medorbust99 Posted May 11, 2016 Report Share Posted May 11, 2016 Hi everyone, Looking for advice from some current Mac med students on workload and balancing it all. Attending med school has been a life long dream of mine. I'm a mature student, and giving up an established career with a high salary to pursue it. I was absolutely elated yesterday when I received my acceptance to Mac. A bit of background about myself: I'm engaged and in a blended family. My fiancée has kids and relocating to Hamilton is not an option for us. There also won't be room in the budget for a second accommodation in Hamilton, in addition to maintaining our household in Toronto. So the only way this can work is for me to commute. I realize this won't be ideal and am willing to make the sacrifice. Looking for any advice from current Mac Med students who may have commuted and how difficult it was to balance it all. Since I will be going against traffic, the drive time will be 50 minutes if I leave early enough (and worst case scenario an hour and 15 minutes if leave in rush hour- which I will obviously avoid at all costs). I also have family in Burlington, and I plan on crashing there two nights a week so that I'm only making the long commute three times a week. Is this totally insane or do-able? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FeministKilljoy Posted May 11, 2016 Report Share Posted May 11, 2016 I know of surgeons at McMaster who do this... It can be done. I have friends who studied Physiotherapy at Mac and lived in Mississauga and commuted. Having a transponder for the 407 helps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
osteogeek Posted May 11, 2016 Report Share Posted May 11, 2016 It's going to be hard, but it's doable. I commuted from Mississauga to Mac for all of med school, and know people who commuted from Toronto and Vaughan, which are similar drive times as yours, and we all made it through the other end ok. We all did the commute for similar family reasons, which made it worth it - it definitely wouldn't be worth the effort to commute if it was just to save money. During preclerkship, it really shouldn't be too awful - you won't necessarily have to be on campus every day depending on your tutorial schedule, so that helps a ton. During clerkship it will be tougher but still doable - some rotations are offered in Burlington, and if you could match to those sites it would shorten your commute. The two killers will be your 6-week clerkship rotations in surgery and internal medicine. Those are long hours and pretty exhausting, plus lots of call. I managed those commuting by either taking transit so I didn't have to drive post-call, or going back to my call room after a shift and taking a nap for an hour or two before I had to hit the road. Another option would be to try to budget for a short-term rental in Hamilton for those two rotations (everyone does those in Hamilton, no possibility of doing them further east), or to try to stay with your family in Burlington a bit more during those blocks. If you want to chat more about it, feel free to PM me and I'll give you my e-mail address. It will suck at times, but for me the benefit of coming home and living with my husband has been totally worth it over the alternative. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fightoffyourdemons Posted May 11, 2016 Report Share Posted May 11, 2016 There is a student in my year who is in the exact same situation as you! PM me and I can probably get you his email. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Birdy Posted May 12, 2016 Report Share Posted May 12, 2016 There are at least two students in our year who commute from TO. One is in my tutorial group. They seem to get on well annd manage it well enough. An hour-ish commute sucks but it's not unworkable. Plenty manage it. And as others said, you won't need to be in Hamilton every day most of the time in preclerkship at least and you can rank the closer-to-Toronto sites higher for clerkship rotation site selection. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Edict Posted May 12, 2016 Report Share Posted May 12, 2016 Hi everyone, Looking for advice from some current Mac med students on workload and balancing it all. Attending med school has been a life long dream of mine. I'm a mature student, and giving up an established career with a high salary to pursue it. I was absolutely elated yesterday when I received my acceptance to Mac. A bit of background about myself: I'm engaged and in a blended family. My fiancée has kids and relocating to Hamilton is not an option for us. There also won't be room in the budget for a second accommodation in Hamilton, in addition to maintaining our household in Toronto. So the only way this can work is for me to commute. I realize this won't be ideal and am willing to make the sacrifice. Looking for any advice from current Mac Med students who may have commuted and how difficult it was to balance it all. Since I will be going against traffic, the drive time will be 50 minutes if I leave early enough (and worst case scenario an hour and 15 minutes if leave in rush hour- which I will obviously avoid at all costs). I also have family in Burlington, and I plan on crashing there two nights a week so that I'm only making the long commute three times a week. Is this totally insane or do-able? Totally doable, there were multiple people in my class with almost the exact same situation as you commuting from DT toronto. I also know of one person who recently moved back from Hamilton to the GTA to commute for the rest of preclerkship and clerkship. The reality is that you only really need to go to Hamilton 2-3 days per week during pre-clerkship. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
medorbust99 Posted May 12, 2016 Author Report Share Posted May 12, 2016 Cool! Thanks so much guys for your responses. It meant a lot to hear that other people have successfully done this before and solidified my decision to go to Mac! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
katakari Posted May 13, 2016 Report Share Posted May 13, 2016 Commuting sucks but if you listen to medical podcasts/lectures it's almost not even lost time. I didn't commute in preclerkship but in clerkship I've had anywhere from 20mins daily commutes to 3 hours weekly commutes and sometimes being in the car listening to the material is the highlight of the day/week. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Organomegaly Posted May 13, 2016 Report Share Posted May 13, 2016 Totally doable, there were multiple people in my class with almost the exact same situation as you commuting from DT toronto. I also know of one person who recently moved back from Hamilton to the GTA to commute for the rest of preclerkship and clerkship. The reality is that you only really need to go to Hamilton 2-3 days per week during pre-clerkship. True, but it could be up to 4 depending on when clinical skills is scheduled. But I generally agree. Pre-clerkship is very amenable to commuting! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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