Wayfaring MD: Missionary Physician

Ooh, good question!

My biggest fear going into medical school was not being able to handle the volume of material that I was facing. I wasn’t afraid of failing, per se, but of just being overwhelmed. Day one of med school was like

But somehow I got through it. 

My biggest fear now that I’m done is that I’ll be faced with a situation where I have to think fast on my feet and I’ll be completely unprepared for it. Like one of those where the nurse says, “Doctor, what do you want to do?” and I’ll be like:

And what’s scarier I think is that it will happen. It’s terrifying that my decisions affect people’s lives. It’s not as terrifying if I have time to think through what I’m doing, but if I have to think and act fast, I’m scared I’ll mess up. 

Basically, I hate the feeling of being overwhelmed. It scares me like whoa. 

Heh, my study habits in college were terrible compared to med school, and my med school studying wasn’t what it could have been. I didn’t grasp the concept of reading the textbook and studying every day until I got to medical school. 

My studying varied by the class: for for classes like physics, genetics, biochemistry, calculus, and all my chemistries, I was pretty diligent to work all the problems in the books and go to tutoring sessions that were available so I could do more practice problems. That method worked well for me most of the time, except for physics I (where I went to every tutoring session, did all the problems correctly on the first try, and still got Cs on tests because my teacher was writing tests for rocket scientists) and organic I (where my teacher wrote 2.5 hour exams and only gave us 1 hour to finish them).  

For classes that were more rote memorization based, like some of my biologies and most of my gen ed classes, I pretty much would just review my notes here and there and then hunker down a few days before the exams. I got As in pretty much all of those classes because I’m a great memorizer, but I’m not sure how much of that stuff I put in my long term memory. 

Those methods of studying worked for me in undergrad, but I knew they wouldn’t work in medical school. It was REALLY hard for me to pick up the pace once I got to medical school because I was used to doing well without having to work extremely hard. So yeah, it probably is a bad habit to start studying that way. Put in the time, learn how to study and really absorb what you’re learning, and maybe it’ll make med school a bit easier for you (if only because it taught you how to study properly).

Sure, here’s some I follow:

medicalstate - why aren’t you already following him? I’m on his inspiration list, and he’s on mine ;)

md-admissions  - funny conversations from med students

futureerdoc - US - fellow fourth year

medicineinstills - a med student’s experience told through photography

3x5byangie - a med student’s project 365

wordsthatididntsay - my fave pre-medder. I think we could be great buddies in real life. 

thenotquitedoctor - a pre-med who will be starting med school soon

mylifeasamedstudent - hasn’t updated in a while, but still great. 

descantforhope - a naturopathic student

wifeofadocstar - the wife of a 4th year med student

dr-zaman -a first year med student

hartmd - a first year student in Texas

purplequeens - UK 

mymedspace  - mostly pictures

medicalcase - a high school student who posts anatomy pictures

adventuresofaprokerryote - Canadians, this one’s for you. 

varcega - Philippines?

navamon - Caribbean

fabyeroca - 

js-anatomy - Scotland

whitecoatandstethoscope - Scotland

shouldbestudyingmedschool -US

inadvertentpremed -a non-traditional US pre-med student

padude - an ER PA in NY