What makes medical school hard is that studying follows you like a shadow. It’s there when you’re with your family, it’s there when you’re working out, it’s there when you’re visiting friends. In medical school, studying is constantly occupying a little space in the back corner of your mind, waiting ever so impatiently to be done. Its constant presence leads to an omnipresent, low-level anxiety that flares up from time to time around tests. The main reason studying is such a pre-occupying thought in medical school is because there is so much of it to do all the time. The human body is a beautiful, yet extremely complex entity. So complex, that it seems conceited to think that one person can learn it all. This makes learning in medical school feel like throwing grains of sand in a constantly emptying hourglass. Often, it seems as if learning about the body is just as much an exercise in learning how much you don’t know about the body. The whole experience is humbling. Still, it is the job of a doctor to know as much as possible for his/her patients, so as medical students we must keep chugging along, learning a copious number of facts, constantly living at the limits of our memory. What also makes studying so ubiquitous is actually how easy it is to do. All one needs is material and attention. Material is absurdly easy to find, as a medical student is in no short supply of lectures, textbooks, review books, question banks and remote access to this thing that seems to contain the full extent of human knowledge called the Internet. As for attention, that should be easy as well. Ideally one always has it on them, and it’s not technically finite, so it should last as long as one truly wants it to. Yet it is this ease that makes it so all encompassing. From the time you gain consciousness to the time you lose it, there is something that can be done to gain knowledge and get a better grade. Moreover, medical school has no finite hours, so there is no such thing as “off the clock”. Mornings, afternoons, nights, weekdays, weekends: everything is fair game. At times, it feels as if every minute spent doing anything else – even something you enjoy – is a minute wasted, and that thought leads to a constant, grinding anxiety. Now at this point, with anxiety in full force, the next logical step is to reduce how much you care about it. Why try so hard? After all, P=MD. But that goes against the type A personality that got you into medical school. The same type A personality that helped you achieve everything you desired in life. You’re stuck with a personality that refuses to accept your limits despite missing goals, losing friends, and dealing with seemingly perpetual sleep deprivation. What this leads to is this constant push-pull between caring too much and caring too little, the equilibrium set by your ability to minimize how much you care about other aspects of life. This includes your social life, video games, physical exercise, T.V., family life, etc. Everything is on the chopping block, and what you choose to keep will be an honest reflection of your values. It can be tough. But eventually one finds his/her own equilibrium, and whittles down what they actually care about to the bare necessities. It is getting to that stage that is difficult. There will inevitably be times when you get fed up and try to get away from it all. But that’s the kicker in medical school: all of your friends will be medical students. Everyone you eat lunch with, go out on weekends with, sit in class with will be medical students. You are brought together specifically for what you are doing, and often times that is really the only thing you’re going to talk about. You will either be talking about classes in medical school, or people who also go to medical school, with your mind perpetually revolving around medical school. At times it seems impossible to get away. This situation inadvertently leads to a shared anxiety. Whenever somebody starts studying, it raises the anxiety of everyone else by making everyone feel the need to study. Suddenly, when one mentions how much he studies, he becomes a dick. Truces are formed between friends to not mention studying for certain periods of time. Eventually, it becomes everyone’s responsibility to prevent this hobgoblin from popping back into our collective consciousness when we simply want to relax. So when people say medical school is hard, likely it is this study anxiety they are actually referring to. If one looks at medical school from a simple hours worked perspective, medical school is really not that bad. Some weeks require 30-40 hours of work, some may be 80, but many young people work 80 hours a week (eventually we will too), so it’s feasible. What makes medical school hard is that study anxiety is always present, as long as you’re awake, constantly pushing you to work. Fortunately, you will adapt. You will get used to it, discover your equilibrium, become more efficient and actually find yourself having great times with phenomenal people. You will learn that indeed you have limits, and that time spent not studying is equally, and often more important than time spent studying. You will have a firm grasp on the importance of psychological outlets such as family, sports, hobbies, and friends both inside, and especially outside of medical school. Eventually you accept this as the life you chose and learn to enjoy it. Just remember that at the end of this endeavor you get an M.D. behind your name, which also follows you wherever you go. This article was written by John Silva and published at AlMost The Doctor Channel
The whole experience is humbling.. And all the hard work will pay for it, the joy it would bring on a strangers/patients face would be the reward..!!
