How Hard is Medical School (Made to Sound as Depressing as Possible)

Medical School is extremely hard.

First, you arrive at medical school. A bright, cheery MSI.

And you are really, really excited to be here. I mean, possibly more excited that you will ever be for anything thus far in your life (unless you're already married, had a child etc.) You recognize that it is going to be hard but at the same time you think to yourself, "Well I got in, didn't I, hopefully the administration didn't make some huge mistake." Have I mentioned that you are excited. Tens of thousands of people didn't get in to medical school this year, but you did.

Then you get done with the lazy week of orientation, which you probably skipped half of anyway, and you arrive at your first class.


ANATOMY- Day One

Welcome to Medical School here at the Medical College of the United States. Blah. Blah. Study a little every day. Blah. Blah. This is going to be the most challenging thing that you have ever done. Blah Blah. This is the axilla. Blah blah.

Video begins:

"This is how to disect a human body..."

Professor: Ok class now we are going to go downstairs and begin disecting, there will be 6 people per cadaver.

You (thinking to yourself): This is great! I'm finally doing something that is interesting. No more boring stuff like General Chemistry for me!

And that first night you study better than you ever have in your life, because if you know one thing, it's that you don't want to be one of those 5 or so people that drop out (and you definitely don't want to Modify, which means that you end up taking 5 years to complete medical school instead of the usual 4.). And you keep studying every night for the next month, and on some levels it's actually fun (or at the very least tolerable).

Then the first test arrives.

And you pass! Not only that, but you do pretty well--not honors by any means, but since your main concern was just getting through, finding out that you are an "average" medical student is actually not all that bad.

So you keep studying, and studying, and studying, every night for the next few months. Not only for anatomy, but also for embryology and histology which are taken concurrently. And very gradually this sense of newness begins to wear off.

(to be continued...)