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I'm in the middle of my first year 2nd semester of medical school and I am wondering if a rotten yr is worth repeating or if I should just keep going and hope fo rthe best when it comes to boards?
I'm in the middle of my first year, second semester, and it's all been one helluva train wreck... ...
I just spoke to him today and he says it's up to me... he only warned me that if I do attempt GI and fail, that I will have two failures on my record...![]()
I graduated from an Ivy league with two degrees and a 4.0... it's just hard to stomach... but it's a good reminder to everyone that life doesn't stop happening just because you're in med school!
Are you a gambler?
It just doesn't seem like you are on a lucky streak right now .... We all hit ice patches in life and it's how high you bounce that matters. Sometimes it is best to reboot and make a fresh start; show people what you are capable of by controlling the circumstances so that they are in your favor. I remember reading another thread where someone tried to push forward while going through a divorce and wound up failing out.
You have a great excuse for repeating the year. If it were me, I would interpret the dean's statement as a hint and retake the year, but I'm very conservative and will take the long slog if necessary. I don't get the impression that first year grades matter much, but perhaps failures do. I'm not sure. Your dean seems to suggest that it does matter if you fail two courses.
Have you even started medical school yet? I'm not sure how you feel so confident giving advice about all things medical school related if you haven't gone through parts of it yet. It will invariably be different in some way from how you expect it to be.
I'm in the middle of my first year, second semester, and it's all been one helluva train wreck... I got into multiple car accidents my first semester, along with a snowstorm that left me w/o heat or electricity for a week... that, along with a bunch of other drama lead me to fail the first intro/fundamentals class offered at my school... which I'm now re-taking in the summer... that in it of itself was a blow, but I vowed to do better spring semester and pray that all the bad luck was behind me...
I was doing well this semester (i.e. Honors in my classes) until I had to have major abdominal surgery which has now left me in the middle of our GI module not knowing what the hell to do... I have the option of cramming Metabolism and GI and barely getting by, hence not repeating the year, or taking an official leave of absence and repeating the entire first year..
My dilemma involves the boards and my future career... is it possible to still be a good physician/do well on the boards after half-assing your first year? My conscience says to repeat the year, and yet everyone around me is saying that's the last thing I should be doing... apparently boards studying is independent of classroom material, and yet I'm not sure if I can re-learn everything from scratch on my own... then again, will repeating the year be worth it? Considering I won't be getting any grades for any classes minus the one I failed...
Also... how bad is it to have failed a class? (Mind you, with a 64)... according to my dean, it disqualifies me immediately for a bunch of programs... and yet some say 1st year grades dont matter? Help!
I gave the OP my opinion based on what they said and my own life experiences. If you have a problem with my confidence, that's your problem, not mine. The OP didn't seem to have an issue with my comments, so I'm not sure who made you the hall monitor around here.
The OP's medical school dean warned the OP so I took that seriously. However, you seem to think you know what's better for a student than a dean, which doesn't come across very well to me. I would propose that the dean's advice should be given more weight than yours or mine for that matter.
It's my impression that the OP wanted to talk to others about the issue, so I think it's fair game for someone like me to comment. I didn't claim to be an expert nor already in medical school. Most of the information is there in the OP's message.
Getting more to your advice, I'm not sure how helpful your study advice is to someone who appears to be quite capable in that respect. In addition, you don't appear to have gone through abdominal surgery while in medical school, so you might change your mind if you were going through that surgery (or maybe you were in exactly the same situation and made it through?). I personally have no problem with you giving your opinion, but you seem to be set on the requirement of having been there before you are qualified to comment.
One more year is another year's of tuition in their pocket, and one fewer year of a doctor's salary.
My dilemma involves the boards and my future career... is it possible to still be a good physician/do well on the boards after half-assing your first year? My conscience says to repeat the year, and yet everyone around me is saying that's the last thing I should be doing... apparently boards studying is independent of classroom material, and yet I'm not sure if I can re-learn everything from scratch on my own... then again, will repeating the year be worth it? Considering I won't be getting any grades for any classes minus the one I failed...
Also... how bad is it to have failed a class? (Mind you, with a 64)... according to my dean, it disqualifies me immediately for a bunch of programs... and yet some say 1st year grades dont matter? Help!
Does an appendectomy count? That's abdominal surgery which I had in medical school.
Off topic - this is kind of not true. Financially, the school would prefer that you NOT repeat the year. Think about it: if the OP takes an LOA and comes back next year, that leaves an empty spot in the MS2 class that the school can't fill. The OP will then be taking up another spot in the MS1 class, so the school will only be getting 5 years of tuition out of the OP, instead of 8 years of tuition out of 2 students. Hopefully that made grammatical sense.
Also, as "bad" as medical school is, I can assure you there are other difficult situations out there that people can experience and can share the wisdom of.
Keep in mind that I'm almost certainly a lot older than you, have a Ph.D., am completing a post-doc, ran a company for 10 years (and worked in a variety of complex professional situations for several years prior to that), been married for 18 years, have children, so it's not like I just graduated from high school yesterday. I have some life perspective, and my assessment (incompetent as you claim it to be), is not at all inconsistent with at least one other post from someone who seems to know more about the specifics of the OP's program than you do (see previous messages).
Anon-y-mouse: Can you be sure that your appendectomy was comparable to the "major abdominal surgery" that this person seems to be suggesting (perhaps something related to one of the car accidents)? It just doesn't seem like we have that information or can make a lot of judgments like that at this point. Did you experience this situation in the context of already having "fail[ed] the first intro/fundamentals class"? I seriously doubt your situation was practically a carbon copy of what this person is going through. You might even be going to a different school or into a different specialty as well. Based on what we know from the posts, it seems like there are many specifics that have not been provided.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting that I don't think you should post your comments (although I don't agree with the opinion/conclusion that you provided). As far as I'm concerned, I really could care less if you are in medical school or not or whether you had the same problems. I'm also not suggesting that I will not benefit immensely in my perspective on a situation like this from medical school.
Keep in mind that I'm almost certainly a lot older than you, have a Ph.D., am completing a post-doc, ran a company for 10 years (and worked in a variety of complex professional situations for several years prior to that), been married for 18 years, have children, so it's not like I just graduated from high school yesterday. I have some life perspective, and my assessment (incompetent as you claim it to be), is not at all inconsistent with at least one other post from someone who seems to know more about the specifics of the OP's program than you do (see previous messages).
Also, it seems very presumptuous to suggest that you, as an MSX, somehow have a monopoly on wisdom in sorting out a situation. In my life, some of the absolute best advice has often come from people outside of my specific situation. Sometimes people on the inside were locked into a particular mentality that was not at all helpful in sorting out the options. Over the years (decades, actually) great advice came not only from people who were beside me in my life but also those who gained wisdom in various ways that were not at all similar to my path ... something you appear to think is impossible. Also, as "bad" as medical school is, I can assure you there are other difficult situations out there that people can experience and can share the wisdom of.
Anyway, look up above at some of the other messages. You'll see that my advice is consistent with advice of other medical students. Just because I have not been in the specific situation does not mean that I can't give my opinion. I'm really unsure as to why you feel the need to get on my case.
I think that you're right on many levels. I think that what anon-y-mouse was saying, though, was that it seemed that you were suggesting blithely that the OP retake the year. Personally, yes, I would rather retake the year than have 2 failures on my transcript, but that's not a decision that I would make lightly.
Retaking first year, from a non-med student perspective, seems like a drag, but overall, not too bad. To a med student, that situation would seem like hell on earth. That involves taking anatomy lab again, for starters. 1st year classes are some of the most boring classes on earth. To illustrate the typical attitude towards retaking the 1st year, one of my classmates, when asked a similar question by a non-med student, said flatly "I'd rather be Richard Simmons' cabana boy than take anatomy lab again!"
Off topic - this is kind of not true. Financially, the school would prefer that you NOT repeat the year. Think about it: if the OP takes an LOA and comes back next year, that leaves an empty spot in the MS2 class that the school can't fill. The OP will then be taking up another spot in the MS1 class, so the school will only be getting 5 years of tuition out of the OP, instead of 8 years of tuition out of 2 students. Hopefully that made grammatical sense.
No, I didn't mean to suggest that it was a no-brainer, and I can appreciate hell on earth and the idea of not repeating a year. I must have created the wrong impression.
Maybe in being much older now and a different sense of time duration I'm less worried about losing a year or suffering for another year of boredom or agony than messing up things in the long term. It isn't always an option, but doing something difficult over again to reach a long-term objective or just to create options is consistent with how I've done things throughout my life and has served me well. Losing a year or extending suffering when I was younger was a much bigger deal to me than it is now.
I was taking the angle of asking the OP about how they felt about taking risks with their career and I took the dean's opinion/hint rather seriously. I know people who somehow squeek through life and either don't care that bad things happen or just seem to be lucky at everything they do. I'm more a risk minimizer and when I do take risks, I weight the payoff. Ending suffering faster has never been a big plus for me. It seems to me there is an important risk element (unknowns) to the OP's question and the more conservative approach would be to 'reboot.'
Wow, touchy (but also really long! I guess it isn't just at my school where the PhD's feel the need to speak at length). At any rate, good for you, it sounds like you are quite accomplished and I'm sure you'll succeed given all that you have done so far. It isn't like this is the only thread on which you've given your sage advice, though. I'm still standing by my viewpoint of "you don't know what it's like until you've actually experienced it", although I'm sure the original poster does appreciate your advice. There are just some contexts which even the accomplished life-changers in my class were absolutely not prepared for.
Oh, and getting one's appendix removed isn't a walk in the park at all, at least not for me. Any sort of surgery is traumatic to the body. I had an allergy to the anesthesia, had some other complications; by and large I was out of commission for a good 10 days. Fortunately I worked at length with my dean and faculty and we came up with a schedule for me to catch up. In any case, repeating another year of medical school is hell.
For example, I'm seriously considering doing a research year between MS2 and MS3 (Baylor offers that). I want to add publication related to oncology and possibly a LOR so if I aim for a Heme/Onc fellowship at a place like MD Anderson, I'll have a stronger CV coming out of my IM. One opthamologist said that was not a good idea ... better to wait until you are done with the MD to do things like research (when you can get paid more, etc.). Also, I have seen complaints from students that say it makes MS3 hard when you have had a year to forget. Thus, this isn't just a point of idle interest. It's related to a concern that I have in my own planning.
MD/PhD students generally punctuate their education in a 2+3+2 format but I'm sure you knew that. One of my best friends, an MD/PhD senior medical student, said that she felt less prepared for the wards and initially faltered, but that by match time, she got the interviews at MGH/etc. mainly because of her PhD, and that many top residencies actually build in research rotations / research years to their residencies. Anyway, that was just a side note. The world needs more oncologists![]()
Off topic - this is kind of not true. Financially, the school would prefer that you NOT repeat the year. Think about it: if the OP takes an LOA and comes back next year, that leaves an empty spot in the MS2 class that the school can't fill. The OP will then be taking up another spot in the MS1 class, so the school will only be getting 5 years of tuition out of the OP, instead of 8 years of tuition out of 2 students. Hopefully that made grammatical sense.
not so fast. my school has filled several spots in the M2 class b/c people have flaked out.
not so fast. my school has filled several spots in the M2 class b/c people have flaked out.
Wow, I really appreciate all the insight... and lo and behold, someone from my own school
So I guess I should have made it more clear that there is flexibility in my exam-taking... my main debate is, will I be able to ace the boards and overall do well in my career ahead having half-assed my first year? Is the idea that if I repeat the year, I'll be much better prepared too idealistic? Is it just possible to remediate it all over the summer and not be too behind?
I've spent the year essentially reading notes and cramming, instead of reading relevant chapters in Boron and Robbins... i.e. haven't reached my full potential... I WANT to do well and believe I can... but are boards review books and self-study over the summer enough? Do I need an intensive re-do? I want to do well on my boards to keep my options open... (at the moment, they involve EM or Surgery)...
I feel like I have a foot in each option... oof...
my main debate is, will I be able to ace the boards and overall do well in my career ahead having half-assed my first year? Is the idea that if I repeat the year, I'll be much better prepared too idealistic? Is it just possible to remediate it all over the summer and not be too behind?
So I guess I should have made it more clear that there is flexibility in my exam-taking... my main debate is, will I be able to ace the boards and overall do well in my career ahead having half-assed my first year? Is the idea that if I repeat the year, I'll be much better prepared too idealistic? Is it just possible to remediate it all over the summer and not be too behind?
Do I need an intensive re-do? I want to do well on my boards to keep my options open... (at the moment, they involve EM or Surgery)...
I feel like I have a foot in each option... oof...
then get off SDN AND START STUDYING. T
Yes, you can do well in your career and do well on your boards, regardless of your 1st year performance. If you want to review it over the summer before 2nd year, that's doable. Repeating the year probably won't leave you that much better prepared. It'll just leave you more tired and burned out when it comes to starting 2nd year.
You'll have to study everything again before boards anyway. An intensive re-do probably isn't necessary. If you pass the re-exam on whatever you failed, then you'll be in good shape.
No, actually, you don't. If you realistically think that you can pass the metabolism/GI exam, then get off SDN AND START STUDYING. Thinking about repeating a year on the vague notion that it might help you do better on your boards or improve your chances for your dream residency is really, really strange. It's not a good idea. The only reason to repeat a year is because you absolutely have to, not because you are "opting" to.
Wow, I really appreciate all the insight... and lo and behold, someone from my own school
So I guess I should have made it more clear that there is flexibility in my exam-taking... my main debate is, will I be able to ace the boards and overall do well in my career ahead having half-assed my first year? Is the idea that if I repeat the year, I'll be much better prepared too idealistic? Is it just possible to remediate it all over the summer and not be too behind?
I've spent the year essentially reading notes and cramming, instead of reading relevant chapters in Boron and Robbins... i.e. haven't reached my full potential... I WANT to do well and believe I can... but are boards review books and self-study over the summer enough? Do I need an intensive re-do? I want to do well on my boards to keep my options open... (at the moment, they involve EM or Surgery)...
I feel like I have a foot in each option... oof...
... I don't care what life experiences a person has had. It is not possible to understand how awful the first year of medical school is until you do it. I don't know anyone who has left medical school after the first year--if they don't make it, it's generally because they can't get through the crap of first year. ...
People take abuse in all kinds of jobs, whether it is patroling the streets of Bagdad, washing dishes in a steak house, working 120 hour weeks during a chemical plant turnaround, or just working for an abusive boss in a dead-end job because the economy is bad. If it came down to repeating MS1 or being stuck for the rest of my life in a medical specialty I didn't like I would repeat MS1. It's 1 year of pain versus 40 years of hell; sometimes it helps to think about the future as well.
... That does not put you in the position to act like medical school will be just like a 9-5 job and not so bad and that we're just all overeacting at how hard it is. ....
I'd tough it out if you are on a traditional curriculum. I've had multiple classmates who failed one course or another in first year, remediated as necessary over the summer, and went on to do much better in second year with nice respectable scores on boards. A lot of it is about figuring out how to study; in your case of course, a lot is about handling big challenges in life outside school.
My advice might change if you are on a newer curriculum with all systems-based classes, where there is a lot less room for catching up on stuff in second year that you didn't really get in first year (since you only see stuff once).
We've had a few people repeat first year. Often you get no credit for tuition if you miss the last quarter; I agree that it would really suck to have to retake all the ethics etc. courses from scratch.
If you're worried about your future ability to serve patients, there are better ways to brush up on content knowledge than by retaking first year, since much of that material is esoteric or specific to particular fields, and not very useful for any kind of generalist.
The bottom line is that pain avoidance is not always the winning strategy. The easiest thing would be just to drop out of medical school and avoid this suffering altogether. If it was really that bad, this would be the best option and everyone's suggestion (unlike many other life situations that the OP could find him/herself in). I don't see anyone suggesting that. I also find it extremely humorous that some people think that med school is so bad that no one would want to repeat a year when very few people actually drop out and thousands of people want to get in.
I will send you a PM sometime soon, because there are things that I'd like to say that don't belong in a public forum.
Not to be unkind, but these are some of the most uninformed, ignorant assertions I've heard a pre-med make in a very long time.
Let the OP tell me what s/he thinks. S/he seems perfectly capable of speaking on his/her own behalf.
You got a 4.0 from an ivy league in undergrad? You can do this!
Sure, let's talk offline.It just seems to me that we will treat patients with diseases that we have never had and hope never to experience. In current events, we don't need to personally go to Bagdad to provide valuable input on whether or not American troops should stay there or not. We should seriously consider the opinions of people who are in the situation, and that's exactly what I have done, and I have been given a variety of accounts. I'm convinced that we can provide input for situations based on reliable facts even if we ourselves have not personally experienced exactly the same thing.