Want to go to med school don’t really like Anatomy?

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chemdoctor

chemdoctor

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Did any of you not like anatomy? I’m not really enjoying it. It’s easy but damn so much rote memorization... kinda boring here and there.

What do y’all think about this? Is it a bad sign? I love genetics, Biochem, my neuroscience classes etc.
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First year is going to be rough, at least in my experience. Instead of an anatomy class or block, we integrate anatomy into all blocks from MSK (August) to repro (January).

There’s a lot of anatomy to parse through first year, and most of the clinical correlates are grounded in the anatomy.

Not to say you can’t or shouldn’t go - if you want to be a doctor, you should go to medical school - but it might be a wild ride for the first couple months.
 
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I have some bad news for you. Med students have to rote memorize huge volumes of information. It's not just Anatomy. Microbio/infectious disease, nervous system pathways, receptor types, genetic disorders and biochem pathways, drug names and random unpredictable side effects etc...if you hate memorizing you're better off studying math, stats, econ, compsci, engineering etc
 
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efle said:
I have some bad news for you. Med students have to rote memorize huge volumes of information. It's not just Anatomy. Microbio/infectious disease, nervous system pathways, receptor types, genetic disorders and biochem pathways, drug names and random unpredictable side effects etc...if you hate memorizing you're better off studying math, stats, econ, compsci, engineering etc
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Oh no :( I mean I don’t mind memorizing. I can memorize stuff. Just don’t like memorizing every name of the bone and I hate anatomy lab practicals. But I’ve done well in memorizing in other classes with lots of info
 
Isoval said:
First year is going to be rough, at least in my experience. Instead of an anatomy class or block, we integrate anatomy into all blocks from MSK (August) to repro (January).

There’s a lot of anatomy to parse through first year, and most of the clinical correlates are grounded in the anatomy.

Not to say you can’t or shouldn’t go - if you want to be a doctor, you should go to medical school - but it might be a wild ride for the first couple months.
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Yeah. Guess I gotta stop whining and coMplaining and start memorizing this stuff. The material is cool it’s just memorizing every last name is annoying. But I gotta do it! Thank you for your response
 
chemdoctor said:
Did any of you not like anatomy? I’m not really enjoying it. It’s easy but damn so much rote memorization... kinda boring here and there.

What do y’all think about this? Is it a bad sign? I love genetics, Biochem, my neuroscience classes etc.
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You have saddened me
 
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I am in the same boat of disliking the rote-memorization side of anatomy. However, I take it from the optimistic perspective of absolutely loving physiology. I can justify memorizing the anatomy as a means of more comfortably/accurately talking about the physiology. If you take it like that - where the anatomy is simply a tool to better converse/think about the physiology - it should make the memorization feel a lot more worthwhile.

I can tell you, it is a fantastic feeling to walk up to your professor with a specific question and actually have the words to describe where/what you are talking about and to understand and receive a more in depth answer to your question. Knowing the anatomy greatly increases the productivity of your physiology questions/conversations.
 
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samualjhatfield said:
I am in the same boat of disliking the rote-memorization side of anatomy. However, I take it from the optimistic perspective of absolutely loving physiology. I can justify memorizing the anatomy as a means of more comfortably/accurately talking about the physiology. If you take it like that - where the anatomy is simply a tool to better converse/think about the physiology - it should make the memorization feel a lot more worthwhile.

I can tell you, it is a fantastic feeling to walk up to your professor with a specific question and actually have the words to describe where/what you are talking about and to understand and receive a more in depth answer to your question. Knowing the anatomy greatly increases the productivity of your physiology questions/conversations.
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So true!! I love the Physiology portion of my class but hate the rote memorization if anstomy!!!
 
Goro said:
You have saddened me
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Hey!! I don’t hate ALL of it... it’s just the rote memorization is annoying! I understand it’s important and I really love the Physiology
 
chemdoctor said:
Hey!! I don’t hate ALL of it... it’s just the rote memorization is annoying! I understand it’s important and I really love the Physiology
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It's not just brute memory; you still have to be able to apply. Best way to handle it is to visualize how you would explain to a patient or his/her family about an injury to any structure.
 
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chemdoctor said:
Hey!! I don’t hate ALL of it... it’s just the rote memorization is annoying! I understand it’s important and I really love the Physiology
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You'll be fine. I'm terrible at rote memorization so I find ways to chain things together, or at least make them make sense logically in my head.

That being said, med school is still like 60% memorization... Repetition is key and is the black magic formula to remember stuff.

For anatomy specifically though, the app Complete Anatomy was a godsend. Helped me picture stuff in my head and piece information together. Also image occlusion on anki (flash cards).

Point is find ways to learn the material and how to apply it in real life (Like everytime you learn a muscle and it's motion, try to flex and feel it work) and make sure you'll like the other courses too b/c anatomy is only 1 of many!
 
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Goro said:
It's not just brute memory; you still have to be able to apply. Best way to handle it is to visualize how you would explain to a patient or his/her family about an injury to any structure.
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Huh that’s perfect!!!
 
OrthoTraumaMD said:
I agree. Just trust me, while the memorization sucks, it becomes infinitely more interesting when you actually apply it to real cases in real patients.
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I’ll bet. Thanks for everyone’s responses. I feel more motivated to memorize this stuff now.
 
EE undergrad degree. Give me something where I can make sense of it even with some memorization and I will kill it such as biochem/organic chem. Give me something that is essentially figuring something out and I will sleep through the class with high 90's like physics.

Anatomy is like my kryptonite. Could never make sense of it b/c its all rote memorization. Lab had a progressing terrible smell that I could not wait to get out. I barely cut, left ASAP. I applaud the students who could memorize each muscle, each nerve, each vessel, each organ and loved being in Lab until they were kicked out.

My First C Ever in my academic career and probably the most satisfied that I could make it out alive.
 
Goro said:
It's not just brute memory; you still have to be able to apply. Best way to handle it is to visualize how you would explain to a patient or his/her family about an injury to any structure.
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As a 1st yr med student, how the heck does one apply anything to a patient???? Now it makes sense and I am sure I would get atleast a B but as a 1st yr med student?
 
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Plenty of medical students hate anatomy. They probably don't end up in sports medicine or PM&R.

That being said, you may find anatomy more enjoyable in medical school than undergrad. I had to learn some ridiculous minutia in undergrad (especially for musculoskeletal), but in med school there was an eye on clinical application. That made it much more tolerable. Despite that, some med students will hate anatomy no matter what: those students suffer through it, graduate, and become competent doctors.
 
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Brain tissue oozing out from head trauma and most will know that it is not good but doesn't mean it adds anything to improved learning. :)
 
I think the brute memorization will get the word bank in your head, but memory alone will not bring you success in anatomy. You have to master relationships and be able to answer second order questions. If X structure is damaged, how will Y be affected? You can also use your memorized “word bank” to interpret imaging, and attempt to answer a “3D question” from a 2D image. I love anatomy :love:
 
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it's not a good sign but it's not the end of the world. Look at the bigger picture, anatomy is only part of medicine. It serves its place, but for some of us we only need a very basic knowledge of gross anatomy.

So then why do we study the finer details? Because we need to pass USMLE step exams and board exams in order to practice medicine. This distinction is crucial. Tests can be learned, question banks can be studied. In med school you focus on what will be tested and how the material will be tested, from what angle. If you have the capacity for more, all the power to you, but that's what you should have a firm grasp of as you head into exams. As for anatomy specifically, like the person above me said, you really need to approach it like something exists because it can be broken and cause trouble and can be fixed.

So even if you are super bad at rote memorization, you absolutely CAN pass these step exams. I almost failed anatomy, and have had a TON of trouble with these exams, but I struggled through it and matched into a decent internal medicine program. I studied VERY differently in med school than in college. In med school, you will realize that you have always been encouraged to think "why" up until now, but now you not only have to know why, you also have to know "what". It might be a tough transition, but there's NO reason you shouldn't do medicine just because you don't like anatomy, or that you are bad at or hate memorization. Medicine is much much more than that. If your reasons/resolve for pursuing medicine is strong enough, you'll get through this.
 
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@sweetfragrance thank you so much for your encouragement. It’s really helping me right now. Yeh I know it’s only a part of medicine. Thanks again.
 
emergentmd said:
As a 1st yr med student, how the heck does one apply anything to a patient???? Now it makes sense and I am sure I would get atleast a B but as a 1st yr med student?
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Stand in the OR for a little bit, it all becomes applicable.

Or as stated before, if you damage a nerve or blood vessel, what is the resultant injury and region of the body affected?
 
chemdoctor said:
Oh no :( I mean I don’t mind memorizing. I can memorize stuff. Just don’t like memorizing every name of the bone and I hate anatomy lab practicals. But I’ve done well in memorizing in other classes with lots of info
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I despised anatomy lab. It was a box to check for entry into a stable high paying field. You’ll have things you don’t like & things you do.

Luckily there are resources that are really good which make anatomy easy to learn. Especially “human Atlas” which is an AR app that puts a dissectable cadaver in your living room.
 
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Medic741 said:
I despised anatomy lab. It was a box to check for entry into a stable high paying field. You’ll have things you don’t like & things you do.

Luckily there are resources that are really good which make anatomy easy to learn. Especially “human Atlas” which is an AR app that puts a dissectable cadaver in your living room.
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I read that way too quickly and assumed that somebody would just deliver a cadaver to your living room… So many questions.
 
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OrthoTraumaMD said:
I read that way too quickly and assumed that somebody would just deliver a cadaver to your living room… So many questions.
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It's Amazon's new special. 2 day free shipping with prime too ;)
 
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