A common question I've been getting asked is "How is medical school going?" so I decided to give a one month update. For any of you pursuing medical school, this post is meant to INFORM you about how medical school is and NOT SCARE you! This post will help you understand the lifestyle of a medical school student and will help you decide if the medical pathway is for you.
First, let's get the bad out of the way.
How is the content/workload? Remember how we took a whole semester for genetics? Be prepared to that whole class in 4 lectures within 2 days. Same thing goes for DNA/RNA/Protein synthesis except we did all of that in one day. Within 4 weeks, we managed to cover 43 lectures (most of them were 1 hour long while some of them were 2 hours long) along with 5 cases (which were each 2 hours long). You can do the math there to see how many hours of lectures we get per week. That's only including our foundations class, for anatomy, we have over 20 bones and muscles per week and we also have to constantly practice of our standardized patient sessions along with studying for medicine and society. So yeah, get ready to do a lot of work.
Free time? Never heard of her. Im not kidding when I say I spend every minute either eating food, taking a shower, OR STUDYING. It is absolutely crucial to study at least 4+ hours on top of the 4+ hours of lectures everyday (on a good day). Basically, remember how you studied for finals week? It's like that every single day. The week before my exam, I was studying for approximately 16 hours a day which was absolutely crazy and the hardest I've ever studied in my life. I still make time a couple of days a week to play basketball or do something physical but besides that, all of my time is spent studying or reviewing. This is the first time in 5 weeks I have gotten time to write this blog post for 10 minutes.
Social life? I don't even know what that is anymore. Your whole life will revolve around medical school and studying. You will definitely make a small group with people who you will mainly study with and hang out but keeping contact with your other friends is very difficult. I'll send a text to a friend checking up on them but will not be able to reply until 10 PM so. Additionally, with the COVID pandemic going on, even hanging around/meeting all of your medical school friends outside of the medical school is difficult because of all the regulations that have been placed. However, I am not going to lie, I have went out to eat with my friends quite a bit or balled out with them or watched a movie. These things are important to create bonds and for your mental health. But don't expect time to scroll through insta or make posts or whatever.
Sleep Schedule? Well this is a tricky question. If you're productive throughout the day and don't take a break, I am sure you can get a full 8-9 hours. However, if you tend to slack a little and still want to get all your work done and want to relax over the weekend, you'll get. full 6-7 hours. It is completely up to you and your time management.
Weekends? I honestly cannot really differentiate between the weekends and weekdays except that I can sleep in. This is where I do the majority of my studying because you get the whole day free and can catch up on all of the work you missed. However, I have taken a few weekends off to relax.
Emotional Drain/Burnout? Everyone will go through this at one point or another and I have no doubt. You will have mood swings and you will go through a lot of emotions whether its happiness, stress, anxiety, despair, and etc. However, you must remember, you will get through this and this is all just temporary. You MUST do things to take care of yourself. I've taken up basketball as a physical output and meditation for 5 minutes as an emotional output. You should also create a strong support network. For me, that is my family and a few friends but that might be different for everyone.
There are some good parts though. You are learning about things you should be interested in. You get a white coat which is a symbol of a new chapter. You will meet new people and experience new things. You will get close to people you never thought you would ever talk to. While studying, there will be a lot of unforgettable moments, discussions, and arguments. Your standardized patient sessions will be the first time that you will get to act as a real doctor and ask relevant questions. You get to work with cadavers in anatomy lab. There are a lot of student interest groups that you can join to meet people and hold fun events (although it is hard during COVID). You can run for student government (I am currently running for curriculum committee) and make some real change within the school.
The biggest issue is adjusting but now, after 4 weeks, I have gotten used to all of these "bad things" and I don't even think about them at all. Remember, this is the harsh reality of medical school. It is a lot of work and before you get in, you should think about all of these things. You must truly have a passion and love for medicine to pursue this career path. For me, this will all be worth it at the end when I'm going around and saving people's lives but for you, it might not be so these are all things you should consider.
As I go through this journey, I will keep you guys updated!
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