Daily habits to remain "normal" throughout med school?

[circlecircledotdot]

Knowing that med school pretty much dominates ones life, I'm just curious to know how you guys kept up with still being 'normal' and having the ability to speak to people from all walks of life about most topics?

Did you guys have to intentionally read the news, follow pop-culture, etc while in med school? What are your thoughts on this? 

And for those with an s/o, do you think it burdened your partner to always be talking about medicine?

 

 

 

[sleeping_sickness]

Med school doesn't really dominate your life unless you let it. In retrospect, med school wasn't really that busy - at least not compared to surgical residency (which also isn't as bad as people say it is). Make sure you keep up with hobbies. If you usually do a sport or extra-curricular multiple times per week now, make sure you squeeze it in at least 1x/wk during med school. First year med really isn't that busy at all and there's no reason why you can't live a semi-normal life. Third year is the busiest. 

I made an effort to keep up with friends outside of med school and I just kept on being myself. Don't always talk about medicine. I found that I would end up avoiding the people who always talked about medicine. I kept work at work, and home at home. 

Take-home point - just be yourself. Don't let medicine take that from you or you'll be unhappy and you'll burn out. 

[Bambi]

1 hour ago, circlecircledotdot said:

Knowing that med school pretty much dominates ones life, I'm just curious to know how you guys kept up with still being 'normal' and having the ability to speak to people from all walks of life about most topics?

Did you guys have to intentionally read the news, follow pop-culture, etc while in med school? What are your thoughts on this? 

And for those with an s/o, do you think it burdened your partner to always be talking about medicine?

 

 

 

My experience was different than sleeping_sickness. During med school, I worked hard 6 days a week, and I had no time for anything else. All my friends are classmates from med school, the others prior to med school are gone. I had no time to interact with others. 

However, my life has opened up since in surgical residency. I found first yr residency brutal,  it I adjusted long ago, work hard, take vacations and have a life outside of the hospital. It is important that your s.o. Is both understanding and supportive to your work and ambitions. My s.o. did not feel burdened in any way.

[1D7]

Friends: I was still involved with the core group of friends I had before medical school. Much less time to actually interact with any of them face-to-face. People I saw weekly before medical school, I met up with only monthly or a few times per year. Although the workload was not unreasonable in the preclinical years, the distance to home discouraged me from travelling back often (and even when I did, time had to be allocated to family/SO before friends). I imagine if I did my schooling close to friends that I'd probably see them more regularly during preclinical years. During clinical years there was no time at all for those sort of interactions.

When we would meet up I generally avoided talking about medicine except when they asked about it. No reason to talk about it when it already dominated my conversations with my classmates/med school friends.

SO: Medicine was a heavy burden. We both had busy and often incompatible schedules. Finding someone understanding and supportive is definitely key.

[Birdy]

I set rules around when I was allowed to work on school stuff and very rarely broke then. Throughout med school, I looked at it as my job, and prioritized the things outside of medicine that make my life what it is. I loved medical school and enjoyed it, but my real life is my family and friends and pets and pursuit of my interests. So I made sure to prioritize those things. 

I don’t talk to my husband constantly about medicine (though he has been subject to a few of my rants on inequalities...) We talk about the same stuff we talked about before I went into medicine. We just occasionally talk about medicine too, since it’s my job and it’s interesting to him as someone who receives health services, even if he doesn’t share my passion for it. 

[goleafsgochris]

I mostly agree with the posters who listed friends outside of medicine as helpful.

Honestly though OP don't worry too much about this.  There are people in medicine who are obsessed with medicine/are abnormal, but in my experience these are the people that were not normal to begin with.  Typically they are the type that obsessed about medicine prior to getting in, and who think of medicine as not so much a career but as a personal identity.  Its a weird criticism, but it was the people who really seemed to love medicine and medical topics while even in like undergrad life sci (rather than just studying it when they had to).