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<pagetext>I found this site off the internet back when I was applying to med school, and wasn't ever able to find it again, until today. It's a bit of a humourous take on med school life, with a few grains of truthfullness. I think the Canadian med school system is quite a bit more progressive than many of the US schools, in that we incorporate a lot more clinical teaching in the first two years at the expense of the basic science facts. Needless to say, learning the clinical material is usually significantly more interesting, and less onerous than memorizing biochemical pathways, or all 500 contraindications to a given drug, etc.

 

www.geocities.com/CollegePark/6174/premed-advice.htm

 

 

<!--EZCODE BOLD START--> Advice for Pre-Meds<!--EZCODE BOLD END-->

 

Here is a little something for first year students or those wishing to enter.

It was originally published under another name. Hope this helps.

 

Dont ask me but somehow I received your message about Medical School. I am

just starting my 3rd year clerkships as a medical student at LSU in New

Orleans, LA. There are a few things I would like to tell you before you start

medical school....and, of course, these are only my opinions and may not

represent the opinions of anyone else in this entire world....so take it with

a grain of salt.

 

01 - Everyone, including my doctor, told me to get the hell out of medicine

        before I got in.

02 - I busted my ass in high school, college, etc...to get to med school.

03 - Once in medical school, what you did to get you there no longer matters.

04 - Be prepared to study....then study somemore, and then a little more...

        and then be prepared to not do well on the test.

05 - Be prepared to accept the reality that you may be an idiot (this came

        as a shock to me).

06 - Be thankful that everyone else in your class is also an idiot and no

        one expects you to know everything all at once, and for every test.

07 - Realize that getting ahead in med school means making lots of

        friends ... those who step on toes to get to the top are quickly

        shunned by the rest of the class. This is very bad since people

        tend to get a hold of old tests, helpful hints, book

        recommendations, etc..that will be of great benefit to you. If you

        are the smartest person in the class...dont try to show off and be

        cocky. There will be plenty of opportunities for people to

        undermine you if they decide they dont like your attitude. In

        short, have fun, be nice....make sure you are likable to a large

        number of people.

08 - No one can go through medical school 8 times, so dont be such a "pal"

        that you end up doing extra work (typing a review sheet, for

        example) for your friends while they are out having a good time.

09 - For me, the first year was NOT the hardest. This is b/c I was used

        to busting my ass to get into medical school that I never slowed

        down. For some, it is the "wake up call" if you never studied in

        college.

10 - The second year IS the hardest, its survival of the fittest. They

        want you to know everything about everything, and some more in

        between. People quit after every exam.

11 - Once thru your second year, the rest is cheesecake. You dress like

        a doctor, work like a doctor, and hopefully start acting like a

        doctor.

12 - Once thru your second year, you realize the first 2 were bullshit and

        you know nothing and can't remember the rest.

13 - Its relatively easy to PASS medical school, it requires more

        dedication than genius to get a High Pass, and a mixture of both to

        Honor.

14 - Remember that P=MD (meaning that if you PASS you will become a

        doctor). Also, remember that P is not equal to ENT, SURGERY,

        OBGYN, DERMATOLOGY, etc...so basically, everyone who graduates is a

        doctor, but not everyone who graduates is the doctor they may want

        to be.

15 - In the middle of the second year, they could not pay you enough to

        be a doctor.

16 - In the middle of the second year, you cant afford to quit b/c you now

        have a huge loan to pay back.

17 - The best years of your life are while you are in medical school.

18 - The worst years of your life are while you are in medical school.

19 - Dating in medical school is close to impossible. If you can find

        someone who understands your language, your schedule, your attitude,

        your financial situation...marry them first, ask questions later.

20 - Sleeping/eating right become luxuries in medical school.

21 - Noone will ever understand your schedule or what the hell you are

        doing (eg why you have to study 2 weeks before a test).

22 - You will have to study 2 weeks for a test.

23 - You will have to learn to budget your time wisely if you want to ever

        have a life. Same goes for your money.

24 - Some people go out every night and do exceptionally well in medical

        school...if this is you...great. If this is not you...Sorry.

25 - Some people bust their ass every day and fail medical school...hope this

        is not you.

26 - The person who finds the best balance between study, social, family,

        friends, entertainment will make the best of medical school.

27 - The ass who always aces every test and never studies is everyone in

        medical school BUT you.

28 - The fact that you can dissect a rat in college has no bearing on your

        performance in medical school.

29 - The fact that your favorite class in college is Biology is unique

        b/c the smartest people in medical school today are NOT biology

        majors and, in fact, have never taken such a class.

30 - The fact that you have taken such classes will help in the first year,

        and give you more time for other things while your classmates are

        "learning how to use the microscope".

31 - If a histology class is offered at your school, take it..take it

        again...teach it...learn to love it. You can essentially SKIP your

        medical school histology class if you know it well enough.

32 - You may have thought that all the BULLSHIT classes you took in high

        school/college would come to an end when you got to medical

        school ... sorry...they are still there.

33 - You wont believe the amount of information they want you to know.

34 - You wont believe the amount of information you can forget.

35 - Old tests can save your ass...they can also sink you if you just

        memorize answers.

36 - You will have to rearrange your life, study habits, friendships

        around being a student. No one will understand that you need to

        study so much, for so long. I study at least 10 hours a day, every

        day. I usually take a day off. Some people dont..thats just me.

        I also am not at the top of my class. You have to find your

        balance/grade tradeoff/relationship breaker time periods for

        studying.

37 - Drugs are bad, dont do drugs. If you need help staying awake, you are        

        too tired to study..go to sleep.

38 - Your friends, collegues, will do drugs and make A's. Hopefully, life

        will weed them out. Until then, be cool and realize that maybe

        making C's is your maximum performance level.

39 - Dont neglect friends/family/pets - they are good for fun/meals/etc.

        They can also be a drag (Come out with us, you can study tomorrow).

        You need to have a long talk with these people if you do get into

        medical school.

40 - To the rest of the world, you are not a doctor until you graduate the

        4th year. To your family, you are a doctor two weeks before you

        start your first year. If ever asked any medical questions, follow

        your answer with a disclaimer (....but I would go to your doctor if

        you are worried about it because I don't really know). Be careful

        what you say, because people are listening.

41 - Never listen to a previous medical students advice on medical school.

        They have been run though the meat grinder and couldnt think of

        putting anyone else thru such torture. They tend to leave out the

        good stuff like parties, good friends, fun memories, their first

        patient contact, someone calling you DOC, getting to wear a white

        coat, and knowing what the hell is going on during ER.

 

In summary, if you are not sure you want to be a doctor...be very sure you want

to be a doctor before you come to medical school. That bullsh*t about "helping

people" will get you nowhere your first 2 years. We are all in medical school

because we want to "help people" but this alone will not get you an MD. You need

to be dedicated to yourself, your studies, your talents, and your life as a whole

just to get thru the first 2 years. Any outside pressures you have will burst

while you are in school so be prepared to handle that before you get here. We

are not special in any way, we are not geniuses, but, we are willing to work

hard...and that, my friend, is what will make you successful in medical school.

 

 

Good Luck.

[Guest strider2004]

One interesting thing is that everyone coming into med school wants to specialize in something. Then they realize that they wouldn't have a life and family medicine becomes more appealing. Remember that if you do surgery, you're devoting your life to it. Dermatology, radiology, and ENT are very competitive specialties because they pay well and give you time off.

[Guest Ian Wong]

To those three specialties, I would add the following lifestyle-friendlies:

 

Ophthalmology

Urology

Pathology

Anesthesia (depends)

Plastic Surgery (depends)

Physical Medicine and Rehab/Physiatry

Radiation Oncology

Psychiatry

Neurology (I think)

Emergency Medicine (if you can tolerate the shiftwork)

and some of the Internal Medicine subspecialties such as Rheumatology.

 

Ian

UBC, Med 3

[Guest ThugJaan]

I don't know about that stuff....most of the people in my class don't seem to be so shallow as to pick somethign simply b/c it has lesser hours and pays a lot. Most people in my class that want to specialize are looking at surgery, ob/gyn, internal (ie - caridology), peds, etc. and not radiology and derm./opth.

[Guest strider2004]

What school and what year are you in? That makes a difference.

[Guest Ian Wong]

The year makes a big difference! I think there was a study done at one point where first year medical students ranked the most idealistic of all professional students sampled in a personality test, while the same students by the end of fourth year had plummetted to the least.

 

Med school definitely changes your perspective on things; whether it does it for the better or the worse depends a lot on your previous personality and the enjoyment you derive both in school, and out of school with friends and family.

 

Of course, the ideal situation is to find the specialty that you love that also gives you time to spend pursuing other interests; it's militantly unfair for medical schools to expect their student bodies to be exceptionally well-rounded when at its worse, med school and undoubtedly residency take those outside interests away for extended periods of time.

 

Ian

UBC, Med 3

[Guest ThugJaan]

Hey,

 

First year Meds at UofT. I guess lifestyle issues may creep in later on in training, but even for whom it does seem to matter, most people seem to be leaning towards family meds and internal and staying away from surgery. I have yet to meet anyone that wants to be a radiologist or a derm....but then again I doubt if you wanted to a be a radiologist you would be too apt to start telling everyone either! However, most people seem to be leaning towards peds, ob/gyn, internal, family and surgery as far as I can tell.

[Guest Fanconi]

When did you figure out what kind of doctor you wanted to become?

 

I think I've got it figured out...but let's hear what you have to say!

[Guest YongQ]

Mmmm... family... I don't know why some would find "nonspecialization" into family so unappealing to the point that they wouldn't even consider it. The lifestyle is awesome, there is endless variety, there is patient contact coming out of your ears, flexibility galore, more than comfortable remuneration, and some intellectual challenges to go with it. Family med is so different from the specialties that it's basically a specialty in itself, and I wished this were more recognized.

 

Sorry I'm a little off-topic, it's off-week for the 0T5s!

[Guest ThugJaan]

Hey,

 

'off-week' for OT5's...lol...with the quality of lectures we had this week I need to understand a weeks worth of 100 miles an hour jargon.

 

Acutally, I am one such person that is not really leaning towards family medicine, and I will explain why:

 

- awesome lifestyle -> I don' t really care about lifestyle issues

 

- variety -> true

 

- patient contact -> yes, but I don't enjoy the medical interview nearly as much as anatomy labs

 

- flexibilty -> again, true

 

-remumeration -> yeah right, more than comfortable? Have you seen the debt load we will haev upon graduation. Unless you plan to work up north, salary is a definite negative.

 

- intellectual -> yes, a challange. Not as hard as other specialities though.

 

Some other issues include the 'respect' aspect and how you are perceived within the actual medical community. Also, how you are not really involved in life-or-death tramua, more everyday, routine medicine.

 

I agree Family Meds is a great option and is plenty interesting, but lets face it, the major pluses are lifestyle issues and talking more with patients. If you don't care abotu lifestyle and you would rather work on a patient than talk to them, it is easy to see why a lot of people find medicine unappealing.

[Guest YongQ]

ThugJaan, with re: to the debtload, in family (and almost any specialty) you could pay that back in a matter of months. Where you might want to worry is rehab med or geriatric med, but even those are going to change for the better over the next few years (or so I heard in the career nights).

 

You don't care about lifestyle? Wow that is excellent, after all, somebody has to become our surgeons!

[Guest Ian Wong]

Trust me on this when I say that you'll start considering lifestyle more as your time in med school progresses. Now, lifestyle shouldn't, in my opinion, dictate your career choices to the point that you are doing something that you feel no passion for, but it's definitely something to consider. Certain specialties, mostly the surgical ones, can be really unrealistic if you aren't willing to make the commitments and sacrifices needed.

 

Ian

UBC, Med 3

[Guest ThugJaan]

Hey,

 

YongQ, I think it all depends on what your debt load will be. Remember now that most people will have a debt of around 20-30 grand before entering medical school (you may be different, this is on average). Also, med school @ UofT, while great, comes at an added cost. We are looking at around 25 grand a year in terms of debt load. Thus, you are looking at 120-130 grand (with compound interest on the non-OSAP part) debt after 4 yrs. Now comes residency...making just enough to scrape by, you can hardly indulge in paying off you debt, instead, you will proably just add more interest on the principal.

 

If you do family you only have 2 years to endure. After that, you will start off taking in about 80-90 grand after taxes....do the math, it will take abotu 5-10 years to pay it all off.

 

Specialization is not much better due to the exteneded residency period. However, you will be able to pay off the total in about 1 year after residency. So, it is about 5 years post-graduation again.

 

Again, this doesn't apply to everyone. I tend to commute quite a bit to save money and also have been working all through highschool, undergrad, and now medical school to help keep my debt load down. Others, however, are not as fortunate and have to put up with a much larger debt load, which is getting very large indeed.

 

As for lifestyle issues...what I mean by 'it isn't important' is that by nature if I like what I am doing, I like being immeresed in it. It would not matter if it was accouting, law, etc. If I was able to, I would love to spend more time working. I think once family and children issues creep in one would feel the need to devore more time for home-life, but I would definetely prefer to be in the OR as opposed to sitting at home with the wife/kids.

 

YoungQ...I think I have fiy figured out who you are (I think we are friends ...lol, small world indeed.

[Guest Akane200]

Wow, someone likes the anatomy labs more than patient contact? You may want to consider pathology too.

 

I think that picking specialties depends on how well they fit your personality also. A few reasons why I don't like famiily all that much is that its, well, boring. Taking care of the well population can be repetitive at times too (many cases of colds, ear infections, etc). In addition, I'm not sure if I can like/stand counselling patients on diets and lifestyle (smoking cessation!) knowing that some will never ever listen! (OK, so I'm an impatient person... but some things drive me crazy :b I'm working on it ...)

 

As far as debt load is concerned, I think that at some point, 120k and 140k doesn't make that much difference in the end. We'll be paying for it for a very long time. :b

 

Lifestyle should be important somewhere along the way. It's just that some people put more importance on it than others. It really depends on the situation (like are you married, having kids, etc).

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