Simple enough, here are 101 things you wish you knew before starting medical school.
- If I had known what it was going to be like, I would never have done it.
- You’ll study more than you ever have in your life.
- Only half of your class will be in the top 50%. You have a 50% chance of being in the top half of your class. Get used to it now.
- You don’t need to know anatomy before school starts. Or pathology. Or physiology.
- Third year rotations will suck the life out you.
- Several people from your class will have sex with each other. You might be one of the lucky participants.
- You may discover early on that medicine isn’t for you.
- You don’t have to be AOA or have impeccable board scores to match somewhere – only if you’re matching into radiology.
- Your social life may suffer some.
- Pelvic exams are teh suck.
- You won’t be a medical student on the surgery service. You’ll be the retractor bitch.
- Residents will probably ask you to retrieve some type of nourishment for them.
- Most of your time on rotations will be wasted. Thrown away. Down the drain.
- You’ll work with at least one attending physician who you’ll want to beat the shit out of.
- You’ll work with at least three residents who you’ll want to beat the shit out of.
- You’ll ask a stranger about the quality of their stools.
- You’ll ask post-op patients if they’ve farted within the last 24 hours.
- At some point during your stay, a stranger’s bodily fluids will most likely come into contact with your exposed skin.
- Somebody in your class will flunk out of medical school.
- You’ll work 14 days straight without a single day off. Probably multiple times.
- A student in your class will have sex with an attending or resident.
- After the first two years are over, your summer breaks will no longer exist. Enjoy them as much as you can.
- You’ll be sleep deprived.
- There will be times on certain rotations where you won’t be allowed to eat.
- You will be pimped.
- You’ll wake up one day and ask yourself is this really what you want out of life.
- You’ll party a lot during the first two years, but then that pretty much ends at the beginning of your junior year.
- You’ll probably change your specialty of choice at least 4 times.
- You’ll spend a good deal of your time playing social worker.
- You’ll learn that medical insurance reimbursement is a huge problem, particularly for primary care physicians.
- Nurses will treat you badly, simply because you are a medical student.
- There will be times when you’ll be ignored by your attending or resident.
- You will develop a thick skin. If you fail to do this, you’ll cry often.
- Public humiliation is very commonplace in medical training.
- Surgeons are assholes. Take my word for it now.
- OB/GYN residents are treated like shit, and that shit runs downhill. Be ready to pick it up and sleep with it.
- It’s always the medical student’s fault.
- Gunner is a derogatory word. It’s almost as bad as racial slurs.
- You’ll look forward to the weekend, not so you can relax and have a good time but so you can catch up on studying for the week.
- Your house might go uncleaned for two weeks during an intensive exam block.
- As a medical student on rotations, you don’t matter. In fact, you get in the way and impede productivity.
- There’s a fair chance that you will be physically struck by a nurse, resident, or attending physician. This may include slapped on the hand or kicked on the shin in order to instruct you to “move” or “get out of the way.”
- Any really bad procedures will be done by you. The residents don’t want to do them, and you’re the low man on the totem pole. This includes rectal examinations and digital disimpactions.
- You’ll be competing against the best of the best, the cream of the crop. This isn’t college where half of your classmates are idiots. Everybody in medical school is smart.
- Don’t think that you own the world because you just got accepted into medical school. That kind of attitude will humble you faster than anything else.
- If you’re in it for the money, there are much better, more efficient ways to make a living. Medicine is not one of them.
- Anatomy sucks. All of the bone names sound the same.
- If there is anything at all that you’d rather do in life, do not go into medicine.
- The competition doesn’t end after getting accepted to medical school. You’ll have to compete for class rank, awards, and residency. If you want to do a fellowship, you’ll have to compete for that too.
- You’ll never look at weekends the same again.
- VA hospitals suck. Most of them are old, but the medical records system is good.
- Your fourth year in medical school will be like a vacation compared to the first three years. It’s a good thing too, because you’ll need one.
- Somebody in your class will be known as the “highlighter whore.” Most often a female, she’ll carry around a backpack full of every highlighter color known to man. She’ll actually use them, too.
- Rumors surrounding members of your class will spread faster than they did in high school.
- You’ll meet a lot of cool people, many new friends, and maybe your husband or wife.
- No matter how bad your medical school experience was at times, you’ll still be able to think about the good times. Kind of like how I am doing right now.
- Your first class get-together will be the most memorable. Cherish those times.
- Long after medical school is over, you’ll still keep in contact with the friends you made. I do nearly every day.
- Gunners always sit in the front row. This rule never fails. However, not everyone who sits in the front row is a gunner.
- There will be one person in your class who’s the coolest, most laid back person you’ve ever met. This guy will sit in the back row and throw paper airplanes during class, and then blow up with 260+ Step I’s after second year. True story.
- At the beginning of first year, everyone will talk about how cool it’s going to be to help patients. At the end of third year, everybody will talk about how cool it’s going to be to make a lot of money.
- Students who start medical school wanting to do primary care end up in dermatology. Those students who start medical school wanting to do dermatology end up in family medicine.
- Telling local girls at the bar that you’re a medical student doesn’t mean shit. They’ve been hearing that for years. Be more unique.
- The money isn’t really that good in medicine. Not if you look at it in terms of hours worked.
- Don’t wear your white coat into the gas station, or any other business that has nothing to do with you wearing a white coat. You look like an ass, and people do make fun of you.
- Don’t round on patients that aren’t yours. If you round on another student’s patients, that will spread around your class like fire after a 10 year drought. Your team will think you’re an idiot too.
- If you are on a rotation with other students, don’t bring in journal articles to share with the team “on the fly” without letting the other students know. This makes you look like a gunner, and nobody likes a gunner. Do it once, and you might as well bring in a new topic daily. Rest assured that your fellow students will just to show you up.
- If you piss off your intern, he or she can make your life hell.
- If your intern pisses you off, you can make his or her life hell.
- Don’t try to work during medical school. Live life and enjoy the first two years.
- Not participating in tons of ECs doesn’t hurt your chances for residency. Forget the weekend free clinic and play some Frisbee golf instead.
- Don’t rent an apartment. If you can afford to, buy a small home instead. I saved $200 per month and had roughly $30,000 in equity by choosing to buy versus rent.
- Your family members will ask you for medical advice, even after your first week of first year.
- Many of your friends will go onto great jobs and fantastic lifestyles. You’ll be faced with 4 more years of debt and then at least 3 years of residency before you’ll see any real earning potential.
- Pick a specialty based around what you like to do.
- At least once during your 4 year stay, you’ll wonder if you should quit.
- It’s amazing how fast time flies on your days off. It’s equally amazing at how slow the days are on a rotation you hate.
- You’ll learn to be scared of asking for time off.
- No matter what specialty you want to do, somebody on an unrelated rotation will hold it against you.
- A great way to piss of attendings and residents are to tell them that you don’t plan to complete a residency.
- Many of your rotations will require you to be the “vitals bitch.” On surgery, you’ll be the “retractor bitch.”
- Sitting around in a group and talking about ethical issues involving patients is not fun.
- If an attending or resident treats you badly, call them out on it. You can get away with far more than you think.
- Going to class is generally a waste of time. Make your own schedule and enjoy the added free time.
- Find new ways to study. The methods you used in college may or may not work. If something doesn’t work, adapt.
- Hospitals smell bad.
- Subjective evaluations are just that – subjective. They aren’t your end all, be all so don’t dwell on a poor evaluation. The person giving it was probably an asshole, anyway.
- Some physicians will tell you it’s better than it really is. Take what you hear (both positive and negative) with a grain of salt.
- 90% of surgeons are assholes, and 63% of statistics are made up. The former falls in the lucky 37%.
- The best time of your entire medical school career is between the times when you first get your acceptance letter and when you start school.
- During the summer before medical school starts, do not attempt to study or read anything remotely related to medicine. Take this time to travel and do things for you.
- The residents and faculty in OB/GYN will be some of the most malignant personalities you’ve ever come into contact with.
- Vaginal deliveries are messy. So are c-sections. It’s just an all-around blood fest if you like that sort of thing.
- Despite what the faculty tell you, you don’t need all of the fancy equipment that they suggest for you to buy. All you need is a stethoscope. The other equipment they say you “need” is standard in all clinic and hospital exam rooms. If it’s not standard, your training hospital and clinics suck.
- If your school has a note taking service, it’s a good idea to pony up the cash for it. It saves time and gives you the option of not attending lecture.
- Medicine is better than being a janitor, but there were times when I envied the people cleaning the hospital trash cans.
- Avoid surgery like the plague.
- See above and then apply it to OB/GYN as well.
- The money is good in medicine, but it’s not all that great especially considering the amount of time that you’ll have to work.
- One time an HIV+ patient ripped out his IV and then “slung” his blood at the staff in the room. Go, go infectious disease.
- Read Med School Hell now, throughout medical school, and then after you’re done. Then come back and tell me how right I am.
I have many things I’m interested in besides medicine. I’m a 2nd year and dreading years 3 and 4. 1 and 2 have been a breeze, probably easier and more fun than college even. But with years 3 and 4 coming, now I’m facing real medicine and I don’t want any part of it. I am considering finishing Step1 and then taking a LOA to explore other career options. I hope to never return. I don’t know why I ever came down this route but I was badly mistaken.
I am a 3rd year and I just want to say….this is accurate. extremely accurate.
Go into MD/PhD, the best decision you’ll ever make. I currently doing it at HMS.
True. Medicine is gruling but it must be what you enjoy doing. I had the experience of seeing first hand what practicing medicine is like since I had the rare experience of doing whatever it takes to keep my brother alive. I had no life of my own because I was constantly at his bedside monitoring all his body activities. I also took measures to revive him doing times when I thought he would have passed away. I have learned from physicians and pharmacists whom prescribed medicine for his treatment for me to procure from drug stores. In my own experiences, medicine must be what you really want to do and not some profession that anyone can delve into. Medicine is work at its best saving lives. Medicine would always be my first choice of career.
19. Somebody in your class will flunk out of medical school.
Or be arrested for terrorism
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[Sorry for the rant but the back slapping has got excessive]
I worked for 8 years in the UK and 5 years in the US in medicine. Then I quit to do physics as I realised (to me) Medicine is mostly mundane and repetitive and not at all as noble as it first seems. It’s a big pharma led, litigation fearing, admin riddled business. That may be only my opinion (or where I worked) but what isn’t is the fact they we (well you now) are paid brilliantly.
Law and Medicine are always the hardest jobs to get (including the training). Yet they always get many more applicants than the places. The reason is money. Cut it whatever way you like Medicine (and law) is overpaid and this is shown in the applicant to place ratio.
I’m pretty well off but I work much harder and longer than I ever did in medicine for less money. But at least what I do interests me and im not dying for the shift to finish in work anymore. Also a humanitarian project im working on could mean that that by switching off medicine I might save millions rather than a couple of thousand over a career.
In short Medicine can be noble but that is the exception not the rule. O and practically all the points on the list are spot on (minus the money one).
it was all damn true- every word of it- and i am a medical graduate from half a world away, i studied in Nepal, a small country in Asia- and our medical education is drastically different and archetypal compared to the west. Still every word sounded true even to me- extremely nicely put. I am glad somebody put it on paper( well web paper anyway)
I’m a non-trad (e.g., old fart) going back to school in a post-bacc pre-med program. It’s been nearly 20 years since I finished up my undergrad work in another field.
From my experience, EVERY job sucks compared to the relatively carefree life we enjoyed in our first 20 years of life. Being held accountable, responsible and putting in the long hours every week for a paycheck that never seems to be adequate…well, it just plain sucks. Your chosen first career will most always be a let-down from your expectations. Sure, there will be great moments and they will be what keeps you going down that path…but those moments are surrounded by the drudgery and the general malaise of “Am I wasting my time?”
Our family’s pediatric dentist was scolding me when we talked about my career change to go back to school as a pre-med. Her husband has been an internist for 10 years and is miserable. She was bemoaning the fact that she had to advertise her services (the indiginity!) and come in on her day off to handle payroll for five employees. She works three days a week and pulls in nearly $300K.
Cry me a river.
While medicine may not be the gravy boat it once was, it is sure a hell of a lot better than most other businesses.
I want to quit med school to start a band and change the world…
Well, then tell me how to make mint as a pharm rep or something.
I’m a peds intern, and while it doesn’t suck anywhere near as much as being in surgery or something, it still sucks balls. If I could make enough money to pay off my student loans and make a decent living, then medicine could just as well go straight to hell.
I invest, and I have more than a few ideas for business, many of which the “M.D.” after my name will help me in, but medicine blows me.
There was a point earlier this year when I was making more per day in the fucking stock market than I make in my shitty resident position.
Add to that the abuse you get from nurses and jackasses who clearly have no respect for you.
Grr.
I just finished year 3 at HMS, and I am studying for Step 2 in the weeks before my medicine subinternship. And I can say, as one of those pre-meds who dreamt of a life of service and do-goodery, that all of the above is dishearteningly correct.
Medical school makes me wish that I were dead. I mean that in the least suicidal way possible.
I’m definitely thinking of doing law school after med school because I don’t want to end up being a bitter doctor….I’m currently in my third year of med school….absolutely hate it….the senior residents really get a power trip over keeping you even though you have absolutely nothing to do!!!!
So I’m officially terrified….
I’m attending a community college to be a RN in hopes that medical school will be easier.
Am I crazy?
Should I have just gone pre-med in the first place?
@Jill
Nursing school will be a vacation compared to medical school.
Wow.. I am planning on going to med school, I am a sophomore in college now.. but this has freaked me out a little! but for some strange reason it is kind of exciting as well. We’ll see! but none the less, this was very funny
Im a senior in high school, and even with all this posted shit, I’m still lookin forward to eventually going into med school. i cant see myself doing anything else. Just a couple questions:
1) Do you rotate in all these different things no matter what field of medicine you want to get into? For instance, if I wanted to go into psychiatry, would I rotate randomly or around psychiatric stuff?
2) Is med school really THAT grueling? Or are most of you people posting stuff just a bunch of pussies that cry mommy when you see some blood/get cussed at by a 5ft surgeon with a 10ft pole up their ass? Just curious; if med school really was this horrible, wouldnt there be a large drop in the number of people finishing med school? From the people I’ve talked to, it doesn’t seem that physically/psychologically painful; one of my relatives got into med school here while she still couldnt speak english. she said med school was just like any other graduate program.
3) How much free time do you have throughout the years? I participate in boxing/lifting and have a relatively average social life. How much will med school get in the way of this? If i cant do any of this, maybe some surgeons/nurses would be willing to let me take my agression out on them…and im not kidding. one bit.
From my experience med school is all that. however the bit about it not paying off is bullshit. people come in with expectations that they’ll be working three day work weeks and doing minimal work as a doctor. that’s nonsense. yes, it’s a lot of work, and yes, it’ll require effort. however i have yet to see any other job with that much security which gives you 200k/year before you turn 30. and yes the effort put into med school and residency is monumental considering how crappily you’re paid in residency initially but it all eventually evens out. Hell i’m just going to live with my parents if i can for residency and use all my salary to pay off med school loans.
However, people really need to work in other fields if they seriously whine this much about medicine. The only thing that really sucks is that the chain of command blows. Nobody respects you when you’re at the bottom or even second to the top – only if you’re at the top. And to get to the top you have to be rude, backstabbing, and an all-round asshole and very likely betray all and anything that you hold dear morally. But if you have your own practice eventually, that shouldn’t matter.
is it just me or does it piss anyone else off that there are many of us who really do want to become doctors and here we are competing for med school with a bunch of people who dont really give a shit. if you are not prepared to put in long hours and play with somebodys butthole then keep your med school app to yourself and quit getting in my damn way.
omg !!! insane xD thank god (to me) , that I won’t be there x’D
you’re wrong. i’m in medical school and i’m not having any sex AT ALL! and i’m female who got a decent amount in undergad!
I’m an undergrad senior applying to med schools and now come across this site. Just my luck. Now I’m unsure what I should do with my life and as a senior, I better make a decision quick. Also, it’s not like a neuroscience major has many opportunities. I was only doing it for pre-med. It doesn’t help that my parents are pushing me for medical school and anything else would be a failure. What to do?
@wow
I am in somewhat of a similar boat. Although, I am 27 years old (I haven’t been in school the whole time). I was a computer science major and switched to Chem a few years back to go to medical school. I could graduate in chem very quickly and go on to med school but I work for a healthcare company now and many of the doctors here tell me that they doubt they would do it again if they had the chance. I just took this semester off to re-evaluate my career choice. I may not graduate until I’m 29 but I’d rather do that than get stuck in Med School with massive loans and then regret doing it.
Make this decision for you and not for your parents. They aren’t going to be the ones that are going to have to endure the stress/debt/time and lack of a social life for the 7-10+ years it will take to finish your education.
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i am currently pursuing my future career through this field of morons … And eventhough i am still in my first year of medicine, I HATE MEDICAL SCHOOL
i am currently pursuing my future career, taking this morons career … And eventhough i am still in my first year of medicine, I HATE MEDICAL SCHOOL
Step 1 is the first test that future doctors are required to take in order to be “board certified.” It’s a terrible test, studying for it sucks, and you take it after your second year (and step 2 during your 4th year). A score of 260 is amazing and will pretty much get you into the specialty of your choice. Passing is 185. The average is 215.
yes we are the retractor bitch. all the time, anywhere aroun the world we medical students suffer the same thing. But i’ve become a suction bitch,sphygmomanometer bitch, and report writer bitch……..
gee I just love being a medical students
This makes me want to become a bum and forget about med school.
This post brings back so many horrible memories… Worth it in the end.
Geee…I’m glad I read this. It seems like Med School defeats the purpose of having a family and a life in general. What if you’d died in a wreck or something…I know it’s a respectable career choice but it doesn’t seem like people respect you enough. I’m out! Thanks
On surgeons. All surgeons may be assholes, but orthopods are an asshole’s asshole. Be smart, be a vet.
Unless you went to Hopkins for undergrad.. in which case med school will be a breeze.
After reading this list, my suspicions are confirmed: the pay just isn’t worth it for you guys. It must be something else that drives some of you.
I was born with a rare brain desiese. I speant the past 8 years trying to figure out what it was. I saw a lot of doctors with a blank, gaping look in their eyes like they were about to put a bullet in their brains. I couldn’t blame them. I know my current primary care physician wants to die. I can tell by his posture and the dead fish stare.
Thankfully I found one surgeon who must have been driven in the name of science (it was at a research facility). She was full of energy and cut my head open and fixed the problem. Who knows how the hell she could take such a job otherwise. She cuts heads up in the early morning and sees patients until late into the afternoon every day. No amount of money would be worth it to me.
Oh well. At least the headaches are gone and I can feel my hands again. I’m as good as new.
For those of you who are idealists: keep up the energy! I know you’re a rare breed, but you’re out there.
Hoover,
I could swear you must have gone to the same medical school as me. The girl who slept with the attendings and about half the medical school class, was her name perchance Michelle?
I agree with almost all of this. The salary stuff is kind of how you look at that half-full glass of water. But I think when I started medical school those many years ago that I really thought life would be good, meaning easy and financially rewarding. After 20 years of medicine it has never been easy and the financial stuff won’t make up for the lost time with family and friends if it’s not really what you want to do. As a matter of fact nothing makes up for that lost time.
Speaking of family and friends, I knew that I didn’t want to be a surgeon because they’re all divorced, at least once. Certainly all the surgeons in academics are assholes, but not as malignant as the Obstetricians. Surgeons in private practice towards the end of their careers become decent human beings…again or for the first time I don’t know. Maybe they begin to realize all they’ve wasted.
Lastly, you should have said something about the culture of irrationally inflated expectations. Third year medical students are supposed to be as knowledgable and proficient as interns, or residents. Interns in their first month are expected to perform as independently as a senior resident. Second year residents should function as well as a fellow or attending. All through the clerkship and internship you keep asking yourself, if I already knew all of that, then why the hell am I putting up with all this bullshit? I thought the reason for coming here was to learn, train, be educated to be a doctor.? And then as a student or intern you phone a consultant. The asshole on the other end (cardiologist, CT surgeon, ophthalmologist, ENT etc) expects you to have already done his job. Have you done the (slit lamp exam, tracheostomy, chest tube insertion, pericardiocentesis, pacemaker insertion) yet?…If I knew how to do that, why would I be calling you, dumbass?
In the end I feel something like what some preadolescent women experience when they are roped into arranged marriages. At first, you don’t know what you’re in for, but over time you develop love (in this case for the profession). You learn to appreciate small successes and always remember the home -runs. Yesterday (Sunday) a patient was admitted to my service from the ER. The history was one month of diarrhea and lower abdominal pain since starting radiation therapy. The pain had recently increased. Exam showed peritoneal signs. Suspecting a perforated viscus we called the surgeon. Later that evening he went for surgical repair of a rectosigmoid perforation. It’s an easy diagnosis to make, but even these routine hits are not always made. The ER team failed to make the Dx. If we hadn’t been there he might have languished on the ward until septic shock had developed. By that point his chance of survival would have been limited. We probably saved his life. All too often, I think, doctors fail to appreciate the impact of their work.
Thanks for the entertaining list, Hoover. It brings back unpleasant but now funny memories.
Great post, I linked to it on my physical therapy blog, very similar! Thanks
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I wish I would have known a lot of these before I started nursing school. Nursing school is a killer so I can’t imagine Medical school.
I understand this is a cynical website, but this is just so exaggerated, it’s almost ridiculous. Maybe my school is a bit different, but even on surgery I wasn’t a retractor bitch, nor were 90% of surgeones assholes… but then again maybe I just got lucky. But this tread did remind me that as a future surgeon I should try to keep my humanity.
Also, I would do it again…
Hey Elaine what med school did you attend?
First semester in, and I’ve checked off twenty so far
I flunked med’ school!! Got to final year passed practical but failed writtens! Med’ school awarded me a bachelor in medical science???? What can i do guys???? UK
mY EMAIL IS imukasa@hotmail.com
Way too cynical. Med school is hard work and there will be times where you will experience difficult personalities. But in my experience that has been the exception rather than the norm. I absolutely hated OB GYN because of the personalities (seriously crazy) but I was pleasantly surprised with surgery. Surgery and OB are long hours–you will be exhausted, but IM, FM, Peds, Psych are not difficult rotations. And 4th year is a piece of cake. Many of the stereotypes in medicine are pure hyperbole. IF you have no time to enjoy your life in med school then you are doing something wrong. If you are studying every second of the day, you’re doing something wrong (I averaged about 5-6 hours of studying a day in first 2 years (including class) and did well). Don’t believe what you read on this thread–seriously it’s laughable. I have absolutely no regrets going to med school and neither do the vast majority of my classmates.
Hey,
did you guys ever have to do pelvic examinations on eachother?
That’d suck
This was so entertaining to read, espcially since I do eventually want to go Med school. Thanks for the tips. OB/GYN is not for me, someone did that for Health Class career day, NOT me nope.. i think i am better off with anesthesiology. this dream of mine is only is only 8 more years away… gotta finish my undergrad first _.- GREATTT, kiss my social life goodbye and hello sleep deprived bitch =)
this page rocks
i am a med student from poland, on my second year, and i have to tell you it’s so true, especialy about surgeons, they are assholes, but i wanna be one 
(in poland we do work at the clinic from our 1st year and so on during each summer). keep up the good work!
Theres one word that describes all of you people: PUSSIES