Third year is wonderful

[Go Ducks]

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I've seen several threads lately about how much third year sucks. I gotta say, I love it! (Only one month in, but still...). Just wanted to throw some encouragement to all of you who are starting second year, which was extremely stressful for me. It is worth it.

So far I've been pulling crazy hours, but every day has been full of seeing cool stuff or having touching conversations with families or getting to actually know my classmates or feeling like I am learning something important. Plus my residents seem to like me so I'm starting to feel smart again 🙂 Wonderful feeling.

So hang in there guys. It gets way better!

 

[dr zaius]

Replies from those on surgery clerkship telling you to jump off a bridge in 3...2...

 

[bad virus]

I hope you drop your saftey glasses onto the sterile field

or

 

[DrSnips]

Replies from those on surgery clerkship telling you to jump off a bridge in 3...2...

Or those taking a shelf. So glad to be done with those.

 

[secants]

My biggest concern is the shelf and how I'm supposed to find time to study adequately for it. Other than that, third year is a good change from the last year.

 

[armybound]

So you haven't been graded yet?

 

[Frank Nutter]

Go %#!^ yourself

 

[greatnt249]

I hope you drop your saftey glasses onto the sterile field

Actually had that happen to me during OB/GYN. Luckily it was only a vaginal hysterectomy, and I was able to catch them before they contaminated much more than the suction I was holding. Still, not an experience I would like to repeat.

 

[CaptainSSO]

Blah

 

[Asp]

Dont brlieve this propaganda it is fuded By the med school deabs of ametica secret society.

 

[Cinclus]

I hope you drop your saftey glasses onto the sterile field

or

That's a horrible, horrible foot pain.

 

[FunnyCurrent]

I've seen several threads lately about how much third year sucks. I gotta say, I love it! (Only one month in, but still...). Just wanted to throw some encouragement to all of you who are starting second year, which was extremely stressful for me. It is worth it.

So far I've been pulling crazy hours, but every day has been full of seeing cool stuff or having touching conversations with families or getting to actually know my classmates or feeling like I am learning something important. Plus my residents seem to like me so I'm starting to feel smart again 🙂 Wonderful feeling.

So hang in there guys. It gets way better!

^ probably on psych rotation?

 

[mmmcdowe]

I enjoyed clinical year as well, but I'm enjoying post- clinical year even more.

 

[RestoreSight]

The worse thing about third year was bubble-headed optimists who were way too enthusiastic about scutwork and made everyone else look bad in comparison..

 

[VisionaryTics]

At this point on my psych rotation, I'm starting to wish for scutwork. I'm basically a glorified pre-med shadowing for 11 hours per day.

 

[bad virus]

At this point on my psych rotation, I'm starting to wish for scutwork. I'm basically a glorified pre-med shadowing for 11 hours per day.

man, you have a crappy psych rotation. I saw the attending literally twice my whole rotation. The rest of the time, I split the 20 or so patients in our ward with my intern (only other person I saw during the whole rotation) and we would both have our notes done by 11am. We would then go and chow down at the Cafeteria and then hang out with the patients or study or whatever till 5 pm when we could go home.

Other than some major quirks, many of the patients are pretty normal people (except for trying to kill themselves every five minutes). On one week, I had a bunch of cool patients, and we literally played basketball for 6 hours a day. It was awesome. Actually all this typing is starting to make me worry that I fit in with the psych patients . . .

Lol, in the end I got honors and I have no clue how the attending even evaluated me.

 

[da8s0859q]

I've seen several threads lately about how much third year sucks. I gotta say, I love it! (Only one month in, but still...). Just wanted to throw some encouragement to all of you who are starting second year, which was extremely stressful for me. It is worth it.

So far I've been pulling crazy hours, but every day has been full of seeing cool stuff or having touching conversations with families or getting to actually know my classmates or feeling like I am learning something important. Plus my residents seem to like me so I'm starting to feel smart again 🙂 Wonderful feeling.

So hang in there guys. It gets way better!

What rotation are you on?

 

[beyondbethany]

See how you feel in April or May when you are writing the 1000th SOAP note of the year that is essentially redundant and unnecessary. Yes, on the whole, the clinical years are far better than the preclinical years, but they are taxing and frustrating. Long hours, subjective grading, occasional malignant personalities, it will start to wear on you eventually. But I still love medicine and like medical school for the most part.

 

[MilkmanAl]

I enjoyed third year, for the most part. Inpatient peds was really annoying, and OB was sheer hell. Other than those two, though, I had anywhere from an okay to awesome time.

 

[link2swim06]

I think it all depends on your personality, I thought 2nd year was the most boring, tedious year of my life.

3rd year is more like a job. If you are good at dealing with all types of people (i.e. those giving you praise to telling you are an idiot) then it will not be anything new.

If you like doing "stuff" more than reading/studying you will like 3rd year a million times more.

Some people enjoy reading/studying all day and have never had a real job...I feel like those are the people who don't like 3rd year.

 

[dr zaius]

At this point on my psych rotation, I'm starting to wish for scutwork. I'm basically a glorified pre-med shadowing for 11 hours per day.

Currently on my final week in psych. So far I've interviewed countless patients, pushed the button on ECT, bagged the patient during ECT (thanks, anesthesia), and obtained tons of collateral. I think I would express some SI if I had to shadow psych residents and attendings all day. I feel for you, bro 🙁.

 

[hrandani]

3rd year is more like a job. If you are good at dealing with all types of people (i.e. those giving you praise to telling you are an idiot) then it will not be anything new.

This is true with the stipulation that some job environments just suck, horribly, and it has nothing to do with the employee.

Some medical schools are better than others at making sure rotations are a positive experience. Furthermore, some places just don't care about trying to give students something to do, even scut.

Personally I love scut. It's real work. ******ed hospital drama and rounding (teaching experience, my ass) drive me up the wall.

 

[swamprat]

Yeah I'm on surgery right now.. its okay. I have learned that I don't like it as much as I thought and probably will not go into surgery unless I really hate everything else (I was one of those 50/50 ppl on surgery, neither gungho nor def not type of ppl altho my pre-clinical thoughts always jumbled around from def wanna do it to not without any real practical experience other than 1 shadowing experience). Being in the OR is ok, but its not enough medicine/disease management/pharm as I hoped. I also don't care or really want to learn the procedures (although I do enjoy suturing and doing minor things when they let me). So for me so far third year is ok in a sense that I learned about the surgery field and that its not for me but kinda crappy because of mainly the long hours and the lack of interest in most surgical issues. I also feel like although being in the OR is cool, I think as a student we'd learn more taking consults and doing floor work but that could be just because thus far most of my attendings don't go into huge discussions with me during the case.

 

[bad virus]

Yeah I'm on surgery right now.. its okay. I have learned that I don't like it as much as I thought and probably will not go into surgery unless I really hate everything else (I was one of those 50/50 ppl on surgery, neither gungho nor def not type of ppl altho my pre-clinical thoughts always jumbled around from def wanna do it to not without any real practical experience other than 1 shadowing experience). Being in the OR is ok, but its not enough medicine/disease management/pharm as I hoped. I also don't care or really want to learn the procedures (although I do enjoy suturing and doing minor things when they let me). So for me so far third year is ok in a sense that I learned about the surgery field and that its not for me but kinda crappy because of mainly the long hours and the lack of interest in most surgical issues. I also feel like although being in the OR is cool, I think as a student we'd learn more taking consults and doing floor work but that could be just because thus far most of my attendings don't go into huge discussions with me during the case.

I think the biggest reason you are not liking as much as you probably would otherwise is because this is your first rotation and you probably still have no idea what's going on in the hospital. There is something to be said about having medicine as your first rotation, as it sets you up real well for the rest of the year. I can't remember where I read it first, but the quote went something like this: Third year is like being in a foreign country, you don't speak the language and the locals are not that friendly. Also, there is another possibility for your current out look. Maybe you don't think the OR sucks the dinner out of Courtney Love's rear because this is your first rotation and you are probably still running on some epinephrine. Personally, when I found out what a buck-walter was, I all but refused to go into the OR . . . J/K. . . but holding a retractor for 4 hours blows no matter who you are.

Oh and in regards to the person who said that 1st and 2nd year is favored by those who never had a real job. I have had every kind of job (from crappy to exciting) you can imagine since I was 10 years old. I am not exaggerating here at all. I whole heartedly preferred the first two years. I just really start to bug out when people exert control over my schedule. That's partially why I am going into a shift work based field