To all the students who went to bed crying
or woke up screaming.
To all those who needed to leave their hearts at the door.
- "The four-pointed star... is a phenomenon carrying a grave and solemn warning."[1]
Besides medical school, there is probably no other four-year experience - unless it be four year's service in a war - that can so change the cognitive content of one's mind and the nature of one's relationships with others.
- F.D. Moorse, Harvard Medical School
This is the School of Babylon
And at its hand we learn
To walk into the furnaces
And whistle as we burn.
- Thomas Blackburn
I just graduated with honors from Tufts University School of Medicine, the class of 1999. I don't feel honorable, though. I have become disillusioned - disgusted even - by medical training and medicine as a whole. I want to help others dispel their illusions as well.
Medical school is four years long. The first two years are basic science lectures, more like an extension of college. The last two years, however, third year and fourth year, involve rotations through hospitals. "One of the few statements with which most physicians would agree," one doctor writes, "is that the third year, the year on the wards, is the critical year in medical education." [2] "In no year of their adult lives," another contends, "do students change so much as during the third year of medical school."[3] This is my story of third year, the worst year of my life.
