For the past several years, I felt like all I heard was everyone in medical school telling me how hard it is. I was a little worried, especially since I took a year off of school. How would I have the capacity to study anymore? Heck, I was used to spending my weekends and evenings lazing around, watching TV, and overall doing as I pleased. And now all of a sudden, I was expected to sit with my feet bolted to the floor staring at a computer screen with words like infundibular recess screaming at me for 9 hours a day. There was no way. All kinds of thoughts crossed my mind: I would lose all of my friends, gain weight from sitting around all day, and generally go insane.
What I Learned During My First Semester of Medical School
Students will feel a variety of emotions during the weeks and days leading up to the start of medical school, ranging from excitement to anxiety. Below are five key things I learned during my first semester in medical school, some of which I wish I had known before I began:
1. Every student is unique, so do what works best for you
Many people equate the preclinical years of medical school to standing before a water hose and attempting to drink all of the water that pours from it. The vast amount of information that you will be exposed to may seem overwhelming at times, but it is important to remember that generations of physicians have successfully completed their medical training. There is a way to manage this wealth of information.
How to ace your first patient encounter
As a medical student, you spend four years of college and the first two years of medical school studying non-stop for what feels like thousands of hours, cramming your brain with knowledge. But when the time comes to conduct your first face-to-face patient encounter, your confidence is rocked by the challenge of having to establish rapport, extract all the relevant medical history, and complete a physical exam, all while showing compassion, answering patient questions, and developing a differential diagnosis list and treatment plan in 30 minutes or less. Clinic is even worse with a meager 12 minutes scheduled for each patient encounter.
Top 5 Questions to Ask Your Pre-Health Advisor
If you’re interested in a career in medicine, one of the most important and helpful people will be your college’s pre-health advisor. There’s a lot of planning and preparation to do before you’ll be ready to apply to medical school, so it’s a good idea to meet with your advisor early. Make an appointment or go to drop-in hours at least once a semester to keep in touch about your classes and activities. When your advisor knows you well, they can help you find opportunities relevant to your interests and strategize about when and where to apply.
Here are some important things to ask about when you meet:
1. What classes should I take and when?
Your advisor can help you create a plan for which pre-requisite classes you should take and how you should schedule them. This will help you develop a timeline for when you’ll be ready to take the MCAT® Exam and apply to medical school. Different medical schools have different requirements, so your advisor can help you determine if you’ll need a post-baccalaureate or other program to help meet coursework requirements.
2. Are there any campus pre-med clubs, email lists, or workshops?
Many colleges have student run pre-med clubs that are a great way to make friends, form study groups, learn about local opportunities, and stay motivated. Your advisor may also send out information through an email list or social media and may hold workshops on various pre-med topics.
3. Does our school have a specific process for writing Committee Letters or Letters of Evaluation?
One of the most important and influential components of your application is the Committee Letter or Letters of Evaluation that you’ll receive from faculty and staff members at your college. The Committee Letter is a document or collection of letters written on your behalf to tell medical schools about you, your commitment to medicine, and your strengths. It’s important to know your school’s procedure so that you can begin early and have your letters sent in on time. Some medical schools will not consider your application complete until they have this letter.
4. Do you know of any medically-related opportunities in the community that will help me get experience?
Some colleges have relationships with local hospitals, clinics or other community-based centers that may allow you opportunities to shadow, volunteer, or work in a lab. There may also be a connection with a local medical school, or another organization, that has a pre-med summer or pipeline program. Your advisor will likely know about many of these and be able to help you decide which might be right for you. They’ll also be able to steer you away from places where other students may have had negative experiences. Be sure to check with them each semester as opportunities may come available at different times of the year.
5. Do you think I should take a gap year before starting medical school?
More and more students are taking a year or more in between undergrad and medical school for various reasons. Last year, more than 50% of accepted applicants had one or more years between graduating college and applying to medical school. Your advisor can help you decide what’s best for you and discuss what opportunities might make you a more competitive applicant.
Whether you’re just starting to think about medicine or you’ve already applied, your advisor can be a great resource throughout the process. For more tips, see AAMC’s Partnering with your Advisor.
Spaced Repetition in Medical Education
We all want to train to become the best clinicians we can be, but education in the health professions is often like drinking from a firehose. Worse yet, most of us haven’t learned how to learn – how to effectively synthesize and retain the knowledge for the long term, both to do well on board exams and to have that knowledge available to inform our clinical practice.When we came into medical school, one of the most common pieces of advice we’d get from upperclassmen was “don’t worry about remembering this; you’ll forget it all by rotations and you’ll have to relearn it anyway.” What a depressing thought – but it’s true! By the time they arrive in medical school, most students have forgotten the majority of what they learned in college courses. Students routinely need to re-learn massive amounts of forgotten information before taking their board exams, and residents eventually forget much of what they learned in medical school outside their specialty. All this translates into vast amounts of time wasted.
Five Simple Tips for a Better Personal Statement
The personal statement is, for many, one of the most dreaded aspects of the medical school application. It can be quite intimidating to be given a blank space so large, with the expectation that you will use it to answer a simple yet complex question: “Why do you want to go to medical school?” This question can be difficult to answer in the form of a personal statement because it is so open-ended; even students who “know” the answer for themselves may feel worried that they are not structuring the personal statement correctly, or are not saying everything that they feel admissions committees want to see. There is also the issue of deficiencies or weaknesses elsewhere in the application; the personal statement is supposed to be a platform for addressing these, but many students struggle to write about these openly and tie this into the rest of the personal statement.
20 Questions: Mellissa Withers, MHS, PhD, Global Health
Mellissa Withers, MHS, PhD, is an assistant clinical professor at University of Southern California (USC) in the Institute for Global Health and leads the Global Health Program of the Association of Pacific Rim Universities, a network of 45 universities in the region, where she teaches global health-related courses. Withers also works as an independent health research consultant, with research focusing on global reproductive health and women’s empowerment, including human trafficking, preventing unintended pregnancy, HIV/AIDS prevention among sex workers in Asia, and engaging male partners in family planning in sub-Saharan Africa. She received a bachelor’s degree in global development with a minor in ethnic studies from University of California, Berkeley (2001), a Master of Health Science (MHS) in international health systems management from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (2003), and a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in community health sciences with a minor in cultural anthropology from University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Fielding School of Public Health (2010).
Bedside Ethics: The Story of Jane and John
Reposted from here with permission. The circumstances under which Jane and I met were less than ideal. … Read more
Chronicles of a Med Student: And So It Begins!
The minute the tasseled hat flew off of my head after “Pomp and Circumstance”, I knew I was no longer a kid. What a startling realization–one I’m sure many of you have experienced–for someone who has led a fairly sheltered life! Let me confess one little thing: I was scared. Not just an ordinary level of scared. The kind of scared that catches you by surprise to the point where you start bawling on your graduation day with your bedazzled cap and a brand new bachelor’s degree in your hand. I was taking a gap year and had no idea which direction my life was going to go next. I knew what I had been working for my entire life: medical school. But this was not the feeling I had anticipated when I completed my undergraduate career. I had practically planned my life out since I was in middle school: I was going to go straight from high school to college to medical school to a career. But things had changed; I had grown a little tired of the academic life and wanted to experience something new. I wanted to live a little! But figuring out what to do next and how to do it was intimidating.
10 Things to Expect From Your Summer Undergrad Research Experience
For some undergrads, this summer will be spent lounging on the beach reading and hanging out with friends. Days will be spent blissfully sleeping until a parent annoyingly insists that it’s time to get up and do something.But alas that’s not for you.
Physician Employment Contracts: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
In both hospital[1] and group practice settings, physicians are regularly asked to sign employment contracts that the group or hospital may describe as “standard”. While physician employment contracts can define the terms of the employment relationship in helpful ways, they can and often do contain clauses and obligations that may have a long-lasting impact on the physician. When negotiating a contract with a potential employer, physicians are well advised to take a hard look at key contract terms, including termination provisions, non-compete clauses, professional liability insurance terms and indemnification obligations, and negotiate to remove or revise overly burdensome terms prior to the start of the employment relationship.
10 Signs You're an Intern
1. 2 Days off in a row = Vacation!
In high school, I looked forward to winter break, spring break, and summer break. In undergraduate, it was the two weeks off over winter break and the week off between quarters. Anything short of a week off felt like barely time to catch your breath – definitely not a vacation. As a medical student, there was still winter break and most bank holidays. Now, as an intern, any time there are two days off in a row, what most of the rest of my non-medicine peers would simply call “the weekend” constitutes the most luxurious vacation.
5 Things You Should Know About Secondary Applications
Unlike other graduate school admissions processes, where there is typically only one round of applications, medical schools often have a primary application and a secondary application. The secondary application generally involves one or more essay questions that are meant to help the admissions committee better understand your background, qualifications, and career aspirations. Below are five things you should know about medical school secondary applications.
Graduation Day Thoughts on Student Debt
Memorial Day and Mother’s Day are May’s official holidays, but for millions, graduation day is May’s biggest celebration—as momentous as a wedding or birth. Graduation creates memories of a proud family gathering, celebrations with classmates, and the inspiring message from a charismatic commencement speaker.
I’ve had my share of graduations—high school, college at Cornell University, medical school at GW, grad school at Hopkins. Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) President Jordan Cohen addressed my medical school graduation. I had no idea who he was. A decade later, I went to work for him, and the AAMC has been my professional home ever since.
Ensuring Fairness: An Interview with the Director of MCAT Security and Compliance
Updated March 3, 2022. The article was updated to correct minor grammatical errors and formatting. … Read more
Eight Tips on Money Management for Entering Medical Students
You’ve already done the hard part, you’ve made it into medical school! But how are you going to pay for it? Understanding how to manage your money is critical for financial success. Follow these eight basic tips to start your medical career off right.
Q&A With Physician-Author Matt McCarthy, MD
I was having dinner with my editor three years ago, and he asked if I’d ever thought of writing a book about medicine. I had kept a journal during my intern year, but I was hesitant to write about my experiences. Some were great, but a lot weren’t and I wasn’t sure I could convey the difficult moments fairly. My editor and I spent a long time working on the tone of the book, trying to capture just how terrifying and inspiring that first year is.
2. What would you say is the most controversial part of the book?
The trickiest thing is writing about your own patients. Some medical writers believe we should only write about patients if we have their written consent. Most journalists tend to disagree with this and you occasionally see arguments about it break out on social media. In a few cases, I wasn’t able to get written consent for my book, so I had to change identifying details to protect anonymity. It’s not just about complying with HIPAA. It’s about changing personal details so thoroughly that you’re really protecting identities. Patients are vulnerable, and we have to be careful when we write about them.
5 Reasons Intern Year is Better Than Medical School
I had a certain level of (I thought well-justified) terror anticipating the start of intern year. No longer able to hide behind the protective “I’m just the medical student” blockade, I was worried about not being able to live up to the burden and the privilege of being someone’s doctor. Third year was rough and I could only imagine the horrors that awaited me as an intern. Yes, it has been a difficult year, filled with long hours and intense days. However, what I found was that contrary to my fears, intern year has been so much better than medical school. If you recently walked across the stage and accept your diploma, congratulations! Here’s what you have to look forward to:
Lost in Translation
Republished with permission from here. In the rest of the house, the noise of the party … Read more
What's On Your Summer Reading List?
For most students, summer break is an opportunity to do many things for which there … Read more