Wayfaring MD
And for the 5,000th time, let me clarify that I am female.
Disclaimer:
HIPAA is for reals, folks. All of my "patient stories" have been changed to protect patient privacy. I will change any or all identifiers, including age, location, race/ethnicity, sex, medical history, and quotes.
I am a senior in high school and I want to become a doctor, but medical school seems… Tiresome and depressing. I feel like once I get there I’ll be so isolated and alone that I will give up. How does one handle that? It just seems so daunting to me. But medicine is my passion and I don’t want to give it up! -scienceofthes0ul
Well friend, you have judged medical school correctly…sort of. It absolutely can be tiresome and depressing, and it is at times (and residency moreso). But the cool thing is that when you’re tired and depressed, most of your friends are probably feeling the same thing.
That doesn’t sound very comforting, but it kind of is. You will be surrounded by people who are just as miserable as you are, and they can empathize with you and you can use each other to get through. It’s funny, I spent less time with my friends in med school than I did with friends in undergrad, but I was much closer to my med school friends, and I think it’s because of this miserable dynamic.
Take my best good friend, for example. We somehow managed to get every 3rd year rotation together, which was a godsend. She kept me sane, for real. And during our 4th year when we parted ways for much of the year, we still called each other almost daily to share crazy patient stories, catch up, and commiserate.
But just in case you’re not lucky enough to find a best good friend in med school, here are some tips to avoid isolation, depression, and burnout.
Hey fourth years, how great has fourth year been for you? Amazing right? I told you it would be. Like all good things, fourth year must come to an end, and the beginning of that end is, of course, RANK LISTS. Rank lists are due February 20 (and if you didn’t already know this, you need to step up your game yo), and I’m sure you guys are all freaking out about them a little bit.
A close friend of mine e-mailed me recently about her rank list decision making, and she said,
I have been expecting to have a “big moment” of sorts where the lights come down from heaven and God says “this is where you are supposed to go.”
We all hope for that feeling. That moment when it’s all clear.
So far, that hasn’t happened for her, and I imagine it hasn’t happened for many of you. I had my own little rank list crisis last year (btw, I matched my first ranked program, but I won’t tell which of those two it was), so I totally understand the frustration and the worries and fears associated with making this list that will determine the course of your next 3-7 years.
So here’s a little advice to consider in your decision making:
Hey! Did you do any additional extra-curricular activities or work experience while in med school to help you with your residency applications? What sort of things would increase your chance of getting a competitive residency position? -gokulan
If you look at the NRMP’s data on which factors are most important to program directors in deciding whether or not to offer an interview to an applicant, extracurricular experiences are pretty low on the list. The thing that matters most is grades. After grades, the most important things are letters of rec from respected doctors in your specialty and a good personal statement.
There are 2 things to consider when applying to residency: 1) how competitive your specialty is, and 2) how competitive your top program is. If you’re applying to a no-so-competitive specialty (like those in primary care), you may not need super high scores compared to the med school population at large. However, if you want a good program within your specialty, you want to be on the above average score range for your specialty. To check the average step 1 score for your specialty, click here.
Extracurriculars, unfortunately, don’t do much to boost low grades when applying to residency programs (unlike applying to med school). Where extracurriculars really come into play is showing your interest in your specialty. If you are applying for internal medicine but all your activities are things like March of Dimes, Jerry’s Kids, St. Jude’s and Ronald McDonald House, programs may question your dedication to adult medicine. If your school has an interest group for your chosen specialty, you should be involved in it. If you like research, your research should probably have a place in your specialty. It’s a little harder for the surgical subspecialties. Most surgeon hopefuls choose to spend their extra time in the OR, working their butts off for good letters of rec.
So what did I do? I’m interested in family medicine, specifically global medicine and in rural and underserved populations, and I was applying mostly to programs that offered an emphasis in these things. So I did rural medicine rotations, free clinic electives, and mission trips. I worked in my school’s free clinic, helped plan our mission trip, and was an officer in our family medicine interest group.
Hey, so I’m in med school right now. However, it’s getting to that point where I have to take my Step 1s and start thinking about residency. How hard is the process overall? Is it as stressful, difficult, and overcomplicated as all the people on the forums make it out to be? As a side note, I am in a foreign medical school right now, and I’m hoping to get back to the States as… something. We’ll see when I get to clinicals. - tinypasserine
The residency application process is no more painful or difficult than the med school application process. Actually, it may be a little easier.
The AAFP has a pretty decent Timeline/Checklist thingy to help you organize and plan your application process.
I think it probably is a little more complex for foreign medical grads, but since I went to school in the US, I don’t know all the ins and outs of that process. I would check out ERAS’s page for IMGs for that info.
Also, disregard Student Doctor Network. For everything. Go with the TOADs. We will not steer you wrong.
Are you in the end of your second year? Because that’s probably a little early to be thinking seriously about residency. But here’s what you can do at this point:
get-going asked: What’s a good way to not be a gunner? I’ve realized looking at your and md admissions descriptions for gunners that I am one, and I don’t wanna be!
My suspicion, get-going, is that you are not a gunner. Why? Because gunners don’t worry about being gunners. They just gun away. Like I said before, all high achieving people are a little type A, but you only become a gunner when you take it to the extreme. Also, why avoid being a gunner? Because they’re obnoxious, they make other people’s lives miserable, and they make school unnecessarily stressful. So here are some tips.
1. Keep your grades to yourself. No one cares about your grades except other gunners, and they don’t need to know.
2. Don’t ask other people their grades. If they want to tell you, they’ll tell you.
3. Don’t even ask “how did you do” or “are you happy with the test?” If the person didn’t do so well, you’re embarrassing them by even asking.
4. Don’t answer a question unless it is asked directly to you.
5. Do not ever ever ever ask a fellow student a question you already know the answer to. Leave the pimping to the professors. The one exception is if the student asks you to quiz them. And even then, don’t be a jerk.
get-going asked: What’s a good way to not be a gunner? I’ve realized looking at your and md admissions descriptions for gunners that I am one, and I don’t wanna be!
My suspicion, get-going, is that you are not a gunner. Why? Because gunners don’t worry about being gunners. They just gun away. Like I said before, all high achieving people are a little type A, but you only become a gunner when you take it to the extreme. Also, why avoid being a gunner? Because they’re obnoxious, they make other people’s lives miserable, and they make school unnecessarily stressful. So here are some tips.
1. Keep your grades to yourself. No one cares about your grades except other gunners, and they don’t need to know.
2. Don’t ask other people their grades. If they want to tell you, they’ll tell you.
3. Don’t even ask “how did you do” or “are you happy with the test?” If the person didn’t do so well, you’re embarrassing them by even asking.
4. Don’t answer a question unless it is asked directly to you.
5. Do not ever ever ever ask a fellow student a question you already know the answer to. Leave the pimping to the professors. The one exception is if the student asks you to quiz them. And even then, don’t be a jerk.
1. Work like crazy until interviews are over. Then chill like you have never chilled before.
2. Store up that vacation time for the end of the year if you can. Moving takes 3 times as much time and effort as you think it will.
3. Do an away rotation (or three!). Even if it’s not at your top program, it will teach you a lot about other hospital systems and will help you figure out what you like and don’t like in a program.
4. Pick one piece of clothing in your interview outfit that will make you memorable. It can be bling, but tasteful, of course. Maybe shoes with a little pizzazz. For me, it was a scarf. Guys, go with a brightly colored tie (again, mad points for the bowtie) or pocket square if you’re classy like that.
5. Be nice to the hotel staff and support staff at residency programs you’re applying to. If you’re rude, it may come back to bite you. People check up on that sort of thing.
1. Find some FOBT developer and steal it. Keep it with you at all times. You will be a hero because that stuff has legs and doesn’t like to be in the same place as the cards.
2. Don’t take your white coat into your house except to wash it. But wash it frequently. On hot. With bleach. MRSA is no joke, yo.
3. Keep an extra pair of socks, a toothbrush, an extra cell phone charger, a roll of quarters (cuz you gotta eat, and how can you eat without vending machine moneys?) and a case of gum at the hospital. You will thank me later.
4. If you are on surgery, congratulations, your diet now consists entirely of mountain dew and fiber one bars. Stock up.
5. When on a particularly miserable rotation with long hours, pack one more thing in your lunchbox than you think you’ll eat. You’ll eat it.
1. Don’t get complacent. If your study method wasn’t working the best last year, change it! Second year is harder, duh.
2. In that same vein, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
3. Enjoy the occasional bits of humor hidden in Robbins and Cotran Pathology. ( I did Path first year, but it’s my understanding that most traditional schools do it second year).
4. Take a first year under your wing and help them get through. Give them your notes, call them occasionally, take them out for coffee. If your school doesn’t have an official big sib/little sib program, start one.
A new academic year is beginning, which means there is a whole new crop of thousands of first years who are, at any given moment, this close to peeing themselves out of excitement or utter fear. So to calm your worries, I’ve compiled a little advice column. Here goes:
1. Don’t look at the cadaver’s face on the first day of dissection. Save that emotional challenge for a week or two in.
2. Take the amount of time you think you’ll need to study and double it. Seriously.
3. Yes, you really do have to know that minute detail about the alpha subunit of the cholera toxin molecule (there’s a reason why I still remember it. Hello first day of medical school… ah the memories).
4. Don’t pull all-nighters. If you don’t know it by 10pm, you won’t know it at 3am.
