"Biggest Kick in the Nuts" Preclinical Course

[Dedikated2liftn]

Let's hear it and give your reasons...here's to that one course that bent you over and kept comin' back for more!

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[Re3iRtH]

Human Context in Health Care.

Because I have Y-chromosomitis and hate reflecting
on my feelings.

 

[ZagDoc]

Infectious Disease, namely because (1) I hate parasites and fungi (2) I have absolutely no background in it (3) the ID docs who give the lectures at our school live and breathe this stuff and expect us to have an inordinate amount of attention to detail with it (4) its a weird shmorgesborg of micro, pharm, and epidemiology.

I know you gotta know all of it for the boards, but I could really give two craps about the life cycle of Ascaris lumbracoides or the worldwide prevalence of Wochereria bancroftii or the fact that diethylcarbazamine is indicated in the use of Filariasis but not Onchoceriasis.

 

[racerx]

Neuroscience. The material was OK, but the turn-of-the-century myelin stain cross-sections we took our practical exams with were such poor quality and faded, you had to really strain and suspend disbelief to see some nuclei.

 

[tacrum43]

Pharmacology; it's just memorizing a bunch of made up words. Biochem gets second prize.

 

[Slide]

For M1 year, the class I hated the most was embryology/developmental anatomy, but that wasn't an option so I picked biochemistry instead. Biochemistry in undergrad was ok but stupid in med school. No other class (except developmental) required so much more rote memorization. At least with Histology there were overlaps with neuro and physiology, but biochemistry just seemed like the typical ph.d's dream class that every med student fears.

 

[MSHell]

For M1 year, the class I hated the most was embryology/developmental anatomy, but that wasn't an option so I picked biochemistry instead. Biochemistry in undergrad was ok but stupid in med school. No other class (except developmental) required so much more rote memorization. At least with Histology there were overlaps with neuro and physiology, but biochemistry just seemed like the typical ph.d's dream class that every med student fears.

Wait until you hit pharm

 

[GuzzyRon]

I HATE PBL with a passion. And Biochemistry for me was almost undoable.

 

[OrnotMajestic]

Neuroscience/Neuroanatomy. What a clusterf*** of pointlessly detailed pathways and rote memorization of polysyllabic latin terms for structures of which no man knows the true function. And to echo the person above who mentioned the same thing, the poorly stained slides in which one had difficulty finding the nucleus/structure.

Biochem and Developmental Biology/Genetics tie for second.

Five weeks till fourth year!

 

[LifetimeDoc]

Ditto on neuroscience. They teach so much at our school, many of us have to shift our study time to neuro and spend less time on the more important stuff like physiology or anatomy.

 

[Mobius1985]

Neuroanatomy.

 

[Orthodoc40]

I loved neuro and so did a lot of my classmates - we have great professors and they keep it as clinically relevant as they can the whole way through.

That being said, if you look at the grade averages for classes, they show that neuro, biochem, path and now pharm, really kicked people's butts.

 

[Non-TradTulsa]

Pharmacology just kicked me in the teeth. I thought studying drugs would be a blast... not when you're memorizing 200 of 'em at a time for diseases you've never seen yet. I hated it. And, of course, I know around 1,000 generic names now - which the nurses will never recognize. I know probably a couple of dozen patent names - boy, am I ready for the wards.

I hated anatomy with a passion. I was one of those wonky types who actually kind of enjoyed biochem - I'm more of a cellular-level guy than a gross structures person. I remember one of our anatomy teachers telling us what poor doctors we'd be if we didn't know exactly which compartment every leg muscle was in - in case we got a patient with compartment syndrome. I thought, "Why would I care which compartment? I'm sending him to the ER anyway - it's not like I'm going to lance it in the office." I already know I'm no surgeon.

Pathophys was pretty interesting, and we had a fantastic professor. I think if you're a medical student and you can't stand pathophys at all, you kinda have to ask yourself why you're in med school.

 

[pseudoknot]

Neuroscience/Neuroanatomy. What a clusterf*** of pointlessly detailed pathways and rote memorization of polysyllabic latin terms for structures of which no man knows the true function. And to echo the person above who mentioned the same thing, the poorly stained slides in which one had difficulty finding the nucleus/structure.

I've never hated any class as much as this one. Most of the material seems totally useless for anyone not going into neurosurgery or neurology. It's the epitome of what's wrong with medical education and just seems like hazing.

 

[nogolfinsnow]

The ancillary classes are the worst (e.g. health care in society and other similar courses with various important sounding name that teach you about 1 useful thing for every 11 hours of class) because they're usually mandatory. At least you can expect some of the science courses to be a pain.

 

[Occams Razor]

Anatomy. Mainly due to the teaching instruction.

 

[dr1day]

I was definitely pathology's b**** this semester.

 

[deuist]

Although Doctoring and Physicians in Training courses are easy A's for most students, I would vote for these "soft skill" courses as the real kick in the nuts. They take up so much time that I really miss out on studying for real subjects.

 

[45408]

my school's pharm course is pretty fierce. The exams are all short answer/short essay, so they're pretty hard. Definitely put in a LOT of time for that class for a mediocre result.

 

[racerx]

my school's pharm course is pretty fierce. The exams are all short answer/short essay, so they're pretty hard. Definitely put in a LOT of time for that class for a mediocre result.

Although I stand by neuro for first year, pharm did suck. Around 20 in my MS2 class failed and will remediate this summer.

I always thought of this song whenever I was entering a pharm exam:

I dont like the drugs but the drugs like me

I dont like the drugs, the drugs, the drugs

Norm life baby
"we're white and oh so hetero
and our sex is missionary."

Norm life baby
"we're quitters and we're sober
our confessions will be televised."

You and I are underdosed and we're ready to fall
Raised to be stupid, taught to be nothing at all

I don't like the drugs but the drugs like me
I don't like the drugs, the drugs, the drugs 2x

Norm life baby
"our god is white and unforgiving
we're piss tested and we're praying."

Norm life baby
"I'm just a sample of a soul
made to look just like a human being."

Norm life baby
"we're rehabbed and we're ready
for our 15 minutes of shame."

Norm life baby
"we're talkshown and we're pointing
just like christians at a suicide."

You and I are underdosed and we're ready to fall
Raised to be stupid, taught to be nothing at all

I don't like the drugs but the drugs like me
I don't like the drugs, the drugs, the drugs 2x

"there's a hole in our soul that we fill with dope
and we're feeling fine."

I don't like the drugs but the drugs like me
I don't like the drugs, the drugs the drugs

 

[sendwich]

why is neuro not on this lisT?

 

[Dedikated2liftn]

why is neuro not on this lisT?

Classify it under anatomy or organ systems, which ever you feel is more relevant. Also, I thought biochem was gonna run away with this, interesting.

 

[GuzzyRon]

Neuroscience/Neuroanatomy. What a clusterf*** of pointlessly detailed pathways and rote memorization of polysyllabic latin terms for structures of which no man knows the true function.

I couldn't help laughing out loud at this one. Even though I loved neuro, but I couldn't agree any less on this one point.

 

[Alteran]

Anatomy & Embryology is our first course and by far the worst in terms of instruction. Its not that the anatomists couldn't teach us the material, they absolutely refused to. They abandoned us from the start and gave the standard response "its in your book" to all our questions. They refused to help students wanting help (including myself). The course director actually told a student "Its not my job to teach you anatomy." They also devised this wonderful invention for the gross lab called Students Teaching Students which in principle is supposed to empower students to individually perform a dissection and teach the relevant material to his/her tankmates...for a grade of course. In practice its a thinly veiled guise for the faculty to spend less time in lab with us.

I got the feeling the whole time I went through it that this was an active effort by the faculty to take their potshots at us in anger because we will succeed in life where they failed and are now just bitter old men clinging to a dead end academic post.

I actually wrote in my eval of the course regarding the professors the following: ...they would be more useful to us as cadavers for our medical instruction than as teaching faculty...

 

[sendwich]

Anatomy & Embryology is our first course and by far the worst in terms of instruction. Its not that the anatomists couldn't teach us the material, they absolutely refused to. They abandoned us from the start and gave the standard response "its in your book" to all our questions. They refused to help students wanting help (including myself). The course director actually told a student "Its not my job to teach you anatomy." They also devised this wonderful invention for the gross lab called Students Teaching Students which in principle is supposed to empower students to individually perform a dissection and teach the relevant material to his/her tankmates...for a grade of course. In practice its a thinly veiled guise for the faculty to spend less time in lab with us.

I got the feeling the whole time I went through it that this was an active effort by the faculty to take their potshots at us in anger because we will succeed in life where they failed and are now just bitter old men clinging to a dead end academic post.

I actually wrote in my eval of the course regarding the professors the following: ...they would be more useful to us as cadavers for our medical instruction than as teaching faculty...

OUCH

 

[Colbert]

Anatomy, mainly because it was the first "real" medical school class I had and had to figure out what studying truly meant.

 

[laputan]

Let's hear it and give your reasons...here's to that one course that bent you over and kept comin' back for more!

Way to leave out embryo.

 

[Flaxmoore]

Way to leave out embryo.

Seconded! Embryo at my school is folded in with Anatomy, and the prof who does much of the teaching of it was horrendous. When I had Embryo in UG, they always proceeded through gestation in lockstep- at day X, this is the state the embryo is in, this is the state of the germ layers, the pharyngeal arches and so on.

In med school? We went from conception through birth on the embryo itself before we finally went back and started covering the placenta and other ancillary structures. We last saw the placenta at day 21, before diving into the organ systems. Add to that the prof's predilection for using antiquated terms for structures that could not be found in the book, and we were all miserable.

It was strange. Aside from his habit of not wearing gloves in lab barf, he was a demi-god. He could find anything on any body, in a matter of minutes. In the lecture hall, he was awful.

 

[Dedikated2liftn]

Seconded! Embryo at my school is folded in with Anatomy, and the prof who does much of the teaching of it was horrendous. When I had Embryo in UG, they always proceeded through gestation in lockstep- at day X, this is the state the embryo is in, this is the state of the germ layers, the pharyngeal arches and so on.

In med school? We went from conception through birth on the embryo itself before we finally went back and started covering the placenta and other ancillary structures. We last saw the placenta at day 21, before diving into the organ systems. Add to that the prof's predilection for using antiquated terms for structures that could not be found in the book, and we were all miserable.

It was strange. Aside from his habit of not wearing gloves in lab barf, he was a demi-god. He could find anything on any body, in a matter of minutes. In the lecture hall, he was awful.

It's like this at many schools, that's why I didn't include it as one of the choices.

 

[psipsina]

I think it has everything to do with what is well taught and what is poorly taught at your school. Our second block of biochem was bizarrely taught and then this was remedied for the next class. . . our take on how hard biochem was are totally different! My class was pulling out our hair while the next class thought it was their easy class.

 

[GuzzyRon]

Ah! I know who you are refering to...we must be attending the same school. This prof's name starts with a "Y." He made me hate embryo.

Seconded! Embryo at my school is folded in with Anatomy, and the prof who does much of the teaching of it was horrendous. When I had Embryo in UG, they always proceeded through gestation in lockstep- at day X, this is the state the embryo is in, this is the state of the germ layers, the pharyngeal arches and so on.

In med school? We went from conception through birth on the embryo itself before we finally went back and started covering the placenta and other ancillary structures. We last saw the placenta at day 21, before diving into the organ systems. Add to that the prof's predilection for using antiquated terms for structures that could not be found in the book, and we were all miserable.

It was strange. Aside from his habit of not wearing gloves in lab barf, he was a demi-god. He could find anything on any body, in a matter of minutes. In the lecture hall, he was awful.

 

[Flaxmoore]

Ah! I know who you are referring to...we must be attending the same school. This prof's name starts with a "Y." He made me hate embryo.

You got him!

 

[rachmoninov3]

I have to agree with the soft-core touchy feely classes:

Not only are they a waste of time, and but one class in particular was like those manditory JCHO meetings that you have to sit through on monday morning after working all the previous night. They should call it hospital mandated sensitivity training. You can't even take solice in the fact that you're being paid to sit through it. No, to add insult to injury, you are paying for this crap!

Luckily, they come at the end of the day and I'm pretty much done with med school by then, so I'm usually brain-dead crazy/ornery and it can make for a good time if you just sit in the back and hope the lecturer doesn't see you making fun of her.

 

[Non-TradTulsa]

my school's pharm course is pretty fierce. The exams are all short answer/short essay, so they're pretty hard. Definitely put in a LOT of time for that class for a mediocre result.

That's really gross. I haven't seen short answer/short essay since UG. Our exams, every single blessed one of them, are computer-scored multiple choice. I thought all medical schools were that way - at my school, essay questions are special punishment reserved for make-up exams. You become expert at terms you've never heard before like, "question stem", and "confounders." Our first semester, we actually had a lecture taught by the counseling center on how to guess at a multiple choice test when you were completely clueless. Some professors knew the "rules," but some didn't - and I loved the guys that didn't. I had a couple of instructors where "the longest answer not in the 'a' position" was the correct answer every time.

 

[nka1985]

We'll find out if I get kicked somewhere special by Neuro tomorrow. I've really liked the course for the most part, but it's taken over my life, and while I coasted through the first 2 tests no problem, tomorrow is NOT going to go so well. It's just not sticking in my head right now. Good thing I only need 40% on tomorrow's test to pass the class.

 

[alphaholic06]

That's really gross. I haven't seen short answer/short essay since UG. Our exams, every single blessed one of them, are computer-scored multiple choice. I thought all medical schools were that way - at my school, essay questions are special punishment reserved for make-up exams. You become expert at terms you've never heard before like, "question stem", and "confounders." Our first semester, we actually had a lecture taught by the counseling center on how to guess at a multiple choice test when you were completely clueless. Some professors knew the "rules," but some didn't - and I loved the guys that didn't. I had a couple of instructors where "the longest answer not in the 'a' position" was the correct answer every time.

What are these rules that you speak of?

 

[Jwax]

I went with biochem b/c I didn't see neuro on the list. Embryo would be #3.

I've never hated any class as much as this one. Most of the material seems totally useless for anyone not going into neurosurgery or neurology. It's the epitome of what's wrong with medical education and just seems like hazing.

Agreed - the material really only seemed valuable if you were going into two fields of medicine that maybe 5 out of our class of 170 people would go into. Once we got to the cortex and we talked about all the crazy things that happen to people when they damage it, it was interesting. But it seemed no matter how well I thought I knew the material, the tests were just focused on these little details that I hadn't committed to memory because I am a big-picture person. I also agree w/the comment about the made-up polysyllabic latin terms for nuclei that nobody knows what they really do. Being forced to commit useless pathways to memory is horrific enough, but having to do so when what they know about neuro 10 years from now is probably going to be completely different? Intolerable. I liked our course director a lot though, despite how frustrating the class was.

Biochem was horrible. Complete waste of space and soooo difficult. If it weren't for the fact that 40% of our overall grade was determined in the first 6 weeks of school when we were first starting out and our profs were going reeeally slow, I would have really struggled to pass. As it was, I was riding high after the first exam so I chose to blow off the next two that were strongly focusing on pathways that I didn't care about.

The only class I've enjoyed after a year of med school was anatomy. I hope next year is better.

 

[deuist]

What are these rules that you speak of?

Longest answer choice is the correct answer.

Profs bold the correct answers to create an answer sheet and then unbold to produce the exam that is handed to students. Sometimes, they forget to unbold everything and you'll notice that a period in one sentence is larger than the other sentences.

 

[nka1985]

We'll find out if I get kicked somewhere special by Neuro tomorrow. I've really liked the course for the most part, but it's taken over my life, and while I coasted through the first 2 tests no problem, tomorrow is NOT going to go so well. It's just not sticking in my head right now. Good thing I only need 40% on tomorrow's test to pass the class.

Okay, Neuro was very nice to me on Friday, surprisingly, so I came out with a much better than expected score. I am still really grateful it was the last course of the year because I really need a break after that. I'm so glad that's over...now it's time for vacation.

 

[Thundrstorm]

For me, pharmacology is by far the worst. We had a brief series of intro to pharm lectures, but the rest were scattered throughout the appropriate organ sytem (which I think made sense). What doesn't make sense are the names, the lists of side effects that you have to memorize, and also memorizing which ones affect P450 enzymes. I've tried charts, flashcards, prayer, crying (ha ha), but without fail, my lowest section score on every exam is pharm. I LOATHE it. It just requires brute force to memorize. At least with path and phys, I can reason my way through things. And with anatomy, you can visualize the things you're memorizing. But drugs? They are evil.

(Can you tell that I'm studying ANS pharm for boards today, and I'm bitter about it?)

 

[jbrice1639]

definitely biochem - not so much for difficulty, but overwhelming boredom.

 

[smuwillobrien]

At my school they combine biochemistry and physiology into this unit called metabolism and function. The physiology part kicked my ass. =\

 

[Medinsane]

Profs bold the correct answers to create an answer sheet and then unbold to produce the exam that is handed to students. Sometimes, they forget to unbold everything and you'll notice that a period in one sentence is larger than the other sentences.

Wow I never even noticed this. How freaking genius.

 

[vtucci]

I hated anatomy and neuroscience. I am not an auditory learner and have problems with visuospatial abilities (I don't visualize things well). I also learn things best when they are put into context (the why I need to learn this) so I would have been better suited to have pathology and anatomy combined.

 

[BigRedBeta]

Neuroscience...

 

[cfdavid]

my worst grade of all of pathophys came from Hematology.
in fairness, i didn't work very hard at it though.

lots of memorization, subclassifications etc. the path seems to look very similar between the various classifications of AML etc etc.

i guess it didn't help that we blasted through it in 1 1/2 weeks.....

fortunately, my Step I hematology material has been much more forgiving (I'm mostly using 1st Aid).

 

[Medinsane]

#1 Neuro/Neuroanatomy
#2 Microbiology
#3 Pharmacology

So far those topics above have been the bane of my existence. I guess the 'good thing' is that there's repetition for micro and pharm so you get to see it again and again and again....

And, then there's Neuro, which can basically be represented by the CN test. You need to know SO MUCH about the CN test yet all you write on the chart is "CN 2-12 grossly intact"