Myself and my girlfriend moved to this town so she could attend medical school 3 1/2 months ago. The pressure had gotten to her before, but now she’s seems like she’s starting to crack. She’s been at school since mid-July, a good month before classes at normal university begin. There is a good chance that it is hormonal, as a certain monthly occasion coincided directly with preparing for a lot of tests, and final exams are in a couple weeks, but she had never been this upset before. I keep telling her that this will all pass, that vacation is coming up, and they are just overloading her with work to try and weed out folks who aren’t dedicated.
She keeps telling me she’s unsure of her choice, but she’s doing so well at school, despite a lack of free time. I can tell all the work is getting old to her. It’s a rare occasion that she’s not at school 9-5, and that doesn’t include off the clock studying. I feel like I’m not doing enough to help, and sometimes I worry I’m not doing the right thing or I’m pushing too hard, although she did the same thing when I had trouble in school. Any advice?
The best thing I can recommend would be for you to plan (with or without her help) at least a semi-regular getaway. If you can’t afford much, it could just be for an afternoon. But it seems like having some kind of break in the schedule would give her something to look forward to, and may help.
If the stressing continues, I’d strongly recommend that she see a doctor, and maybe get a little medicinal help. I know that .25mg of Xanax helps me tremendously when I’m feeling overwhelmed, but does not impair me at all.
When faced with an upset SO, some people are listeners and others are problem solvers. (Many times this works along gender lines, but not always.) Sometimes it can help to switch tactics if what you’re doing isn’t working this time. Maybe she doesn’t need you to “fix it”, she just needs to vent. So if you’re a problem solver (which is a good thing!) try just making reassuring noises while she talks about it. Nice and noncommital: “Mm-hmm. Wow. That sounds rough. How did that make you feel? That must have been frustrating. How difficult!” and, of course, the most important of all, “I love you.”
OTOH, if you’re generally a listener, try problem solving instead: “This sounds like a really tough situation. Would you like us to brainstorm some plan to work through it?” or even “Have you tried XYZ?”
On a more practical level, consider taking a trip with her to a hospital or nursing home to volunteer for a few hours talking with patients and bringing them newspapers and tea. She may be getting so bogged down in the book learning that she’s forgetting why she wants to be a doctor in the first place - people. (Unless she intends to be in research, in which case I have no advice.)
She’s a she, so you need to be a listener more than a problem solver. That said, I would strongly suggest you take her away to a par or funfair or something for the day. And then shag her senseless at the end of it. Or better, take her away for a day of little except shagging. Your description of her indicates she’s enormously stressed, and I’ve read many times that sex is a great reliever of stress.
The first year of medical school is tough, especially the first few months. Everyone reevaluates their choice, but most people stick it out and are glad they did.
The beginning of medical school is a time of huge stress–it is a huge change from whatever you were doing before, and moving to a new city doesn’t help. There is a huge amount of information being thrown at you, and usually requires changes in your study habits–ie you can’t just study for a day or two like you did in undergrad and expect to do well. In addition, the subjects the first year of school often seem like they have no relevance to being a physician.
The most important thing right now is for you to be supportive of whatever she decides to do. Let her know how proud you are of how she is doing. And try to get her as far away from school as you can when she has time off after tests. My plan after tests has always been to do nothing related to school over the break. It does help, even if it is just a couple days.
If you feel that she needs more help than you can give, encourage her to look into the support services her school offers. The days when medical schools try to get people to leave are long gone. They will bend over backward to get a student help. There should be tutors available if she needs academic help, and most schools also have counselors available to help with management of psychological stress.
Speaking as a medical student myself, she sounds like a normal first year med student to me! And by the way, I doubt it has much to do with hormones. It’s just a really hard time in life for most people.
I second what Hirundo82 said about remembering there IS help available if she really seems to be close to cracking. The “weeding out” stuff is done prior to letting you into med school. Once you’re in med school, the school wants you to stay in! They lose tuition money and it looks bad if they lose students in the middle of med school.
Medical school is definitely a very different experience than undergrad. Most medical students are used to being high achievers in their undergrad years, so it is a bit of a shock to come to med school and be surrounded by a bunch of other high achievers. If you’re used to thinking of yourself as “the smart one”, and now suddenly there are a lot of other people who are just as smart or smarter, it can make you question yourself.
I can remember honestly wondering at first if the admission committee had made a mistake and let me “slip through the cracks” to get in their school, because I wondered if I could truly handle it. But, fortunately, in the end everything turned out all right!
The best thing you can do is just try to be supportive, try to reduce other sources of stress (like maybe pitching in extra help on chores or making dinner), and just wait for the storm to pass. Don’t try to push her to study or not study…just try to be there for her and listen to her when she needs to vent about it.
Just so you have an idea of what’s ahead for you:
Things will get better for her in second year because the information you learn in second year is more clinically-oriented (which helps you remember why you wanted to be a doc in the first place)…but she’ll probably stress out about the board exam at the end of second year.
Third year is a mix of hard and easy stuff, depending on what particular rotation you’re on at the time. Beware surgery and ob/gyn!
Fourth year is usually a lot easier. I’ve heard some people describe fourth year as “the most expensive vacation you’ll ever take”.
After that, internship is hard for most people…but that could be the end of the hard times depending on what specialty she goes into.
Medicine has a lot of ups and downs. Having the support and caring of a loved one makes it a lot easier to make it through the crazy times.
Shagging her senseless is a good idea if that is what relieves stress for her. A lot of us wimmins don’t want anything to do with sex when we’re feeling badly stressed. It might not be a bad idea to make it clear to her that you understand if she’s too stressed to have sex all the time - one less worry on her mind.
There are lots of little things you can do to help her through the hardest parts, Octagon. Help her with meals, cleaning, laundry, bill paying, all the little details of living that she has to deal with as well as school and studying. I would say that the biggest help you can be to her right now is to do what she needs help with, not what you think she needs help with. And keep listening and telling her it will all work out okay.
Thanks folks. This is all really helpful. We are going on vacation for Thanksgiving and I know that will do some goodl, but the weeks leading up to it are going to be especially rough for her.
I’ve talked to her about a counselor, but she refuses. They told her 50% of students generally do, and the help is free, but she seems to be objecting on principle. She keeps telling me that there could be a better way of carrying out things, rather than giving up management and sponsoring counselors. I feel the same way, but I can’t convince her to seek help, and I do not want to push her into it.
It is reassuring to hear that it gets easier, and that the topics aren’t irrelevant to being a doctor. I am hearing a lot of the latter, and it reminds me of my experience with the first section of organic chemistry.
I’m getting the basic vibe that I should be more attentive, more helpful with the little things, less opinionated & self-centered. I will do my best.
You might want to mention to her that a lot of her patients will be people seeking anxiety and depression meds (and I mean A LOT), and it would be helpful for her as a doctor to have experienced the counselling world herself. It sounds like she sees seeking counselling as a weakness, rather than looking at it as getting advice from a professional on how to do things that she hasn’t been able to figure out for herself yet. Physician, heal thyself.
My thought as well. What kind of doctor wouldn’t recommend an overstressed patient see a counselor! I wouldn’t want a doctor who wasn’t personally open to such an idea.
Speaking as a medical student a lot of us would recommend counseling to a patient but don’t want to do it ourselves. We’re used to feeling smart and capable and to admit that we need help can feel like a personal defeat. But if she can get past that point counseling can be great for some people. But if she absolutely hates the idea don’t push it. I had some problems my first year and finally conviced myself that it was time to swallow my pride and see a counselor but I still hated it. It wasn’t a problem with the specific person I was seeing. I just hated telling my deepest, darkest feelings to a stranger.
Another thing is that she may need to adjust her academic expectations and accept that for the sake of her sanity she doesn’t need to be tops in every class. This comes in more as she gets farther into the clinically relevant stuff. If she picks the classes every term that really interest her and are specific to her intended specialty and shoots for honors in those then she only needs a solid pass in everything else.
What you can do to help her state of mind is going to be very specific to her. Does she like to cook and can she use cooking dinner as a way to unplug from medicine for an hour every night or would coming home to find that you’ve made dinner help her destress and feel loved? You’re going to have to play it by ear a lot of the time and she’s going to have to find a healthy balance between school and the rest of her life or she’ll burn out.
Many of the rest of us are used to feeling smart and capable, too, and asking for help is seen as a sign of weakness. This isn’t unique to medical students. But asking for help is a sign of maturity, not weakness. “I DO IT MYSELF!!!” should end when you are three. And asking for help is a skill med students should be eagar to learn - you can’t master the entire medical body of knowledge yourself.
It’s just a really hard time in life for most people.