What medical school is really like

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FrickenhugeMD

FrickenhugeMD

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Here are the notes from my 2nd yr of med school. Just pulled all the notes together that have been hiding under my futon. This is all inclusive, and does not include any notes from 1st year. This is what you get to look forward to. Red bull can is there for reference.

This does NOT include any books that were read during the year, so don't forget to add those on top of this

2ndyearnotes.jpg

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I love the red bull. Looks like my desk right before finals this semester, except I had like 3-4 cans there :laugh:.
 
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I think that's one of those mini-red bull cans... right? ;)
 
cubssox2000 said:
I love the red bull. Looks like my desk right before finals this semester, except I had like 3-4 cans there :laugh:.
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You should have seen the pile I had by the time I finished step 1 :laugh:
 
My first year notes are in a giant box jammed into a closet. One day soon they'll be excellent kindling for a campfire in a mid-year camping trip.
 
cubssox2000 said:
I was so excited when the Sentry by my apartment had a sale on 4 packs of Red Bull right before study week (5.99!) :love:
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I opt for the case (24) at sam's club. I think it ends up being a little over 30 bucks, but its soooooo worth it :)
 
FrickenhugeMD said:
I opt for the case (24) at sam's club. I think it ends up being a little over 30 bucks, but its soooooo worth it :)
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No doubt. But the Sentry is right across from my apartment and the Sam's Club is sooo far away. I stock up when I get the chance to make up a little of the difference I could have saved at Sam's Club.
 
Do you guys all take notes on paper? I use my Macbook pro for everything. Haven't taken paper notes since high school.
 
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Polka Dot said:
Do you guys all take notes on paper? I use my Macbook pro for everything. Haven't taken paper notes since high school.
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I usually just write everything right into the notes they give us, so I have one source for everything. It helps me to do it that way, but I know of several classmates that type everything up. Do what ever works for you and you'll be fine
 
Wait, I call BS on this one. There aren't that many things to know about the human body to fill up all those papers. :rolleyes:
 
I do the same, writing my notes in the outlines/syllabi that they give us. If not, I can't imagine how high the stack would go...
 
FrickenhugeMD said:
Here are the notes from my 2nd yr of med school. Just pulled all the notes together that have been hiding under my futon. This is all inclusive, and does not include any notes from 1st year. This is what you get to look forward to. Red bull can is there for reference.

This does NOT include any books that were read during the year, so don't forget to add those on top of this

2ndyearnotes.jpg

home.php
Click to expand...

:eek:

thank god I'm applying to dental school
 
DAMN!!!!!! Mother nature would be pissed if everybody did this in medical school

150ish medical schools in the US= crap load of paper + crap load of red bulls • 150 (schools) • 90 (avg med school class size)= DAMN
 
Sweet manatee of Galilee! If you laid all your notes horizontally, they could function as a brand new futon!
 
SU1989 said:
Wait, I call BS on this one. There aren't that many things to know about the human body to fill up all those papers. :rolleyes:
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Hahaha have fun.

And yes, that is very much an accurate representation of one year's worth of information. And, as the OP said, don't forget the books you have to look at, labs you have to get through, small group sessions to take up your time...etc.

Yeah, have fun.
 
I saved all that crap for way too long. I finally threw it out right before moving for residency. I tried to purge all my junk before I moved....and bought a bunch of junk ;)
 
You would be surprised how many notes you can go through in a year. My stack of first year notes looks something like that yet this past year I never got up before 10 and can count on one hand the times that I spent more than five hours a day on school related stuff, and I did just fine.
 
sugardad said:
You would be surprised how many notes you can go through in a year. My stack of first year notes looks something like that yet this past year I never got up before 10 and can count on one hand the times that I spent more than five hours a day on school related stuff, and I did just fine.
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So I know it's a lot of information as seen by the picture. But would you say it's just constant studying to understand and apply most of it or after a while does it start to flow and make sense?
 
Poliscidoc said:
So I know it's a lot of information as seen by the picture. But would you say it's just constant studying to understand and apply most of it or after a while does it start to flow and make sense?
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I'm not sure you really "apply" much of it until the clinical years. During the first years it's mostly read, take notes, review, review, review, exam.. and hope that some of it sticks for when you take Step 1 and start rotations. A lack of clinical correlation is a common complaint of early med students, and programs do what they can to try to expose early med students to folks with various ailments to try and bring it off the paper a bit. But I'd say you really won't get to apply the stuff until 3rd year. It's a lot of memorization. Not amazingly complicated stuff, just a ton of it.

Most people log a lot more hours than sugardad was describing, but everyone has to find their own, individual system that works for them -- it's definitely not a one size fits all kind of thing. In my own experience, you pretty much needed to spend most of your time during the week reviewing daily things (prereading each next day's lecture material and reviewing the current day's lecture notes) , and much of each weekend going through (as well as organizing) the weeks worth of material. Weekends were particularly productive because they were the only days each week that you didn't have new material to review, you could focus on stuff you had already gone through. The amount of time you spent was never enough to know everything, but you do your best. The first few tests are your experimental time -- they tell you if what you are doing is working, and if not, you have to be flexible enough to change things up. Most of the time, what worked in undergrad doesn't in med school and so you need to revamp things.
 
I like doing alot of multiple choice questions. It helps the material stick much quicker.
 
TheProwler said:
I saved all that crap for way too long. I finally threw it out right before moving for residency. I tried to purge all my junk before I moved....and bought a bunch of junk ;)
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:hijacked:

Resident! Congratulations on your graduation from med school... I've been here since you were just an applicant... how the years fly by.
 
There are 500 sheets of paper in a ream, which is 2.25 inches high, meaning there are 222 sheets of paper per inch. Since paper doesn't stack as neatly after it's been used due to wrinkles, etc., let's say there are 200 sheets in an inch of used paper.

A can of Red Bull is 6.5 inches high. Your stack appears to be just over 4 Red Bulls tall, say ~27 inches or 5,400 sheets of paper.

I have no idea what the case is, but let's assume that half of the sheets are printed on both sides. This gives us 8,100 pages of notes.

Let's allow 9 months of classes for MS2 (Mid Aug to Mid May) and assume that you look at some form of notes at least once a day (~270 days). This means you'd have to plow through 30 pages of notes a day, on average. Does that sound about right?

Your stack of notes looks much more menacing than 30 pages of notes a day sounds, but still, I'm sure that it wears you down. And, as you've mentioned, textbooks or Step 1 review materials aren't represented.
 
fisticuffs said:
There are 500 sheets of paper in a ream, which is 2.25 inches high, meaning there are 222 sheets of paper per inch. Since paper doesn't stack as neatly after it's been used due to wrinkles, etc., let's say there are 200 sheets in an inch of used paper.

A can of Red Bull is 6.5 inches high. Your stack appears to be just over 4 Red Bulls tall, say ~27 inches or 5,400 sheets of paper.

I have no idea what the case is, but let's assume that half of the sheets are printed on both sides. This gives us 8,100 pages of notes.

Let's allow 9 months of classes for MS2 (Mid Aug to Mid May) and assume that you look at some form of notes at least once a day (~270 days). This means you'd have to plow through 30 pages of notes a day, on average. Does that sound about right?

Your stack of notes looks much more menacing than 30 pages of notes a day sounds, but still, I'm sure that it wears you down. And, as you've mentioned, textbooks or Step 1 review materials aren't represented.
Click to expand...

In my experience the important (testable) part of each lecture is captured in the powerpoint presentations (if your school gives you access to them) or in the related section of BRS. There really is no need to read every page of notes.
 
If I ever make it to and graduate from med school, I'll be sure to have a big ol' bonfire before starting residency. :D
 
fisticuffs said:
There are 500 sheets of paper in a ream, which is 2.25 inches high, meaning there are 222 sheets of paper per inch. Since paper doesn't stack as neatly after it's been used due to wrinkles, etc., let's say there are 200 sheets in an inch of used paper.

A can of Red Bull is 6.5 inches high. Your stack appears to be just over 4 Red Bulls tall, say ~27 inches or 5,400 sheets of paper.

I have no idea what the case is, but let's assume that half of the sheets are printed on both sides. This gives us 8,100 pages of notes.

Let's allow 9 months of classes for MS2 (Mid Aug to Mid May) and assume that you look at some form of notes at least once a day (~270 days). This means you'd have to plow through 30 pages of notes a day, on average. Does that sound about right?

Your stack of notes looks much more menacing than 30 pages of notes a day sounds, but still, I'm sure that it wears you down. And, as you've mentioned, textbooks or Step 1 review materials aren't represented.
Click to expand...

30 pages a day sounds too low. But bear in mind it's not just 30 pages a day, it's 30 pages of prereading for tomorrow's lecture, plus 30 pages of reviewing of todays lecture, plus however many pages of whatever secondary resource books you want to look at to help understand what is written in the lecture notes, each day. It ends up being a lot. You will work hard in med school, there is no way around that.
 
sugardad said:
In my experience the important (testable) part of each lecture is captured in the powerpoint presentations (if your school gives you access to them) or in the related section of BRS. There really is no need to read every page of notes.
Click to expand...

That may be true of some lecturers, but many use the stuff not covered in the lectures to separate out the Honors from the rest. At most places it is all fair game. From your past two posts, it sounds like your program isn't representative of a lot of them.
 
Law2Doc said:
30 pages a day sounds too low. But bear in mind it's not just 30 pages a day, it's 30 pages of prereading for tomorrow's lecture, plus 30 pages of reviewing of todays lecture, plus however many pages of whatever secondary resource books you want to look at to help understand what is written in the lecture notes, each day. It ends up being a lot. You will work hard in med school, there is no way around that.
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Also there's usually 3 weeks of vacation in there and you don't have reading assigned for weekends or exam days.
 
Granted, some pages are filled with fluff and have 2 power point slides a side, but there are an equal amount of pages that are size 12 font and single spaced. It all evens out into alot of reading.

The way I always looked at it was "how do you eat an elephant?"




... One bite at a time.
 
Polka Dot said:
Do you guys all take notes on paper? I use my Macbook pro for everything. Haven't taken paper notes since high school.
Click to expand...

I'm pretty sure those aren't notes he's taken. Those are notes the school gives you. You can take your own notes in the margins.

Basically, anything in the note packet the school gives you is fair game so I disagree with the person who said you don't have to read it all. A classmate tried reading BRS/First Aid for a few of the early exams and was barely passing.
 
drizzt3117 said:
Also there's usually 3 weeks of vacation in there and you don't have reading assigned for weekends or exam days.
Click to expand...

We get readings on exam days. Not finals, but on days we have mid-terms or quizzes, there's usually an assignment that night.
 
fisticuffs said:
There are 500 sheets of paper in a ream, which is 2.25 inches high, meaning there are 222 sheets of paper per inch. Since paper doesn't stack as neatly after it's been used due to wrinkles, etc., let's say there are 200 sheets in an inch of used paper.

A can of Red Bull is 6.5 inches high. Your stack appears to be just over 4 Red Bulls tall, say ~27 inches or 5,400 sheets of paper.

I have no idea what the case is, but let's assume that half of the sheets are printed on both sides. This gives us 8,100 pages of notes.

Let's allow 9 months of classes for MS2 (Mid Aug to Mid May) and assume that you look at some form of notes at least once a day (~270 days). This means you'd have to plow through 30 pages of notes a day, on average. Does that sound about right?

Your stack of notes looks much more menacing than 30 pages of notes a day sounds, but still, I'm sure that it wears you down. And, as you've mentioned, textbooks or Step 1 review materials aren't represented.
Click to expand...

Only on SDN.
 
That's a lot! Doesn't surprise me though. I have a friend who is in med school and her note stacks look like that. (2nd year)

When I go to medical school (yes I'm confident/persistent enough to stay 'when') I am hoping there will be some good laptop equipment/software to take notes with so I can minimize the paper stacks.)

I take paper notes in college for my classes then scan them into OneNote, then recycle the paper. Really cuts down on the clutter.
 
Law2Doc said:
30 pages a day sounds too low. But bear in mind it's not just 30 pages a day, it's 30 pages of prereading for tomorrow's lecture, plus 30 pages of reviewing of todays lecture, plus however many pages of whatever secondary resource books you want to look at to help understand what is written in the lecture notes, each day. It ends up being a lot. You will work hard in med school, there is no way around that.
Click to expand...

Actually 30 a day was pretty accurate for me. Granted, our notes are single-spaced, double sided, 12-font pages so it took for frickin ever to go through those 30.

And as for the powerpoints, I know most people suggest you just cover those, but I'd start off studying whatever it is that is most complete and then scaling down as you go on if necessary. The system that worked best for me was basically to pre-read the notes, then go to lecture (or not- depended on the professor, really), then go over the notes again but with the powerpoints in front of me so I could focus on the information that was most relevant without forgetting the other stuff. As Law2Doc said, everything that's ever given to you- notes, powerpoints, anything- is technically fair game, so you want to at least be familiar with everything.

Oh and go to a P/F school and avoid the extra headache.
 
Gabby said:
I'm pretty sure those aren't notes he's taken. Those are notes the school gives you. You can take your own notes in the margins.

Basically, anything in the note packet the school gives you is fair game so I disagree with the person who said you don't have to read it all. A classmate tried reading BRS/First Aid for a few of the early exams and was barely passing.
Click to expand...
I did not say that you dont have to read the note packets at all. You should certainly read most lectures, but with the really long boing ones with the size 11 font and single spacing, you may not get much out of trying to decipher them and it may be better to get it from powerpoints/BRS and most of all do questions.
 
sugardad said:
I did not say that you dont have to read the note packets at all.
Click to expand...

I didn't say you did. I said you claimed you don't have to read it all. That's different for different schools.
 
this is why i do as much of my learning as possible on the internet.
 
Wow, I don't think I read that much stuff (or even half of it) during all 4 years of medical school.

Of course, I'm starting residency in orthopaedics...let the jokes about the illiterate bone mechanics start:)
 
"I just finished my second year of med school and all I got was this lousy picture of all my notes"
 
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