What I Learned in First Year

There are people who genuinely enjoy the first 2 years of medical school, and for them I am very happy. I am not one of those people. Going from being a college student to being a med student was a whirlwind transition for me. In college I did the cram-study approach, always made good grades when I put in the effort, and took as many essay-based classes as I could. I love to write, so when the test is based on an essay that trait tends to come through. I can articulate my understanding of a topic very well when given free reign, but straight up "tell me this random fact" kind of tests were always harder for me. I can get on board with classes about critical thinking, but memorization has never been my strongest suit. Even so, this was not a significant impediment in college, where I had plenty of time and a reasonable amount of material to learn for each exam.

Then I became acquainted with the first year of medical school. Med school has a very fast pace, so while there is a certain element of "cram study" which can be employed, you still need to do some amount of studying just about every day. All of the tests were memorization-heavy, none of them were essay-based, and nothing required very much in the way of critical thinking. Medicine is fairly straightforward in its most basic form, and first year in particular was more about the language of medicine than medicine itself. My degree, which included classes in genetics and biochemistry, seemed to lose all value after our cell biology course. I hit anatomy and suddenly I did something that I think I had done maybe twice in my life: I failed an exam. I hadn't sat around staring at the cover of my book for two weeks, either; I honestly studied for the exam, I tried to memorize what they had written down, and somehow it failed to get it crammed into my brain.

There's nothing like medical school to make a smart person feel like an idiot. I had a crisis of belief in myself - I thought surely if I couldn't pass my first anatomy test that my career as a physician was over. I think most people in medical school have at least one of these episodes, whether it's because they did poorly on an exam, failed an exam or failed a whole class. You can't prepare for it, because there's no way to prepare for it. People can talk about the firehose metaphor and eating 5 pancakes a day and whatever, but it is totally different when you look at a pile of powerpoint slides, notes and book chapters realizing that this is literally insane. My husband (a veteran, by the way) relates it to being in the army or going to Iraq, as crazy as that may sound.

After I failed the anatomy test, I took a long look at how I was studying and what I was doing wrong. There's a difference between studying a lot and studying efficiently; when I saw this, I started modifying my habits. I ended up passing anatomy with plenty of margin through this method, and little by little improved my habits over the first semester. By second semester I had gotten into a sort of groove - I was doing well and even spectacularly in some classes, and I was starting to feel like maybe this medicine thing was doable.

Now I'm at the end of my first semester of second year where things look much different. I have a group of friends/study partners that I didn't have in first year, I know exactly what I need to do in each class, and even though I get anxious before every monster exam, I perform up to my own personal standards on a fairly consistent basis. I've learned to be a good medical student. It's important to keep in mind that being a good medical student doesn't automatically make you a good doctor - it makes it possible for you to become a good doctor.

I'm halfway through the last systems course of the semester, which feels quite nice. I plan to use my Saturday to enjoy the lovely winter weather, go out on a date and do all the laundry that I haven't done in a week. Here's to the weekend. :)