6 ms·

Ask HN: For people who attend(ed) medical school, what was your experience like?

• tstartl 11y ago
  i posted to a similar question on reddit a while back: "Listen man, I was in an incredibly similar position as you were. I took a gap year where i taught the MCAT and lived (somewhat) in the city. After I got accepted to medical school, I backpacked through South America for 3 months and met some incredibly interesting and beautiful people from all walks of life. In the summer I worked a 40hr/week job as a Kaplan instructor where i met other Instructors. Some where in medical school, some where about to start, and some quit medical school. I had this amazingly fun experience of working with fun people but also having a robust life outside of my job. Then i went to medical school. I don't want to insult anyone here but the atmosphere in medical school is not inspiring. First, it has the same vibes as law school.. you're going to meet a lot of people who are clearly there because of the prestige and respect the career brings. Second, medical school is a bubble. There is very limited time you have to spend outside of those who you're doing medicine with. Third, and this one is personal, you're not going to meet too many fun creative, wildly free spirited people there; most will be type A personalities that are largely concerned with their grades (which is understandable, just something to consider.) You'll also notice that medical school just becomes this constant circlejerk of "our lives are so tough because we're in med school/ we get no sleep/these tests are so hard" and it gets pretty fucking annoying. I realized going to medical school is deciding that your life will revolve around your career. The first day I was there, they told us you have a minimum of 7 more years of schooling, and that's if you do something like pediatrics. You sound just like i did when i was about to start. I sucked it up, thinking how bad could it be? It can be pretty fucking bad, man. I ended up quitting within a few months of starting because i immediately knew this was not a culture that would allow me to grow in the direction i wanted to grow. Lastly, I also went to a DO school. I'm not sure how MD schools are but I can say for certain that many schools are clearly just doctor making factories that are trying to squeeze as much money out of you as possible. Lastly, you should very carefully consider why you want to do medicine. Medicine nowadays has become more of an assembly line process so the rewarding nature of the healing someone and bringing them back to health has been hugely diminished. Also keep in mind that your paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to lose your twenties for a career. The material is definitely fascinating (which is why i went to medicine) but the beuracracies of this old profession will likely drain you. Please pm if you've got any questions at all." As a side note, I have succesfully transitioned into a career as a software engineer. It brings a lot of the freedom and quirkiness that i was seeking (:
• kendallpark 11y ago
  As a programmer that will be starting med school in two weeks, I am also interested in the answers to this question.
• QUFB 11y ago
  tstartl made a very interesting comment here, but he appears to be hellbanned.
• davak 11y ago
  I loved it. To me medical school was the entire reason that I had worked so hard in high school and college. I finally could quit worrying about grades and just focus on learning. Every waking moment was studying. I knew if I slipped that I would fail. Overall, though, it was great because I was really interested. The people who didn't like it were those that either focused on grades and couldn't keep up or those people who realized that medicine was not their passions. I would type more but I'm on mobile.
• deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
• deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
• jtfairbank 11y ago
  Any medical residents in this thread? I'd love to hear your take on our residency scheduling platform. :) taylor@reschedulemed.com https://reschedulemed.com https://reschedulemed.com
  • jtfairbank 11y ago
    Another question- how was the scheduling of rotations and clinics in med school?
• GoodOldNe 11y ago
  I really liked most of medical school. The years are progressively better (from my perspective) as you get more clinical and hands-on, and further away from rote memorization of biochemical pathways and arcane minutiae that have only the obscurest connections to actual patient care. As a first-year resident in emergency medicine in the Bay Area, I am very happy I went to medical school - I am sure that throughout my training and career I'll have ups and downs, but it doesn't feel like I wasted my time, especially as I am starting practicing as a physician. Every so often, those obscure pieces of trivia that I memorized do come up (in EM especially, you get to see all sorts of things, and sometimes it's fun recognizing the weird findings of autoimmune disease or dermatological things, even if you're not going to order the assays to definitively diagnose them in the department). Living out here in SF it's interesting to compare my past and current life to the friends I have who are involved in tech. I think similarities are the often-seen lack of work/life balance (something I think I developed over three years of working before entering medical school and I would encourage any new MS1 to prioritize thinking about), and the sometimes-overwhelming feelings of "imposter syndrome" or constantly feeling like you somehow fooled people into getting where you are, or that you don't know the things other people think you know. There's also a lot of love for the latest and greatest in technology or theoretical frameworks for understanding disease, sometimes at the expense of things that have been used for ages and that work quite effectively (tincture of time and observation for almost anything, ice for pain, physical exam for evaluation of hemodynamic status). Tips for incoming first year -- if you're tech-savvy, or at least can touch-type, consider checking out Anki, and reading others' tips for utilizing spaced repetition in your studying. Focus on backwards planning your own curricula, using released tests or your professors' advice to get an idea of what will be tested material. Get, and do, as many questions as possible -- BRS, UWorld, NBMEs, etc. Make flashcards from the questions you get wrong. Repeat and repeat. Feel free to ask any other specific questions, I'm a bit fried from a long shift. :-)
  • milkcircle 11y ago
    Thanks for your response! If I can ask a follow-up question, when did you decide to do EM (was that something you knew going into medical school?) and how did you know that this was the right field for you?