What you wish you knew as a MS-1?

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engineering background.. and i can barely study for an hr at a time

I did engineering for undergrad too and I really regret it...

The advice I can give u now is that if u are still in the school and have financial aid as well as elective course needed to be taken, then take physiology or biochem whatever classes that u didn't get to take b/c u did engineering.

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I should have clarified. The study time I was referring to was in addition to class time. You shouldn't skip class and expect to not have to study. However, if you do go to most classes and are able to pick up something from class so you aren't terribly behind, you won't have to study as much. I didn't pull any crazy all-nighters or anything like that. Last year, my routine was pretty much go to most classes (or watch them online), not study much day to day, then study hard the weekend before the exam. Probably a few hours of studying Friday night, 8 hours each Saturday and Sunday. I didn't always get the grades I hoped for, but in the end I did pretty well and I didn't drive myself crazy. If you aren't going to class, I agree that you definitely do need to make up that time somehow.
 
don't forget that panda was older, had already had a career or two under his belt when he ended up where he is now. There is definitely a different threshhold for individuals-if you are a 21 yo who has done nothing but school, you will get your balls busted more than a 35 yo who has done some other stuff. i.e. one is seen as a "kid" the other as more of an adult. HIs advice is good and all but he is not the end all be all when it comes to med schol decorum

fwiw-I often agree wholeheartedly with what he says
 
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bump....

Any more advice?????
 
bump....

Any more advice?????

if you're not a bio major especially, get really good at making review sheets. They save your ***. All the people who came in with an army of different colored pens freaked me out and I kind of scoffed at them (as an engineer where we never had to memorize anything except the gas constant), but there is just too much information to memorize to do it any differently.
 
Currently an MS0, but one of the things that has been encouraging to me is something a friend of mine in high school (class before me, now a second-year med student) said: yes, people study a lot, but for her, she doesn't study nearly as much as most others and still does reasonably well.

Stories about undergrad being more difficult aside, I'm still kind of hoping that I'll be one of those people that can study less than ~4-5 hours a day, attend lectures, and be more or less alright.

Not to pick on you-- I think a lot of us think this way before starting med school. Don't assume that you'll be one of the lucky few who can put in less time studying and still do well. Pretty much everyone in your class could do this in college, but not many will be able to do it in med school.

Also, I totally agree with Anka. You'll get TONS of advice about how to study from second years and I'd take it with a grain of salt. It's not time to reinvent the wheel; you obviously have decent study habits if you've made it this far. Advice like "don't go to class" and "don't buy books" is not good advice for everyone, but it seems to be given out quite frequently (and led to not so stellar grades for me at the start of my first year). Figure out what works for you and go with it!
 
And if you find something that doesn't work for you, abandon it! It's all about adapting.

Even if your system worked for you in a previous class/semester you should be prepared to switch it up in the future. It seems like everytime I find my groove the ante is upped and I have to adapt again.
 
How the women didn't look so good the first day, but they looked better and better with each passing day.

I'm sure the same thing can be said about you and the men in your med school, *******.
 
i wish i wouldve known how fake people can be..how they will act nice to your face and then you hear all the mean and cruel things they say

we have a guy in our class with a muscular dz and i overheard some classmates making fun of how he walks

so freakin immature and not to mention totally without compassion
 
Holy cow, lilpook, that is absolutely awful.

People can be truly, hideously mean. I hope he didn't hear them/see them do this.
 
no he didn't hear.

i don't know...i tend to think my class is one of the meaner ones around.

i've heard people being put down for all sorts of ridiculous stuff...

-the way someone eats their lunch
-the way someone says hello
-the way someone doesn't say much at all
-the way someone smiles too much (no, i am not joking)
-the way someone wears their pants

blah blah blah the list is endless

i hate my class
 
no he didn't hear.

i don't know...i tend to think my class is one of the meaner ones around.

i've heard people being put down for all sorts of ridiculous stuff...

-the way someone eats their lunch
-the way someone says hello
-the way someone doesn't say much at all
-the way someone smiles too much (no, i am not joking)
-the way someone wears their pants

blah blah blah the list is endless

i hate my class

Lame. Is this the majority of your class or is there just a small but vocal crew of a&&holes? I'd focus on finding nice people who you can trust and just avoiding spending any time with the jerks. Did I mention homeschooling's nice, too? :)
 
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Oh I'm so glad he didn't hear.

Dr Bagel, your answer was perfect! You sound like such a great person. I'm so bummed that you're leaving Portland. If I ever get there, you'll be gone! And you're the sort of folk I would have liked to have hung out with. Darnit darnit darnit. OHSU doesn't know what it's missing... But one of my closest, dearest friends is from Oklahoma and LOVES it and LOVES the people out there so I'm sure you'll be happy and that there will be great folks in your class.

Pook, listen, there HAVE to be nice people in your class. Maybe the ones everyone else is making fun of? I have faith that there are others in your class that are worth getting to know and being friends with. I absolutely refuse to believe that out of an entire med school class only one person (you) is humane. That would just be too awful a concept.
 
Oh I'm so glad he didn't hear.

Dr Bagel, your answer was perfect! You sound like such a great person. I'm so bummed that you're leaving Portland. If I ever get there, you'll be gone! And you're the sort of folk I would have liked to have hung out with. Darnit darnit darnit. OHSU doesn't know what it's missing... But one of my closest, dearest friends is from Oklahoma and LOVES it and LOVES the people out there so I'm sure you'll be happy and that there will be great folks in your class.

Pook, listen, there HAVE to be nice people in your class. Maybe the ones everyone else is making fun of? I have faith that there are others in your class that are worth getting to know and being friends with. I absolutely refuse to believe that out of an entire med school class only one person (you) is humane. That would just be too awful a concept.

Ahh, thanks! :) You are going to love Portland. One thing that I liked about living in that part of the country is that people are really, really nice.

Yeah, probably most people in Pook's class are nice. Sometimes the jerks are just more vocal.
 
The only thing you need to know about Med School is:
"Am I 100% sure this is for me."

Because I gotta be honest, If you are 99.7% then it will eat you up and spit you out, tie you up, drag you for over 6 miles, set you on fire, chop you up and bury you all without blinking. Just, be sure....that's my adivce.

However, if you are 100% into it then your determination will let you laugh while med school does all the aforementioned things.
 
...that getting good grades have very little to do with being a good physician.
 
i wish i wouldve known how fake people can be..how they will act nice to your face and then you hear all the mean and cruel things they say

we have a guy in our class with a muscular dz and i overheard some classmates making fun of how he walks

so freakin immature and not to mention totally without compassion

it's unfortunate that garbage like that will one day be allowed to care for patients. they must have really put on an act on interview day.

if i were you i would call them out on it and make them feel like jerks.
 
The only thing you need to know about Med School is:
"Am I 100% sure this is for me."

Because I gotta be honest, If you are 99.7% then it will eat you up and spit you out, tie you up, drag you for over 6 miles, set you on fire, chop you up and bury you all without blinking. Just, be sure....that's my adivce.

However, if you are 100% into it then your determination will let you laugh while med school does all the aforementioned things.

Horrible advice. There is no way to be 100% sure this is for you before going into it. There is also no way to be sure this is for you as a first-year student. Some people could be mediocre test-takers and really struggle the first couple years but be great on the wards; there are many species like this that just are not good multiple choice test takers.

Your life third and fourth year will give you the idea of what the rest of your life/career will be like and whether it's for you; and even then, it's not a total indicator. The first two years are temporary; you can hate them and be done with them, and never be bothered by anything like them again.

I seriously was about 70% sure about going to med school and now I am pretty sure I made the right decision, with the caveat that I will have much better judgment come third-year
 
if you're not a bio major especially, get really good at making review sheets. They save your ***. All the people who came in with an army of different colored pens freaked me out and I kind of scoffed at them (as an engineer where we never had to memorize anything except the gas constant), but there is just too much information to memorize to do it any differently.

this made me laugh. i was a math major and still find it difficult to let go of a little pride and force myself to memorize things, and oddly, i also scoff at the idea of using highlighters and color-coding one's notes. review sheets are great, but when i'm not in the mood for making them or things just get too tedious, another thing i've found helpful is to review the same topic in as many different forms as possible--class notes, textbooks, BRS, cool tutorials you can find through google, harrison's or other medicine texts available through your med school's website, journal articles, etc. it may be a more time consuming method, but i've found it to be far less painful.

repetition is obviously key, but i think those of us with shorter attention spans tend to do better when there's a bit of variety involved. the thought of sitting down and reading the same text for 6 hours makes me ill.
 
this made me laugh. i was a math major and still find it difficult to let go of a little pride and force myself to memorize things, and oddly, i also scoff at the idea of using highlighters and color-coding one's notes. review sheets are great, but when i'm not in the mood for making them or things just get too tedious, another thing i've found helpful is to review the same topic in as many different forms as possible--class notes, textbooks, BRS, cool tutorials you can find through google, harrison's or other medicine texts available through your med school's website, journal articles, etc. it may be a more time consuming method, but i've found it to be far less painful.

repetition is obviously key, but i think those of us with shorter attention spans tend to do better when there's a bit of variety involved. the thought of sitting down and reading the same text for 6 hours makes me ill.

Yes, yes, yes!! I've got to admit that I'm too lazy to make spreadsheets and note cards, so I've gotten into using the same technique. Looking at the material from multiple different sources does help it stick. Also, it seems a little less like work, imo.
 
i'm pretty bad at identifying what's important to "memorize" (maybe because my eyes start glossing over things, or i'm just tired, or i kind of like to go off on useless tangents--something to watch out for if you're a quantitative/technical or possibly just a curious type--that leave me lost in the trees), so finding overlap between multiple sources can help me focus. in the end i have a pretty good idea of the couple things i absolutely MUST memorize.

doctor bagel, i agree--this method is actually kind of fun!
 
yeah,i also look in multiple sources pretty often. Sometimes wording in one just is clumsy and seeing it in something else makes it clear. Sometimes something is "dumbed down" for somebody without a strong math/physics/chemistry background, and it makes it even more confusing for people who understand these subjects from close to first principles.

For example, the respiratory physiology textbook we used had so much hand-waving explanations i wanted to pull my hair out. I am like DRAW A FORCE DIAGRAM AND IT WILL MAKE PERFECT SENSE but I had to do all of that myself.

I find UpToDate a pretty good, free source for selected materials that can be explained in terms of chemistry and physics but are not.
 
i'm pretty bad at identifying what's important to "memorize" (maybe because my eyes start glossing over things, or i'm just tired, or i kind of like to go off on useless tangents--something to watch out for if you're a quantitative/technical or possibly just a curious type--that leave me lost in the trees), so finding overlap between multiple sources can help me focus. in the end i have a pretty good idea of the couple things i absolutely MUST memorize.

doctor bagel, i agree--this method is actually kind of fun!

Lol don't get me started. We were learning about aging of organophosphorous AchE inhibitors, and how it would happen for tertiary alkoxyl groups but not primary or secondary groups. No explanation was given as to why this would happen. I was like "hmmm, i wonder why that happens in terms of organic chemistry". I finally figured out why, but only after wasting about 3 hours :thumbdown: . Not a good use of time in terms of exam performance, but edifying nonetheless.
 
Horrible advice. There is no way to be 100% sure this is for you before going into it. There is also no way to be sure this is for you as a first-year student. Some people could be mediocre test-takers and really struggle the first couple years but be great on the wards; there are many species like this that just are not good multiple choice test takers.

Your life third and fourth year will give you the idea of what the rest of your life/career will be like and whether it's for you; and even then, it's not a total indicator. The first two years are temporary; you can hate them and be done with them, and never be bothered by anything like them again.

I seriously was about 70% sure about going to med school and now I am pretty sure I made the right decision, with the caveat that I will have much better judgment come third-year

Sorry you think my opinion is horrible, but it is only advice based on my experience and should be taken as such. Seems like you are just picking a fight and being an a$$hole.
 
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