So I know this is a four year-old topic but I was directed here from this link:
http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2011/06/reasons-medical-students-burn-depressed.html
I am thankful that I found this thread and that blog.
I definitely feel the OP's pain in thinking that 3rd year is one giant game of trying to satisfy mercurial attendings and residents. Trying to balance learning the material (and then some which I may have forgotten during my first two years) and doing scut work and trying to look good is getting to me. My grades have been mediocre and I too think I'm SOL when it comes to residencies, esp when I'm trying to go for anesthesia. Many of my eval comments have been along the lines of "difficult to establish rapport" or "unemotional" - but the residents I worked with have been saying the opposite things whenever I asked for feedback or whenever I chatted with them in the halls once the rotation was over.
Yeah, it's been one hell of a slog so far throughout the entirety of medical school. I enjoyed my first year up until the point where some classmates of mine accused me of a crime I never committed (without any sort of credible evidence to back them up), which led to me being placed on mandatory counseling for the rest of the year. I had what seemed like secondary depression to me throughout 2nd year as I pondered whether I was really a good person at all (and not the monster my accusers had made me out to be) and I watched my grades jump all over the place. My accusers were never removed from the class, nor was I ever able to confront them, which bothers me from time to time whenever I see them, but it wasn't as bad as when the incident first came up for me.
I limped throughout my crunch month and ended up with a 216 - which is definitely not what I wanted. I watched friends in the class come and go as I found out more about them or they found out about the incident. It's hard losing friends, too - and combine this with the fact that I am the youngest person in my class - I don't have all the skills to cope just yet.
I went into medical school gravitating more towards acute care/ER due to my past training as a basic EMT, and had already knocked off office care settings/chronic care/primary settings because it wasn't stimulating enough for me, and plus reminded me of helicopter parenting - which is what I had to deal with growing up. It is also for this reason I am not having children, so the current pediatric rotation I am on right now is hard for me because it just brings back too many bad memories. Kids are okay - babies not so much - parents even worse. I think I'm turning into George Carlin or something.
I am acquiring more coping skills whenever I can with the help of resumed counseling sessions that my school provides, and I do have some outlets for stress relief, whether it be attempting guitar, salsa dancing (although I cannot interpret the music as well as I want to, which means a lot to me in this current state), going to the firing range for CCW and martial arts training, working out, but I am slowly finding that I am enjoying them less and less because a lot of time is spent playing "the game" and trying to relearn material as well as establish an identity.
I just hope it gets better all the way up to 4th year....