"You should not be sleeping more than 5 hours per night" - Student Services Director

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A53

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So here's an executive summary of my situation:
-I attend a school with mandatory attendance
-This block is particularly dense material
-Our lectures are very poorly structured, to the point where I can only reasonably learn from outside resources
-Even with good time management, I have been unable to find enough hours in a day to study all of our school's lectures and find any spare time for outside resources
-I went to our school's guidance center for some advice, and they identified my sleeping hours as the problem

I'm former military, so I'm asleep by 10pm and awake by 5am. I usually exercise in the morning, review material for an hour, and make a good breakfast before leaving for class (starts at 8am). Our lectures are mandatory and run until 4pm (including labs) on most days. Headphones in class are not allowed.

By the time I get home at ~4:30pm, I dive right into studying and 5.5 hours is just not enough time for me to get through 4 lectures of material and eat dinner. I've tried pre-studying slides prior to class, to get more out of class time, but I've found our lectures to be very disorganized and difficult to follow.

To this point I have been getting decent grades, typically in the low A or high B range, but I'm struggling this block and I find it difficult to believe that allocating ~14 hours per day to med school is not enough to comfortably get through the material. So I went to the guidance center to see if they could identify any flaws in my study habits, and they recommend I go to sleep two hours later because it's unreasonable to expect to get 7 hours of sleep per night as a medical student.

Would you all say their assessment is accurate? And if anyone has any additional recommendations I would love to hear them.
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A53 said:
So here's an executive summary of my situation:
-I attend a school with mandatory attendance
-This block is particularly dense material
-Our lectures are very poorly structured, to the point where I can only reasonably learn from outside resources
-Even with good time management, I have been unable to find enough hours in a day to study all of our school's lectures and find any spare time for outside resources
-I went to our school's guidance center for some advice, and they identified my sleeping hours as the problem

I'm former military, so I'm asleep by 10pm and awake by 5am. I usually exercise in the morning, review material for an hour, and make a good breakfast before leaving for class (starts at 8am). Our lectures are mandatory and run until 4pm (including labs) on most days. Headphones in class are not allowed.

By the time I get home at ~4:30pm, I dive right into studying and 5.5 hours is just not enough time for me to get through 4 lectures of material and eat dinner. I've tried pre-studying slides prior to class, to get more out of class time, but I've found our lectures to be very disorganized and difficult to follow.

To this point I have been getting decent grades, typically in the low A or high B range, but I'm struggling this block and I find it difficult to believe that allocating ~14 hours per day to med school is not enough to comfortably get through the material. So I went to the guidance center to see if they could identify any flaws in my study habits, and they recommend I go to sleep two hours later because it's unreasonable to expect to get 7 hours of sleep per night as a medical student.

Would you all say their assessment is accurate? And if anyone has any additional recommendations I would love to hear them.
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I'm glad I do not go to your school (I chose to attend a school with non-mandatory lecture to avoid problems like this). I'm truly sorry that you received such crappy advice. I do not believe any medical school should equate poor health habits with being a medical student (3rd year is a different story).

For me, this is not an accurate assessment. I sleep 8 hours a night and perform well (*I am not a genius). From the people I talk to in class, they seem to sleep well also. Again, my condolences.

But it sounds like you are doing everything right on your end. The problem seems to reside with ineffectual teaching/relying too much on a lecture-based curriculum. I hope that your next block is better.
 
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Yikes, mandatory lectures? You guys are in med school, not elementary school. The administration should treat you as such.

There is no way that your sleeping habits are to blame for the lack of time. I can't believe they had the audacity to advise you to sleep less! It sounds like the administration needs to reevaluate the curriculum and get rid of inefficiencies and redundancies.
 
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Mandatory lectures absolutely suck... it's so much more efficient to just watch lectures at home.
 
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Man your school is terrible. If you don't have 10 hours a night to sleep as a med student, something's wrong. Except in third year.
 
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A53 said:
To this point I have been getting decent grades, typically in the low A or high B range, but I'm struggling this block and I find it difficult to believe that allocating ~14 hours per day to med school is not enough to comfortably get through the material. So I went to the guidance center to see if they could identify any flaws in my study habits, and they recommend I go to sleep two hours later because it's unreasonable to expect to get 7 hours of sleep per night as a medical student.

Would you all say their assessment is accurate? And if anyone has any additional recommendations I would love to hear them.
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I'm glad you've been able to do well with such an inflexible curriculum up until now, and I'd say not to get too discouraged even if you don't do well in one section. As to the bolded, that's possibly one of the most ridiculous statements I've ever heard come out of a medical school. You might have some nights where you won't be able to get 7 solid hours, but to say you should regularly be getting 5 hours just to pass is stupid. I find it somewhat outrageous that this advice would come from a learning specialist or a mental health counselor, and they should be ashamed of their advice.

On a side note, threads like this always make me wonder what school the OP attends, as it blows my mind that this kind of advice is given at any institution and makes me wonder what schools have such crappy curriculum policies.
 
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Stagg737 said:
I'm glad you've been able to do well with such an inflexible curriculum up until now, and I'd say not to get too discouraged even if you don't do well in one section. As to the bolded, that's possibly one of the most ridiculous statements I've ever heard come out of a medical school. You might have some nights where you won't be able to get 7 solid hours, but to say you should regularly be getting 5 hours just to pass is stupid. I find it somewhat outrageous that this advice would come from a learning specialist or a mental health counselor, and they should be ashamed of their advice.

On a side note, threads like this always make me wonder what school the OP attends, as it blows my mind that this kind of advice is given at any institution and makes me wonder what schools have such crappy curriculum policies.
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OP's school sounds a lot like mine, but I go to a DO school. We don't have the same headphones policy though -- it's frowned upon but I'd be in the same boat as OP if I didn't study during class.

As far as sleeping 5 hours per night, what the **** kind of advice is that? If they don't allow headphones I'd just buy good ear plugs and learn to ignore the lecture while you study. There's a time and place for us all to earn our stripes from lack of sleep, but M1 is not that time.
 
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Sorry about the headphones thing, but any chance you can study how you want anyway during lecture?

I would document what was said verbatim by who, time and date it.

When you get a chance to do evals (be sure they are anonymous) or the LCME exit thing, SKEWER this school.
 
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Also, you may need to cut out your work out and ruin the quality of your breakfast & dinner. You don't have time this block. One block of not working out & eating like crap won't kill you.

On the other hand, if those things are *essential* to your efficiency do what ya gotta.

If you can do just as well studying without them....

Can you eat your breakfast during lecture? A lot of us did. Also, crockpot timer meals. Oatmeal this way, or instant is what I did. Scoop into a tupperware and go. Or, tupperware the night before & nuke. My school had 10 minute breaks & students would nuke, use hot tap water, etc for tea & other edibles. Granola bars, powerbars, fruit.

Crockpot timer dinners to come home to. I rarely ate dinner without reading at the same time. Or, a lot did crockpot type cooking on weekend for the week, can freeze meals that way. I bought microwave dinners. Gross? Sure, but med school's gross.

Also, I would skim the material and try to decide what to focus on, and what you can skip. That's right, what not to study on purpose.

When you are in these straits, and you will be in residency, you just have to accept you're gonna have to cut a combo of personal stuff & job details.
 
Get some nude ear plugs and wear them during lecture so you can do your thing. That is way too much lecture time.
 
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Your school is screwing you
 
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Your school sucks and these rules are nonsense.

That said, I voluntarily went to all of the lectures in the first two years. While I generally thought the lectures were good, not all of them were. There are ways to learn from all but the worst of them. 5 hours is a lot of time. How many resources are you using? My guess is that you're trying to learn the same thing from too many different places if 5 hours of legit studying a day isn't working for you.
 
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Screw that person. As if 8-4 mandatory lecture wasn't cruel enough (seriously, what the hell are they teaching you for 8 hours every day!?), they're seriously suggesting that anyone sleeping more than 5 hours a night is a slacker? Just the thought is making me angry and I don't even go to this school.
 
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Azete said:
OP's school sounds a lot like mine, but I go to a DO school. We don't have the same headphones policy though -- it's frowned upon but I'd be in the same boat as OP if I didn't study during class.

As far as sleeping 5 hours per night, what the **** kind of advice is that? If they don't allow headphones I'd just buy good ear plugs and learn to ignore the lecture while you study. There's a time and place for us all to earn our stripes from lack of sleep, but M1 is not that time.
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I also go to a DO school, and we don't have policies that are anything like this. We had mandatory lectures on occasion, but most of the time it was just 1-2 hours and I've never heard of a "no headphones" rule.

@A53 , how do they know if you show up to lecture and what actually happens if you skip?
 
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Crayola227 said:
Also, you may need to cut out your work out and ruin the quality of your breakfast & dinner. You don't have time this block. One block of not working out & eating like crap won't kill you.
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Imo having a crappy diet and not exercising usually make things worse.
 
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My condolences as well. Your school flat out sucks.

Thankfully most schools aren't like this but this is such an example of how bassackwards education can be. A rant for another day though.
 
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No headphones, but what about ear plugs? Far less conspicuous :)
 
Mandatory attendance hurts students' academic performance. I cannot believe there are schools that still require it.
 
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Stagg737 said:
I also go to a DO school, and we don't have policies that are anything like this. We had mandatory lectures on occasion, but most of the time it was just 1-2 hours and I've never heard of a "no headphones" rule.

@A53 , how do they know if you show up to lecture and what actually happens if you skip?
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We have assigned seating and they take a picture of our class every day to take attendance. If we miss more than 10%, we have to remediate unless you have a major illness but they have to independently verify the condition with one of the school's physician faculty.

Lannister said:
Screw that person. As if 8-4 mandatory lecture wasn't cruel enough (seriously, what the hell are they teaching you for 8 hours every day!?), they're seriously suggesting that anyone sleeping more than 5 hours a night is a slacker? Just the thought is making me angry and I don't even go to this school.
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We usually have 4 lectures between 8-noon, and then we have afternoon labs from 1-4 3 days per week. The other two days we usually have some type of mandatory clinical skills class or guest speaker or ethics seminar. On average, we get one day every 2 weeks or so that we're home before 4pm.

Crayola227 said:
Sorry about the headphones thing, but any chance you can study how you want anyway during lecture?

I would document what was said verbatim by who, time and date it.

When you get a chance to do evals (be sure they are anonymous) or the LCME exit thing, SKEWER this school.
Click to expand...

We have some students that try to study during class, but we have pop iClicker quizzes a couple times per week that usually count for 15-20% of our grade per class. Usually it's on material that was presented that day and not on previous lectures.
 
A53 said:
We have assigned seating and they take a picture of our class every day to take attendance. If we miss more than 10%, we have to remediate unless you have a major illness but they have to independently verify the condition with one of the school's physician faculty.



We usually have 4 lectures between 8-noon, and then we have afternoon labs from 1-4 3 days per week. The other two days we usually have some type of mandatory clinical skills class or guest speaker or ethics seminar. On average, we get one day every 2 weeks or so that we're home before 4pm.



We have some students that try to study during class, but we have pop iClicker quizzes a couple times per week that usually count for 15-20% of our grade per class. Usually it's on material that was presented that day and not on previous lectures.
Click to expand...


This sounds like literal hell. Honestly I'd really love to know what school this is, and how your entire student body isn't clinically depressed.
 
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A53 said:
We usually have 4 lectures between 8-noon, and then we have afternoon labs from 1-4 3 days per week. The other two days we usually have some type of mandatory clinical skills class or guest speaker or ethics seminar. On average, we get one day every 2 weeks or so that we're home before 4pm.
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This just seems so insane to me. I don't know what's wrong with these schools that have so much mandatory stuff. The maximum amount of non-mandatory lecture at my school is 4 hours per day, and usually we only have 1 or 2 days a week where there's actually four lectures (it's usually 2-3). Then we have maybe 3 or 4 hours of mandatory afternoon stuff per week. Most weeks we have one day almost completely free. And people at my school do just fine on Step 1/2. So how exactly do these schools that have a ridiculous amount of mandatory crap think they're helping their students? Obviously it's possible for students to do well with non-mandatory lectures because students at other schools are doing fine!

Sorry, I know my ranting isn't helpful for you, it just angers me that your school is doing this to you.
 
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A53 said:
We have assigned seating and they take a picture of our class every day to take attendance. If we miss more than 10%, we have to remediate unless you have a major illness but they have to independently verify the condition with one of the school's physician faculty.



We usually have 4 lectures between 8-noon, and then we have afternoon labs from 1-4 3 days per week. The other two days we usually have some type of mandatory clinical skills class or guest speaker or ethics seminar. On average, we get one day every 2 weeks or so that we're home before 4pm.



We have some students that try to study during class, but we have pop iClicker quizzes a couple times per week that usually count for 15-20% of our grade per class. Usually it's on material that was presented that day and not on previous lectures.
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OP, I am so sorry for you. Words cannot express my pity.
 
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What school is this? I need to know if it is a school I am currently accepted into so I can send them their acceptance back before even April.
 
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Sorry OP.

This is what I tell premeds when they are deciding between school X and Y. As a premed it's hard to guess what might be important in selecting a school. Class policy, grading policy, etc are so important.
 
Lannister said:
Imo having a crappy diet and not exercising usually make things worse.
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I agree, I was being a bit dramatic.

but he's saying he wakes up at 5 am, and between 5 am and 8 am is getting 1 hr of studying done.

So out of 2 hours, it must be possible to carve more time out for school. Something has to give.

Good breakfasts and workouts can be fast. You can get away with 20 min intense cardio, and resistance train twice a week. Space them out appropriately & try to have more of that time on the weekend. You might lose gainz this way, but it is still enough to be healthy.

Days off the exercise routine can be days without a shower. If you're gonna tell me that skipping a shower on a non-work out day is gonna hurt, then I think we need to reevaluate the level of mental toughness & ability to still learn one is expected to have in a field like medicine.

Make up healthy meals on the weekend. Make that breakfast grab & go. Eat during lecture if you can.

Some microwave meals can be healthy, actually.

I guess my point is, sometimes you're faced with pick between time for work/study, sleep, eating, exercising. And you have to cut time from somewhere. You gotta get more efficient/fast, or cut.

I think 2 less hours of sleep will he more harmful to mental function than more convenience foods for this block, but that's me.

I think where I went wrong was to assume he should sacrifice diet & exercise for sleep.

Op has to decide where to sacrifice.
 
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Affiche said:
Get some nude ear plugs and wear them during lecture so you can do your thing. That is way too much lecture time.
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Alternatively, acquire nude pics of some admin and do whatever you want
 
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Crayola227 said:
Days off the exercise routine can be days without a shower.
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Lol the day I have to give up showers because I don't have time is the day I start questioning whether I picked the wrong career.
 
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A53 said:
We have assigned seating and they take a picture of our class every day to take attendance. If we miss more than 10%, we have to remediate unless you have a major illness but they have to independently verify the condition with one of the school's physician faculty.



We usually have 4 lectures between 8-noon, and then we have afternoon labs from 1-4 3 days per week. The other two days we usually have some type of mandatory clinical skills class or guest speaker or ethics seminar. On average, we get one day every 2 weeks or so that we're home before 4pm.



We have some students that try to study during class, but we have pop iClicker quizzes a couple times per week that usually count for 15-20% of our grade per class. Usually it's on material that was presented that day and not on previous lectures.
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Dude wtf you guys are being treated like some sort of prisoners. Absolutely stupid, insane, and inefficient
 
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Make some noise to administration. Petition. Nothing is set in stone. Rally up your peers. If enough of you take issue to mandatory attendance, you can force their hand.
 
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I am so SO sorry. This sounds absolutely horrible! I wish I had some helpful advice but I'm stumped.
 
so your school pays someone to examine the picture and see who is in place and who isn't? would be worst job ever
 
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eteshoe said:
Dude wtf you guys are being treated like some sort of prisoners. Absolutely stupid, insane, and inefficient
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Being treated like a prisioner *is* the medical school experience. Especially years 3 & 4.

When you graduate to internship is when you graduate to slavery.
 
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meurotic said:
Make some noise to administration. Petition. Nothing is set in stone. Rally up your peers. If enough of you take issue to mandatory attendance, you can force their hand.
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Depends on class size. Big chance. If you don't get enough people to join your little insurrection it could really **** you.

Careful whenever you makes waves with admin.
 
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That really sounds terrible. That's not what med school is like other places. I've got no actual advice, just sympathy.

To applicants reading this fortunate enough to have the option of choosing between schools, the most important things: P/F, non-mandatory lecture, and hearing from current students that the administration is truly on their side are truly the most important things by far imo.
 
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A53 said:
but they have to independently verify the condition with one of the school's physician faculty.
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Erm...did anyone else catch this? That isn't okay. Faculty isn't privy to any of your medical conditions unless you volunteer that information. You do not have to disclose anything.
 
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Its gotta be one of the new schools with provisional accreditation or something. There's just no way this is a normal med school.
 
Can confirm this is a real school; I am almost certain OP is my classmate.
 
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IMO mandatory attendance should be outlawed by the LCME. There is absolutely no legitimate reason for this at all.

Sent from my SM-N910P using SDN mobile
 
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I realize this is the MD side of the house, but I thought I'd mention that several DO schools aren't too far off from this. There were weeks first year when we'd have upwards of 30 hours of required coursework on campus. Usually it'd be more like 25, but still. MS2 is much better in that regard, as we're done with our year of anatomy lab. No matter what though, we've got 4 or sometimes 5 hours of lectures in the AM. We can wear headphones if it's not a guest lecturer, and we can skip up to 20 percent of our AM lectures, but any more than that and we get called before the Academic Committee. We're also part of the "required seats and camera" club someone up-thread mentioned.
 
Can you zone out of lecture to focus on studying in class? Do you think you can still pull off a B or C while focusing on the Step 1 material that's related to the block?

I really don't think cutting back on sleep, exercise, or nutrition will help. These are the things that will be your pillars as you go forward.
 
Not trying to expose anyone, but this really sounds like VCOM...
 
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