argonana said:
This is always a really difficult question for me to answer. Which classes are junk? What's the biggest waste of time? A classmate of mine calls it the "death by 10,000 cuts cirriculum" because there's just so many small courses they've thrown into our schedules all of a sudden that waste all our free time. Now that I'm past it, it's kind of difficult to remember all the names they have for their silly extra classes. This makes it very difficult when talking to the administration (not that most of them care), as it just sounds like you're complaining in general or generally angry and not as if you're trying to be constructive. There's very little chance that the other students will say anything. First, they don't want to say anything possibly negative that could show up on their files for residency apps (and something negative has already appeared on mine from a class where it was supposed to be confidential and perfectly acceptable to criticize!). Second, there's a general attitude that the administration doesn't care anyways. It tends to get very toned down for course rep meetings, where my course rep friend informs me their polite questioning can just be politely ignored.
For starters, culture matters. A well-intentioned course that really teaches nothing about culture, except that you should really be sensitive to it. Great, thanks. No pointers, no how to deal with different groups or strategies (Edit from my friend--we did finally get a handout on this in the last session due to student feedback). It's so politically correct that everyone is afraid to give out any advice. If anything, several courses in med school have made me more afraid to deal with people--"You must be a robot or nobody will like you" type of thing. Ok, people argue, sure it was a waste, but it wasn't a large amount of time and alot of people skipped it. Now it's mandatory attendence is my understanding because so many people cut.
That's a typical Penn response to things students don't like. If they don't show up, it becomes mandatory. Take Health Care Systems, another well intentioned but bogus course about the health care system. It was such a waste of time that most of my class stopped showing up to it until there was only a few regular attendees despite e-mails from the administration encouraging us to go. The next year every lecture for it became required (with sign in sheets and make up work if you missed it), an exam was added, as was a 10 page term paper. Our class had the term paper, and we got a petition to end that nonsense (a term paper in med school?!) that 2/3 of the class signed. The response from the administration? Suck it up. Just like a recent response to the classes complaints of "We're really burned out on clerkships"... SUCK IT UP.
DLPCE (now LEAPP), our longitudinal patient experience, is another waste of time. Sure, it sounds nice to follow a patient for a long period of time, but logistically it just doesn't work for alot of reasons. Obviously, the fact that both of my parents have chronic medical conditions, one of which was at the med school's hospital and I spent alot of my free time watching the conditions around their second dual organ transplant, doesn't do much to exempt me from any of it.
There's lots more classes. As usual, you can argue around each individual class or required activity. But, every year more and more are being added (much of the current nonsense was added during my year), and as such it just needs to be reduced. The usual med school cirriculum is hard, but try having some required lecture on something you don't care about that's poorly presented a day or two before your exam. As someone from a low income family who's seen alot of how culture impacts medicine and vice versa, the whole thing comes off as trite. Like a whole lot of people from upper class backgrounds looking down as "how shall we deal with the lower classes?"
Me, I'm in grad school, and I still take 2 hours a month for a required medical school class called Doctoring where we just sit around and talk about medical school. Wait a second... I'M NOT IN MED SCHOOL ANYMORE! This is NOT the sort of integration anyone wants. Again, if I miss it, several hours of make up work ensues, even if you're in a country like Guatemala (which I was) doing rural health care work (which I was). I mean, I guess when I missed that renal PBL section for my grandmother's funeral, the course director did grudgingly let me out of the 2-3 page writeup for the missed section with "Well, other students in your situation did their makeup work". Though when I asked for permission to miss neuro section because I had walking pneumonia and was told I had to submit a several page writeup, I just went. Hope I didn't infect anyone. The explanations I've heard from the deans as to why this is so? 1. "Too many of our students are used to having very structured and sheltered lives such that if we didn't have so many things mandatory, too many students would be lost" 2. "We're preparing you for the structured style of the clinics." Gone are the days where you can spend all your basic science time in Utah skiing and fly back for exams (as a recently graduated MD/PhD student did--matched into derm out there too).
In the end, you better like Penn's cirriculum that they try to sell you. Someone asked by PM the other day if I'd recommend just skipping the things that are unnecessary. You can't! All those sections they sell you on when you interview, all those extra classes that they think set them apart... I hope you're well sold, cause it's all required. It's rapidly becoming the 8-5 cirriculum (I mean, what do you think happens when you have something required 8-10 then 1-5 required?) that Penn isn't supposed to be. Our class got an official apology from the vice dean for overbooking our schedules, but my friends in the upcoming classes feed me information that leads me to believe that things aren't being fixed.
Oh, and one other thing. The lecture halls suck. It's not so bad for optional classes, as depending on the lecture somewhere from 5-75% of the class shows up. For the mandatory stuff with near 100% attendance, there's just not enough room. We're all crammed in with lots of students sitting on the floors and such. Try to get there early. The business and law schools have large, spacious halls with comfortable seating. Why are we the readheaded step-child? Oh boy, we can watch the lectures from home?! I think I did it once the whole time when I was in the first two years--the notes the lecturers give out for the optional lectures are sufficient for things you miss.
As for the other questions, the attitudes of the professors vary wildly. For the first year and a half, most are nice, though there are a few, very notable exceptions. I'd say on the clinics that goes to maybe 80% of the docs being friendly or just completely ignoring you to 20% or so being mean to you (much of this 20% from surgery and OB/GYN). Strangely, some of the professors that are most disliked among the classes year after year win teaching awards? It's a not understood concept among my circle of friends.
As for where the students are from--yes we do have alot of Noreasters, UCLA2k notwithstanding
I hear that it's not for the med school's lack of trying though--people they accept from the northeast are much more likely to come here than people from other places. I read on an advertisement that something like 50% of the US population is within 4 hours drive of Philly (think DC, Baltimore, Philly, NYC, and Boston). There just aren't that many top-notch medical school applicants from the area around WashU, so they have to reach a little further.
BTW, UCLA2k what did you end up going into? Are you one of the 20 ophtho applicants this year? For those of you who don't know, we produce about 10% of the nation's ophthomology residents year after year. I always find it strange that we have a top IM residency, yet so few of our students go into IM.
This is true for first years, who haven't yet gotten much real pressure, still view med school as a novelty, and are the vast majority of those you'll meet in and out of the school because they're the only ones with the time and interest to hang out with you. Most of the people you'll meet are totally political. Nobody will say anything bad even if they think it, except for me, and I stick out like a sore thumb because of it.
