I have questions about med school!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I’ve really resisted announcing this fact (considering I found out in mid-May, I feel that I’ve strained my willpower enough), but now I actually have questions, so I thought I’d post.

[brag]Last May, I wrote my MCAT. Last December, I submitted my application to the University of Saskatchewan. This March, I was interviewed. This May, I graduated with a degree in History. A few weeks earlier, I had been informed that I was accepted into Medicine, graduating in 2012. Yay etc.[/brag]

It’s all still surreal, but that doesn’t stop me from wanting to ask questions.

I’ll make a numbered list to make answering easier.

  1. Should I be doing anything to prepare myself, academically? Learning anything that’ll be a pain to start on once the school year has begun?

  2. Are any study books (e.g. the “Essential Clinical Anatomy”) far and away better than others?

  3. Will life change much now that I’m in med school? Is the first year all that different from being in Arts, beyond the academics?

  4. Any other advice?

  5. Should this thread be in IMHO?

I’d love to hear from anyone who’s got any experience with studying medicine, directly or indirectly.

2
  1. Should I be doing anything to prepare myself, academically? Learning anything that’ll be a pain to start on once the school year has begun?

Good god, no. Enjoy the summer, unless you KNOW that you have major holes that they told you to fill. If there are no caveats with your acceptance, just enjoy the summer. You’ve got plenty of time to overdo it and burn out later, don’t start now.

  1. Are any study books (e.g. the “Essential Clinical Anatomy”) far and away better than others?

There will be a booklist, of course. Get a good anatomy atlas. The one by Netter is widely used. The idiot books (Clinical Anatomy made ridiculously simple) are good books to read first, then read the real books after you’ve got the silly mnemonics memorized.

  1. Will life change much now that I’m in med school? Is the first year all that different from being in Arts, beyond the academics?

A lot of memorization work, and a more insular crowd than college. In college you probably had friends in Engineering, History, Biology, whatever. Now the people in your med school class are the only people in your year - there is no other major in med school. Med school is weirdly like high school: In crowd / out crowd / nowhere crowd, lockers, rumors, tempests in teapots, lectures, not much independent study or projects - I don’t know much about University of Saskatchewan, but Memorial was very much like high school. They even had a yearly bash they would put together, which was very like a prom.

The last 2 years are usually clerkship, so you’ve got call to do, and your work is on the wards, which is exhausting. Make sure to keep up with your friends / SO during this period, or they’ll be gone when you emerge.

  1. Any other advice?
    Keep up with your out of medicine friends. Keep up with your out of medicine pursuits. Interest yourself in things that make you a better person - medicine won’t.

Don’t become a self-involved dickweed. Don’t believe that being a doctor makes you important. Don’t become cynical. Try to see things from the patient’s point of view. Cultivate compassion. That is very hard to do at 4 a.m. in the emerg. when you’re dealing with someone who is mean and stupid and drunk.

Start thinking about residency. You will do rotations in all the main branches of medicine where they always need warm bodies. (family practice, Internal Medicine, surgery, OBGYN, psychiatry, pediatrics). You will not be made to do rotations in the lesser known and terribly cool branches where they don’t need many people, and you must find your own way there. (Radiology, Radiation Oncology, ENT, Community health (no call), Genetics (no call), Laboratory medicine, etc.) so check these out. You’ll be mad if you discover that radiology was your dream discipline, but you never realized until it was too late.
5. Should this thread be in IMHO?
Dunno.

I’d love to hear from anyone who’s got any experience with studying medicine, directly or indirectly.
[/QUOTE]

Hope this helps. Congratulations and good luck.

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I don’t know any of the answers to your questions, but just want to say CONGRATULATIONS!

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I am thrilled by your news! Couldn’t happen to a better person!

5

Congratulations!

Don’t try to learn the material ahead of time. If you want to do something to prepare yourself, go over general study techniques. Read a book on memorization tricks or the like. Develop strategies for absorption of very large volumes of data quickly. If you’re comfortable with your ability to study, relax and enjoy yourself!

What Attack from the 3rd dimension said. Everyone is going to be on the same page, and everyone knows or can recognize everyone else. I briefly skimmed the U of S first year curriculum, and it looks like there aren’t any optional components at all in the first year, so you will be in class with the same group of people all day, every day. There will probably be some sort of social mailing list available, so people will sometimes spend off-hours together too. Very different from the typical Arts curriculum with mix-and-match courses and schedules.

Fear is not an option. :smiley:

More seriously, you will need to budget your time. Focus on high-yield information first. I’m not sure, but it seems that your first year courses are all pass/fail; if this is the case, do not dedicate too much time to one particular course when you need to shore up others.