What sacrifices have you made since starting Medical School?

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swim97

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Hello all, I am a lowly undergrad considering Medicine as a potential career path. I wanted to know what you used to love to do in Undergrad that you no longer have time to do anymore. I ask because I am very committed to Athletics and Music (I spend about ~18 hrs/week on my hobbies currently) and wanted to start a family someday. I don't want my career path to take too much from me.
What sacrifices have you made since you began Medical School?
Approximately how many hours a week do you dedicate to your studies (including Lecture, Lab, & Commute... etc)? How much times does that leave you?
Input from M1-M2, M3-M4's and Residents are appreciated, bc it only gets harder once you begin, right?

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Hello all, I am a lowly undergrad considering Medicine as a potential career path. I wanted to know what you used to love to do in Undergrad that you no longer have time to do anymore. I ask because I am very committed to Athletics and Music (I spend about ~18 hrs/week on my hobbies currently) and wanted to start a family someday. I don't want my career path to take too much from me.
What sacrifices have you made since you began Medical School?
Approximately how many hours a week do you dedicate to your studies (including Lecture, Lab, & Commute... etc)? How much times does that leave you?
Input from M1-M2, M3-M4's and Residents are appreciated, bc it only gets harder once you begin, right?
If something is important to you and you really want to keep up with it, you will find a way to do so. I never went to lectures and always finished studying at 7P to make sure I had time to dedicate to my hobbies. I was also an early morning kind of guy and would start my days at 5A
However everyone’s situation is different and doing well definitely takes priority. If grades start slipping, then you start cutting out some hobby time.
 
Just a few months into M1, but for me the hardest part has been missing things like family parties, baby showers, etc. because I’m now a plane ride away. However, day to day I’d say there’s definitely a good amount of free time. I like to try to be done with work by 8 so I have time to do things like watch Netflix. I go to the gym quite frequently and cook at home often. On the weekends I try to be productive for one day and use the other day for fun things.
 
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I really don't feel like I've sacrificed much. I will be missing an important event in my girlfriend's life for interview travel, but other than that, I feel like I've come away from medical school with far more than I started.

Since beginning M1 I have:
- Made the strongest group of close friends I've ever had
- Kept up my rec-level athletics, even continuing on a competitive team throughout M3
- Been encouraged by school events to pick my old instrument back up and start playing again
- Met an amazing woman who will be coming with me when we graduate
- Watched way too much Netflix
- Learned a ton and felt successful at school
- Found support and encouragement to finally tackle my decades-long battle with depression and actually get help...and it worked
- Gotten back into cooking and successfully meal-prepped for the vast majority of M3
 
I'm an M4. I'm also gonna say I really don't feel like I missed out on much. I worked for several years before school, and a bunch of my friends are in finance/tech/law and therefore have been working the whole time. While they live in bigger houses then my tiny NY apartment and they occasionally get to go to Paris on vacation instead of upstate NY or the Jersey Shore like me, I don't feel like their lives are that much better than mine (other than that they make money while I go into debt). I think there's a narrative that getting a 'real' job rather than med school means you spend your twenties and thirties having Wolf of Wall Street sex parties and traveling to exotic tropical vacations while we disimpact rectums, but those high paying jobs are time sinks just like medical education--I have a friend working 80 hour weeks in finance, and his trajectory is 5 more years of that before he gets to work a more reasonable 60 hours a week. Obviously he'll end up making more money than I will, but as Han Solo said "what good's a reward if you ain't around to spend it?". And quite frankly, I'd rather do rectal exams all day vs having to look at Excel spreadsheets.

I still get to work out, play video games, watch Netflix, go out drinking or out to dinner with my school friends or girlfriend just as much as when I was working. I don't get to do some of my outdoorsy hobbies as much but that's more a city living thing vs school, so conversely I get to enjoy living in Manhattan. Surgery clerkship sucked, our MS1 test schedule sucked, but I really feel like I've sacrificed very little in school (we'll see how residency goes). I had to learn how to actually apply myself and study, which was not the funnest, but oh well.

I think if you're the sort of person obsessed with maximizing your total income and comparing your life to others (not that you'd ever see that kind of thing on SDN) medicine will feel more like a sacrifice and will contribute to general unhappiness, but I doubt that is unique to medicine.
 
It's not only the hours/week that can come at a cost. You also give up freedom over where you live for the prime of your life. Your significant other got a dream job offer in [City X]? Your family is all in [City Y]? Too bad your med school acceptance/residency match/fellowship match is thousands of miles away from those places.
 
It’s easier to keep your stuff up when you don’t have kids. I am at school or studying during the week from around 6:30 until 4:30-5 including commuting. I love wood working and building furniture and stuff. I also enjoy playing music and biking.

I could spend the couple hours I have before my kids go to bed working in my shop, but I choose to spend that time with my kids. On the weekends I try to spend most of the day with them since they only see me for a couple hours a day during the week. I play my guitar for a little bit each day and I go for a bike ride most days after they go to bed.

So I don’t really get to build stuff anymore, but that’s a choice I made to spend more time with my kids.
 
M1 - had a ton of time for gym/hobbies/Netflix

M2 - ramped up board studying, slowly stopped doing hobbies and gym by the time to take step 1.

Step 1 dedicated study - had 5 weeks off, studies like 12 hours a day and was dead

M3 - some to rotations were impossible for hobbies, some rotations were super chill more like 9-5 with studying on some weekends

Begging of M4 - very tough with sub internships, studying for step 2, prepping for residency app. Overall treated better on rotations and had more free time outside of school but still a slog.

Middle of M4 - 3 months off for interviewing. Interviews are crazy and tiresome but when I’m not interviewing I literally have all the time in the world.

End of M4 - not there yet but I won’t give a **** and neither will my residents, should be a breeze
 
@swim97 - Hard to say what is a sacrifice because you need a comparator. For example if you are thinking med school vs investment banking, then going to med school the salary would be a sacrifice but your hours would actually be better. Also, general job stress would happen in whatever career you pick, so I don’t view things like “stress on a Sub-I” as a sacrifice compared to the stress you’d have trying to suck up and climb the corporate or academic ladder.

With that in mind, my general thoughts on what I may have been sacrificing:

M1: didn’t feel I sacrificed much other than a salary. Still hung out good friends, traveled, explored my city, etc.

M2: salary and the stress of Step 1 is real and definitely causes some anxiety that is I think is somewhat unique no matter what other field you were gonna go into

M3: salary and I guess you sacrifice some weekends, but it’s less a sacrifice and more what you invest to get to do cool stuff and learn medicine. Also hard for me to imagine I would have taken a job where I never had to work a weekend so again it’s not exactly a sacrifice.

Gap Year: nothing - amazing hours, I was paid. Made me think maybe I should have gotten a PhD until I realized I missed seeing patients.

M4: salary and some anxiety from the match process that is unique to medicine. It was a fun year overall though - fewer responsibilities, lots of time to chill with friends, traveling all over.

Residency: work hours and lack of autonomy (over how you spend those hours, where you live, etc) are definitely a sacrifice, as is the low salary. It’s one I’m willing to make for a few years because I do genuinely feel I’m learning so much everyday, but it is not something I could or would want to do for very much longer.

Final thoughts - 1) lots of people have hobbies, start families, etc in medical school and residency, so you would not be unique by any means (doctors are people too, lol), 2) I would think about what your alternative path may be, because to know what you’d sacrifice in medicine you need to have something to compare to, and 3) the happiest doctors I know are the ones that have found their calling in medicine (or, honestly, just wanted to be rich and have a lot of social capital and went into very high paying specialties and work in private practice, but we’ll leave that aside for now), so I would just remind you that if you think you’d love medicine (after shadowing, talking to docs about their lives, talking to patients, etc) then the sacrifices are more investments than anything.
 
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Thank you for the insight everyone, this all sounds very promising.

I imagine that the stress of Medical School is dependent upon the rigor of your institution (P/F or not), your ability to both absorb volumes of information and manage your time, the competitiveness of the residency you are trying to match to and of course other commitments in your life (such as rearing a child).

This all seems very familiar. For most students, it was difficult enough to just get in to a Medical School. Would you say that you are busier/more stressed as a Medical School student than when you were an undergrad?
 
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Thank you for the insight everyone, this all sounds very promising.

I imagine that the stress of Medical School is dependent upon the rigor of your institution (P/F or not), your ability to both absorb volumes of information and manage your time, the competitiveness of the residency you are trying to match to and of course other commitments in your life (such as rearing a child).

This all seems very familiar. For most students, it was difficult enough to just get in to a Medical School. Would you say that you are busier/more stressed as a Medical School student than when you were an undergrad?
Far, far less stressed than undergrad.
 
Thank you for the insight everyone, this all sounds very promising.

I imagine that the stress of Medical School is dependent upon the rigor of your institution (P/F or not), your ability to both absorb volumes of information and manage your time, the competitiveness of the residency you are trying to match to and of course other commitments in your life (such as rearing a child).

This all seems very familiar. For most students, it was difficult enough to just get in to a Medical School. Would you say that you are busier/more stressed as a Medical School student than when you were an undergrad?

Different kind of stress, but less so. I was active duty working 80+ hours per week with two babies under 2 years old trying to get my bachelors. Now I’m a student and my kids are 4 and 5. Much less stressful lol.
 
Thank you for the insight everyone, this all sounds very promising.

I imagine that the stress of Medical School is dependent upon the rigor of your institution (P/F or not), your ability to both absorb volumes of information and manage your time, the competitiveness of the residency you are trying to match to and of course other commitments in your life (such as rearing a child).

This all seems very familiar. For most students, it was difficult enough to just get in to a Medical School. Would you say that you are busier/more stressed as a Medical School student than when you were an undergrad?

A ton more stressful. Med school was my first real academic challenge (with exception of standardized tests). I was the type where everything came really easily to me so i did well without much effort.
 
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