP, and start changing your emoticons to :boom: and :barf:.
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Polonium-210 said:
As far as it is up to me, once I start I will never complain about medical school or medical education. I will happily suffer the stress of medical school over what I have had to endure in the past. I hope you have a blessed day and enjoyable day.
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Ignorance is bliss isn't it. Looking at medical school from the outside, it looks great! No jobby, just go to class (maybe) and study the rest of the day, then take a couple of tests. People will respect you because your "smart". Then on clinical years, you go see patients and make a difference...right? Not really. First few years of school you memorize a bunch of crap for exams, under extreme time constraints with a bunch of admins tossing random hoops in front of you that you have to jump through and that really have no benefit to your education, and in many ways just take away from it. Then 3rd and 4th year come along and you realize that whether you scored 100% or 70% on your MS1-MS2 year exams makes no difference on your ability in 3rd and 4th year as most of it is not directly applicable to real medicine; maybe applicable to 1-2% of patients you might see throughout your upperclassman years, but you spend the majority of your time helping patients overcome social issues, which if the majority of them could get their stuff together, wouldn't need a doctor to help them....you become pretty much a glorified babysitter for many patients. When attendings spend the majority of their time with you and enjoy pimping you on ******ed topics that you have no reason to know at your level, yet when you exhibit your ignorance on the Bezold–Jarisch reflex, but give an answer that is semi-correct, you get yelled, called stupid and told you should never have got into medical school to begin with, in front of your residents and other students (who also don't know what it was)...scrub tech students in the OR will jump on the bandwagon and pimp you too. The whole time, you just have to bite your lip and pucker up your butt hole to keep from opening your mouth and tossing your future into the toilet...so much for respect. Furthermore, if you rotate through a place like the VA, you start to see a lot of the inefficiencies of medicine in general..and in a lot of ways, where the future of medicine is heading...your future.

Sure, I love medical school....Now that I am done with it.
 
BurghStudent said:
This whole process is funny, to be honest. When we're premeds, we want free full healthcare for everyone always, and tout primary care as the solution to the world's problems in our essays, and then once med school and residency sets in, we start adopting more conservative ideologies. I guess that's part of growing up.
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CATHY!! Looooots of good memories in South O. Awesome town.
 
"The main reason it attracts medical students is the lifestyle." I guess I misinterpreted what you meant with those quotes. From what I understand you want to practice medicine, work standard business hours, and make a lot of money. Whereas in FM you practice medicine, work standard business hours, and don't make a lot of money. Not trying to attack you, but doesn't that mean you believe money is the most important factor in your imagined future "lifestyle" and your specialty decision (again, im not necessarily saying thats a bad thing)? In my opinion, FM docs have a pretty good lifestyle as far as hours are concerned.
 
Say said:
"The main reason it attracts medical students is the lifestyle." I guess I misinterpreted what you meant with those quotes. From what I understand you want to practice medicine, work standard business hours, and make a lot of money. Whereas in FM you practice medicine, work standard business hours, and don't make a lot of money. Not trying to attack you, but doesn't that mean you believe money is the most important factor in your imagined future "lifestyle" and your specialty decision (again, im not necessarily saying thats a bad thing)? In my opinion, FM docs have a pretty good lifestyle as far as hours are concerned.
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I quoted those quotes from those posters bc I thought they were hilarious, not bc they applied to me. Also your black and white observation that all FM docs aren't making a lot of money is hilarious. PM&R also has a good lifestyle as well, what's your point?
 
ShinyDome19 said:
Ignorance is bliss isn't it. Looking at medical school from the outside, it looks great! No jobby, just go to class (maybe) and study the rest of the day, then take a couple of tests. People will respect you because your "smart". Then on clinical years, you go see patients and make a difference...right? Not really. First few years of school you memorize a bunch of crap for exams, under extreme time constraints with a bunch of admins tossing random hoops in front of you that you have to jump through and that really have no benefit to your education, and in many ways just take away from it. Then 3rd and 4th year come along and you realize that whether you scored 100% or 70% on your MS1-MS2 year exams makes no difference on your ability in 3rd and 4th year as most of it is not directly applicable to real medicine; maybe applicable to 1-2% of patients you might see throughout your upperclassman years, but you spend the majority of your time helping patients overcome social issues, which if the majority of them could get their stuff together, wouldn't need a doctor to help them....you become pretty much a glorified babysitter for many patients. When attendings spend the majority of their time with you and enjoy pimping you on ******ed topics that you have no reason to know at your level, yet when you exhibit your ignorance on the Bezold–Jarisch reflex, but give an answer that is semi-correct, you get yelled, called stupid and told you should never have got into medical school to begin with, in front of your residents and other students (who also don't know what it was)...scrub tech students in the OR will jump on the bandwagon and pimp you too. The whole time, you just have to bite your lip and pucker up your butt hole to keep from opening your mouth and tossing your future into the toilet...so much for respect. Furthermore, if you rotate through a place like the VA, you start to see a lot of the inefficiencies of medicine in general..and in a lot of ways, where the future of medicine is heading...your future.

Sure, I love medical school....Now that I am done with it.
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Oh don't chastize @Polonium-210's rose-colored glasses view of the world just yet. He will see soon enough what were were talking about and when he sees his quote again as an MS-4, he'll realize how right all of us were.
 
Well, I'm not making sweeping statements about ALL FM. That would be silly. Most FM's average annual salary is on the lower end of physicians though. You didn't answer my question, but that's alright. Nice chat.

I look forward to seeing the doom and gloom of medical school come true in a few months. But for now, I'll be very thankful for being accepted and I look forward to the challenge of medicine. I can't wait to work as hard as I can and see what I'm academically capable of. This maybe naive but who cares. I have read the allopathic board for sometime now and I feel like I have a better grip of what's going to happen as my career progresses. If my positivity is toxic/makes you barf then just let me be haha. Don't be the big bad med school grinch to tell us pre-meds that santa isn't real. Ignorance is bliss...
 
Say said:
"The main reason it attracts medical students is the lifestyle." I guess I misinterpreted what you meant with those quotes. From what I understand you want to practice medicine, work standard business hours, and make a lot of money. Whereas in FM you practice medicine, work standard business hours, and don't make a lot of money. Not trying to attack you, but doesn't that mean you believe money is the most important factor in your imagined future "lifestyle" and your specialty decision (again, im not necessarily saying thats a bad thing)? In my opinion, FM docs have a pretty good lifestyle as far as hours are concerned.
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For many people, "what I actually do when I'm at work" matters. Dealing with all the BS involved in FM is enough to make my head spin. For others, I'm sure anything involving the skin turns them off.
 
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Say said:
Well, I'm not making sweeping statements about ALL FM. That would be silly. Most FM's average annual salary is on the lower end of physicians though. You didn't answer my question, but that's alright. Nice chat.

I look forward to seeing the doom and gloom of medical school come true in a few months. But for now, I'll be very thankful for being accepted and I look forward to the challenge of medicine. I can't wait to work as hard as I can and see what I'm academically capable of. This maybe naive but who cares. I have read the allopathic board for sometime now and I feel like I have a better grip of what's going to happen as my career progresses. If my positivity is toxic/makes you barf then just let me be haha. Don't be the big bad med school grinch to tell us pre-meds that santa isn't real. Ignorance is bliss...
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What question are you talking about??!?! You mean this one? ----> "Not trying to attack you, but doesn't that mean you believe money is the most important factor in your imagined future "lifestyle" and your specialty decision (again, im not necessarily saying thats a bad thing)?"

Yeah, not attacking me at all. 🙄

Thought it would go without saying, but I'll answer you directly: NO, money is not the most important factor. You could pay me $500 K to do FM and I would still hate it and that's mainly bc the govt. has turned it into a gatekeeper and overloaded with such ridiculous documentation, meaningful use, check off lists, etc. and other non-clinical ****, that the satisfaction levels has plummeted to one of the lowest in all of medicine.
 
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Ok, so "lifestyle" to you is true practice of medicine without heavy inhibition of the government. Kudos, you are a pretty good guy and I respect that viewpoint. But you can't blame me for not understanding you when you said "lifestyle" because the mantra that I have read on this board is "lifestyle"= hours + $.
 
Say said:
Ok, so "lifestyle" to you is true practice of medicine without heavy inhibition of the government. Kudos, you are a pretty good guy and I respect that viewpoint. But you can't blame me for not understanding you when you said "lifestyle" because the mantra that I have read on this board is "lifestyle"= hours + $.
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Hours and money are extremely important, too.
 
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Say said:
Ok, so "lifestyle" to you is true practice of medicine without heavy inhibition of the government. Kudos, you are a pretty good guy and I respect that viewpoint. But you can't blame me for not understanding you when you said "lifestyle" because the mantra that I have read on this board is "lifestyle"= hours + $.
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No. When the word lifestyle is used on this board, it's usually referring to whether a specialty has "controllable" hours or not. It has nothing to do with money. Perfect example: PM&R.

And no "lifestyle" to me is not true practice of medicine without heavy inhibition of the government. Try reading what I wrote again.
 
Okay, sounds good. What's the lifestyle of PM&R like?
 
DermViser said:
Oh don't chastize @Polonium-210's rose-colored glasses view of the world just yet. He will see soon enough what were were talking about and when he sees his quote again as an MS-4, he'll realize how right all of us were.
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I don't even necessarily care about the pre-med vs med school thing. I was one of those people who genuinely liked most of medical school, and was pretty happy throughout (well, outside of certain aspects of my personal life, but that's a whole other story)

But I also saw the effects of school on some of my classmates - both physically and mentally struggling. So I'm not blind to the stressors and toil it takes on people. And I certainly wouldn't judge or look down on my classmates, or get up on a soap box and preach to them that they should really be grateful for what they have.
 
southernIM said:
I don't even necessarily care about the pre-med vs med school thing. I was one of those people who genuinely liked most of medical school, and was pretty happy throughout (well, outside of certain aspects of my personal life, but that's a whole other story)

But I also saw the effects of school on some of my classmates - both physically and mentally struggling. So I'm not blind to the stressors and toil it takes on people. And I certainly wouldn't judge or look down on my classmates, or get up on a soap box and preach to them that they should really be grateful for what they have.
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Your last point is what I was getting at. @Polonium-210's comment is a slap in the face to all medical students who will struggle or not excel at at one point or another in medical school whether it's grades in preclinicals, Step 1, MS-3 clerkships, etc., all of which he is saying as a Medical Student (accepted) on an Allopathic thread.

To stand on one's soapbox and say, "How blessed you truly have it. Too many people complain about medical school once they are knee deep in the material. This is your dream. You strived assiduously to achieve this position in life and now you detest it? Give thanks for what you have. There are thousands who covet your current position, myself included," when he is a premed who has yet to even set foot in a classroom is the equivalent of spitting in their face.
 
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Say said:
I look forward to seeing the doom and gloom of medical school come true in a few months. But for now, I'll be very thankful for being accepted and I look forward to the challenge of medicine. I can't wait to work as hard as I can and see what I'm academically capable of. This maybe naive but who cares. I have read the allopathic board for sometime now and I feel like I have a better grip of what's going to happen as my career progresses. If my positivity is toxic/makes you barf then just let me be haha. Don't be the big bad med school grinch to tell us pre-meds that santa isn't real. Ignorance is bliss...
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I can't be the only one that sees the hypocrisy.
 
med school is good, I could not find any other type of education more thrilling, it just forces you too look at other aspects of your life that unavoidably aren't going along at 100% perfect.
 
People don't realize that due to med school being a high-stress environment, the opinions that are given about it from current students or even physicians reflecting on a stressful part of their life are going to be significantly strong in either direction. Just got an A on an exam? Med school is the best, so engaging and it's an awesome experience. Didn't do so well for something you worked hard on, or got run around by some BS? Med school is the worst decision of my life. Stuff like that. It's both. People should look at it for what it is . It's a highly competitive graduate school where the subject is the human body and it's maintenance and repair. It's going to be difficult and it's going to be very serious. If you look back on your doctor's life, you probably wouldn't want them to have their education be 4 years of strolling in fields of daisies and playing with puppies. A medical student's happiness is self-determined IMO, of course there are outside factors, but a large amount of things that happen in medical school are highly self-controlled. Not to mention the ability to successfully deal with adverse events outside of one's control would absolutely have a positive effect on their ability to interact with patients as a physician and also balance being a physician and a person outside of medicine.
 
And boom goes the dynamite. Say you've done it. You've taken something so beautiful, and turned it into an opportunity for pre-meds to learn something. That's not what this was meant for at all.
 
I really don't think med school sucks. I think it's an incredible opportunity and I do feel blessed every day to be there. Of course I get very frustrated with some of the bs the school makes us do but having to do stupid work isn't unique to medicine. As someone who worked in the real world for a little before going to med school I can say that at least the bs is worth it in the end as I might learn something in the process as opposed to just doing **** for the sake of my boss feeling good.
 
Things that make med school hard: #1 you have to go into an insane amount of debt to do it - it sucks living on student loans, it sucks watching other people your age with real jobs that make real money; meanwhile you're still in student mode, #2 the light at the end of the tunnel is residency which is probably more arduous and stressful than med school, #3 everyone tells you "it'll all be worth it", but I honestly don't know if it will be and it's a scary but very real prospect that it won't be "worth it".
 
Before I began medical school I had numerous people, both physicians and others in the business world, look at me like I'm an idiot or straight up ask "Are you crazy?" when I said I was going to medical school. That in reference to their perceived downward spiral of the medical field and the large amount of debt. This is what I want to do so I didn't really give a **** what they said, but I'm curious to know if any of you either heard that from others, especially doctors, or have said that yourselves?
 
BravesNeuro said:
Before I began medical school I had numerous people, both physicians and others in the business world, look at me like I'm an idiot or straight up ask "Are you crazy?" when I said I was going to medical school. That in reference to their perceived downward spiral of the medical field and the large amount of debt. This is what I want to do so I didn't really give a **** what they said, but I'm curious to know if any of you either heard that from others, especially doctors, or have said that yourselves?
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Um, do you not see the irony in this statement?
 
I don't see the irony. I'm not stating that we are all crazy like I was told, and the I didn't give a **** part was in reference to my decision to come to med school after hearing that from multiple people. I don't believe that contradicts my question concerning whether anyone else has heard or said that. I actually see where people are coming from when they say that about someone's choice to enter the medical profession, but whether or not the field is on a downward spiral or not/the debt is not concerning enough to me to drive me away. It's what I want to do. Let me know where the irony is so I can clarify.

Ah if you are referring to physicians saying that as being ironic, then yes it is, however it's happened several times to me and I've heard a few of my friends get the same response.
 
M1, M2 are nothing more than an extension of undergrad. Just busier. I would go as far as to say Preclinical years were LESS stressful than undergrad.

M3 is a poopshow that you can't prepare for. The biggest lie anyone will tell you in med school is that M3 is great. I was told this by my seniors and I believed them. And then was sorely disappointed. Are there hospitals that have an overall culture of being very nurturing towards med students? Sure. But good luck finding them.

It's like a movie all the critics say is amazing and the audience is just like, 'wtf is all the hype about'.

Before all you nay-sayers pounce on me, let me make a note: you do learn a lot in M3. More than you learn in the 2 years before it. If nothing but by osmosis, you begin to understand a clinician's role in patient care. But Learning a lot does NOT equal enjoying your life and being happy. For what it's worth, I worked my absolute tail of compared to my peers (which is saying a ton), I studied hard because I wanted to crush my shelf exams, I showed up early and stayed late without complaining overtly. I always was willing to help and always had a smile on my face. None of it mattered. Mind you, I did well in 3rd year but I STILL hated it.

Nobody but my closest friends and family knew how much I despised 3rd year. And it has everything to do with the immense power interns and residents have over 3rd years.

M3 is actually an amazing study of human nature. A study of how power can bring out the true nature in people. Are there genuinely good residents? Of course. But there's an equal number that relish the power and exert it.

This is what happens when people only 2-3 years older than us are given control over our days, lives, grades. This is what happens when immature jerks are told to grade our maturity and professionalism. When selfish narcissists are told to grade our empathy with patients. And when clueless fools are told to grade our knowledge base. THIS is what's wrong with 3rd year. Your control is completely and utterly stripped from you.

M1, M2s, welcome to the minefield that is 3rd year. My advice: take care of yourself, don't give two craps what people say to you or about you, don't care TOO much about your grades because it truly is out of your control, and most importantly, do what you need to to survive.


Oh and relish your family med and psych rotations.

Sorry for the rant. I needed to get that out of me.
 
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