1. “________ classmate should probably not be a doctor.” At the end of the day, I am not in any way a judge of who can or cannot be a doctor. In fact, a doctor once told me that I didn’t have what it took to be a doctor, and look at me now (still not a doctor…). That being said, anybody reading this who says they haven’t thought this while talking to one of their classmates is either lying or I guess just a genuinely nice person bordering on naiveté. The situation will be that you’re having what you think is just another blasé conversation at a party, when the person you’re talking to opens up and says something random like, “I don’t believe in vaccines” or you find out that the person is actually seriously prejudiced, or the person is just weird bordering on socially unacceptable. In this slightly drunk moment you will have the epiphany, your eyes will open, you’ll nod a little bit too much to what they are saying, and it will hit you: this person should probably not be a doctor. This thought is by no means a reflection of reality, because you’re in the same clueless position that the person who is talking to you is in, but it will happen, and you’re probably right. 2. “I’m not a fan of people” In the hypercompetitive world of medical school, this thought will occur frequently. Somebody will humblebrag about their test scores, you’ll spend too much time around certain individuals until you know all of their –isms, or an attending will refuse to acknowledge your presence as you unwillingly shadow him/her. The classic situation will start with you in a patient room with the patient being rude to you. You don’t particularly mind, because being in a hospital sucks and you’re not even a real doctor; so you finish what you believe is a complete and thorough history. Some time later the attending comes in with a group of medical students and asks you to present the case. You finish presenting a laundry list of issues when right at the end the patient says something along the lines of, “oh ya, I have cancer”. The attending looks at you like you’re an idiot for missing that diagnosis. You look at the patient like, “Why did you not tell me that!?!” That one medical student looks down to suppress a smile. Still, he sees the opportunity to input his encyclopedic knowledge while you are still staring at the patient in disbelief, “Oh yea, I had the longest conversation with patient x in my free time and he told me everything, did you know x cancer is associated with y gene mutation, also the patient has a cute dog named baxter?” You knew all of that, but you don’t care because the last ten seconds have taken away anything resembling compassion, as you have instantly decided that indeed, “I’m not a fan of people.” 3. “How could I be so dumb?” Grades are the name of the game in medical school. Volunteering, caring for people, research – all that is cute, but without good clerkship grades and STEP scores the number of residencies that will even pay attention to any of that dwindles. Moreover, grades are a reflection of your performance, it feels good when those grades show that you performed well, and most medical students have been getting that positive feedback their entire lives. At one point it becomes part of one’s identity. You were always the smart friend. Well in medical school, you will likely become the friend. Medical school admissions cuts out three quarters of the competition leaving you right smack in the average (It can get lonely at the top… of a bell curve). And this is not due to any lack of effort. In fact, you’re studying more than you ever have. And the material is never that hard either; there is just so much of it all the time. The vast majority of the time you will be forgetting things you knew at one point. Eventually you will have the classic post-test talk when somebody is like, “did you get C”, and you’ll be like “no, I got D” and then your smart friend will be like “I got C”, and then your other friend will be like “I got C”, and you’ll be like “how did I not get C?” Then you will think about it for a second and it’ll instantly come to you. Again, just like everything else you knew it, but you forgot it when you needed it and you don’t know why, and all your thinking is “how could I be so dumb?” 4. “I’m tired” Medical school is a marathon, not a race. It’s like drinking from a fire hose. It’s like trying to pronounce a polish last name. From the get go you will be tired, all the time. You won’t mind at first because you’re in medical school, your on your way to achieving your dreams, it feels good in a weird way. But then the enthusiasm fades, you begin having a variety of setbacks, and eventually you simply get tired of being tired. This doesn’t last, as you will get a handle on the material and adjust your expectations; however as studying takes a smaller portion of your life, other factors start to take larger portions. Research if you’ve started it, groups you have joined, exercise regiments your determined to keep. Then comes time for STEP 1 where you have to do all of that, plus study for the biggest test of your life. When your done with STEP 1, happy days – that is until you go to the hospital and have to wake up at 4:30 in the morning for surgery rotations, or work 8 hours a day and then study afterwards. You will wonder when you won’t be tired. You’ll make promises that tonight you’ll sleep earlier. But you wont. You never do. I’d like to say at one point you get over it, but I don’t really know, I’m assuming we all just get used to it. 5. “Was medicine the right choice?” Spoiler alert: despite getting involved in the most straightforward career path there is, you will find yourself questioning your resolve frequently. Medical school will become a massive part of your life. Again, at first you are completely down with it; the human body is amazing, everybody is proud of you, you’re going to be that person you used to watch on TV shows. This enthusiasm will last until one of many weekends that you are studying for a test. You will be scrolling through Facebook lazily as you take a break, and see all of your friends having fun at that party you were invited to but couldn’t make it. What were you doing then? Oh ya, studying something useless to your future like histology, or biochemistry. You will see your friend’s new car and wonder when you will be able to afford one (the answer is a decade). You will also see everyone completing real, life events like traveling, or getting married, or having children while you live in a pseudocollege atmosphere that keeps you too busy and broke to do any of that. You will also look to your future and see that the life you were either consciously or subconsciously expecting is a lot farther away than you realized before entering medical school. And that the gap between you and there is a massive, massive amount of work. You will get over it, hopefully, or you’ll be stuck because you have too much debt and nowhere to go. Most people cope with it, some don’t. 6. “Holy Crap” For all that I’ve ragged on medical school, there will also be times where it is mind numbingly awesome. Think about it, you are a human learning about what it means to be human. In medical school, you see life at the beginning and at the end, you will see the internal organs of individuals living and dead, you will see people from all walks of life and the wide spectrum of human emotions they experience. Just by paying attention you will become acutely aware of the innumerable components that make up the human experience. It’s pretty amazing. And, this only happens in medical school. Medical school is the only time in your life you will get a glimpse at the big picture before you are categorized and stuck in x specialty, left to forget 99% of what you learned, while constantly learning about your ultimately small, yet extremely important and complex area of the human body. Oh, and I forgot to mention that you can eventually become the person that saves lives. Compare that to very real alternatives: like working in a cubicle, constantly dealing with excel spreadsheets, or as a factory worker, doing the same mind numbingly boring task repeatedly day after day for years, or one of the world’s poor (about 50% of the earth’s population), struggling for subsistence, and then medical school turns out to be pretty amazing. Source
