What is the hardest job you've ever done?

[Trismegistus4]

true. . .

I am glad I have someone on ignore. I can only imagine the mishigas. You know what they say. Out of sight, out of mind.

"Disagreeing with someone on the definition of the word job" just might win the award for "Most trivial thing to be put on someone's ignore list over."

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[Old Grunt]

"Disagreeing with someone on the definition of the word job" just might win the award for "Most trivial thing to be put on someone's ignore list over."

I think the "ignore list" is trivial period.

It's just a message board.

But, hey, that's just me.

 

[jl lin]

I think the "ignore list" is trivial period.

It's just a message board.

But, hey, that's just me.

Never used it anywhere else. Q, the moderator, suggested it. I give benefit of doubt all the time, to a point. It's a discernment thing. I feel regular trolling is a way unhealthy. The person knows why if honest. Enough said.

 

[Old Grunt]

Never used it anywhere else. Q, the moderator, suggested it. I give benefit of doubt all the time, to a point. It's a discernment thing. I feel regular trolling is a way unhealthy. The person knows why if honest. Enough said.

Actually, I was just trying to prompt a response to see if I was the person on your ignore list.



I didn't realize there was personal history. As you said, "enough said".

 

[jl lin]

Actually, I was just trying to prompt a response to see if I was the person on your ignore list.



I didn't realize there was personal history. As you said, "enough said".

LOL, nah. Don't see you as using narcissistic trolling in thread after thread after thread.

I decided to save my energy for the more important and fun things in life.

 

[EdLongshanks]

LOL, nah. Don't see you as using narcissistic trolling in thread after thread after thread.

I decided to save my energy for the more important and fun things in life.

The hardest job, yet, is keeping this thread on topic. Maybe I ought to compare someone to Hitler so that we can invoke Godwin's Law and just shut it down.

 

[tmcleavor]

Pouring plastic to make handholds for rock climbing walls. 98 degree warehouse, full tyvek suit head to toe, full face respirator. When I was finished with my shift I had about a gallon of sweat in my suit. Still it had it's up side; free gear!!!

 

[7starmantis]

Pouring plastic to make handholds for rock climbing walls. 98 degree warehouse, full tyvek suit head to toe, full face respirator. When I was finished with my shift I had about a gallon of sweat in my suit. Still it had it's up side; free gear!!!

NICE!! The free gear is enough to make me want to do it!

I bet you sweat off any extra weight in that suit too.

 

[QofQuimica]

The hardest job, yet, is keeping this thread on topic. Maybe I ought to compare someone to Hitler so that we can invoke Godwin's Law and just shut it down.

My favorite post in this whole thread yet.

Different jobs are hard in different ways. If you're going to compare difficulties of jobs, you need to compare likes to likes.

The physically hardest job I've ever done is picking and sorting tomatoes in the summer in Florida. I came home every night smelling like a rotten tomato and trying to evade the cloud of fruit flies that dogged my every move. Picture that kid Pigpen from the Peanuts cartoon. For a very long time after that, I wouldn't even want to *look* at a tomato, let alone eat one. In med school, the physically hardest rotations were surgery and gyn. I have some back issues, so standing there in one position for hours was not the most pleasant experience for me.

I don't think I've ever had an outside job that I felt was overwhelmingly intellectually challenging (i.e., challenging to the point where I felt like I might not be able to handle it). Passing my grad school qualifying exam might be the closest thing that comes to it. My advisor thought I probably wouldn't pass because I was kind of just getting by in the advanced synthesis class. But I busted my butt studying for the qual, and ironically, I was the only student in my year who managed to pass the qual on my first try. In med school, I think most people would say that the most intellectually challenging thing is studying for Step 1. I guess I'd agree with that, although a lot of people find studying for shelf exams third year to be pretty challenging too.

Emotionally, the toughest job I had was working at a camp for the disabled. Actually, that was pretty physically tough too, since we had to help the campers with ADLs, and some of the sessions were for adults. I had one camper who was almost 300 pounds and had some pretty rough bedsores. It was disgusting, but I did my best not to let her see that I felt that way. Also, one of the other counselors was harrassing me, and I had to go to my supervisor. I don't know what the supervisor did, but that guy stayed the heck away from me for the rest of the summer after that. In med school, the most emotionally difficult thing has been having some patients whom I've grown close to die. Even though your relationships with hospitalized patients are short, they're very intense. The very hardest part is having discussions with patients and their families where we break bad news about their diagnosis or prognosis. When the families start crying, sometimes it makes me want to start crying too.

 

[Trismegistus4]

Actually, I was just trying to prompt a response to see if I was the person on your ignore list.



I didn't realize there was personal history. As you said, "enough said".

There isn't personal history. For some reason, she took my repeated posting of negative sentiments about medicine in multiple threads as "trolling" and as some kind of personal attack on her. But this belies an incorrect understanding of what trolling is. Trolling is when you post outrageous or provocative things you don't really mean in order to get a reaction out of people. I was being serious. My purpose was not to stir things up; it was to inform people of the downsides of going to medical school with an insufficient desire to actually become a doctor.

 

[Old Grunt]

I decided to save my energy for the more important and fun things in life.

That's the only way to live life.

 

[jl lin]

The hardest job, yet, is keeping this thread on topic. Maybe I ought to compare someone to Hitler so that we can invoke Godwin's Law and just shut it down.

Actually this isn't all that bad. I've seen threads go on into > 1000 and most of it was not the original topic.
It happens all the time. It all comes back around. It's pretty common to see bump.

 

[jl lin]

That's the only way to live life.

 

[DocMcCoy]

The hardest job I've ever done was as an Infantry Reconnaissance Platoon Leader in Afghanistan. Hard because ground reconnaissance in Afghanistan is a total exercise in futility and frustration.

A distant second would be hauling alfalfa square bales (grew up on a farm).

The hardest thing I've ever done, physically, mentally, and emotionally was Army Ranger School. A 62-day suck-fest where you don't eat or sleep. I was in the shape of my life with a BMI of 22-23 going into it, and still managed to lose close to 30 lbs.

Class 5/02 RLTW

 

[mic2377]

I have had a couple crappy jobs.

1. OTR semi driver at a moving company. Drove approx. 2500 miles a week, coupled with moving 40,000 lbs furniture. Every week was 70+ hours of eat, work, and sleep, and lumping furniture in the hot summer heat.

2. 3rd shift factory work - 90+ degrees in a plant w/o AC, 8 hrs shifts 7 days/week. During one stretch, I worked 3 months straight without a single day off. Yikes.

Life is so much better now....

 

[Old Grunt]

Class 5/02 RLTW

You were right behind me. Class 4/02. RLTW.

 

[ChemMed]

I would say I had two really difficult jobs, but one was really seeing if I could make a dream come true.

1) Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA). I did this to put myself through UG. Physically demanding and emotionally taxing. You get attached to your patients and then they become your friends, but then you have to watch them pass away.

2) Fundraiser organizer and executor. I wanted to raise money for a research trip to Samoa to collect specimens to use in cancer research studies. I raised enough money to high tail it to Texas instead for the same purpose. Its a good thing I had no idea what I was doing when I started, I just kept going until I reached the end point. Keeping track of everyone, everything, and coordinating it all is a full time job and this was all volunteer on my part.

 

[Lacheln]

Others have definitely alluded to this, but I really feel "hard" is relative. My jobs:

Farm worker: mucking stalls, feeding/exercising horses...I thought shoveling crap was bad until I stuck my arm up a rectum...I am not the same person now. Getting kicked in the sternum (which has left me with a permanent dent) was not pleasant either.

All purpose lackey for a mexican restaurant: if I never eat refried beans again I am a-ok. Not a fan of melting cubes of lard either. The grease is still embedded in my pores, 15 years later.

Full-time caregiver for an ill parent: in my case I'd liken this to parenting a teenager....ungrateful, willful, expensive. But there was no going off to college. And btw, this is a JOB, not my "personal life". Except it came with all the responsibility and few benefits.

And since leaving college I've had bosses that were incredibly toxic, at times unstable paychecks, and questionable returns.

At the end of the day anything can suck in the day to day, including med school. It's a question of whether there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Which I believe, for me, med school provides, because I feel I will have an element of control over my future. So it's worth it. But your mileage may vary.

If you feel unsafe, undervalued, or out of control, any job can suck, no matter what the upside may appear to be at first or from the outside. And some people feel that way about medicine.

 

[eablackwell]

The hardest job I ever had was working as a copacker for Bacardi. I worked 40 hour weeks in a nonairconditioned warehouse in Florida. I boxed "special items" with the liquor bottles, which included assembling boxes and inserts for boxes. It was a papercut nightmare, and then when you started sweating it all dripped into the cuts. Plus pushing a wheelchair around with 1000 papercuts was no fun. It made me realize just how much I did not want to end up working in manual labor like the rest of my family.

 

[Lou AZEMT]

I would have to say that when I was walking across the tarmac in 120 degree dry heat in PHX, AZ, marshaling planes and supervising stressed out passengers boarding their planes. I realized that getting paid for what you know rather than sweating your ass off in the summer heat and getting yelled at by the gate attendants.... was not the life to live. Four months had gone by and I quit. I learned that I really value the choices that I am able to make to control my future. And what better place to be than being a Dr. working your ass off to help people life their lives to the fullest through improving their health/quality of life. Im in.

 

[LupaCupcake]

hmmm....my military experience was the most demanding physically and emotionally at times. It also had laid back moments, but I suppose I would say when I was in the U.S Army. Ironically I had moments where I missed it once I was out.

 

[dmf2682]

Compared to other folks on this thread I've never had a hard job. I washed dishes at a diner once, but quit after they told me to wash out their garbage can ( they were too cheap to use liners), and then I was a pizza guy for a summer. It's all been sit at a computer engineering jobs since then.

Excepting my volunteering, which while difficult and very challenging is fun and rewarding. That's the aquatic OT/PT gig, with groups of up to five children with varying levels of autism. I do three hours in a row, and while I've fun and feel great after I also feel like I've just worked a 16 hour day. I don't know how folks do that for a living!

 

[Valerie2481]

Sweet fancy Moses. Reading this thread has made me revoke my own right to complain about anything, ever. Props to all of you.

 

[ThreadStalker]

Mine is a little bit of a tossup. One would be running a chainsaw on a Forest Service Hotshot crew. Carrying 70+ pounds of gear for 16 hour shifts fighting forest fires and getting about 3 days off each month. Definitely physically demanding. The other would be acting as a squad boss on the crew, getting all the responsibility pinned on me from above, and getting all of the tough guy attitude from below. With only 45 pounds to carry, it was physically easier, but way more mentally challenging.

All together, I think the saw was easier. Coworkers are far more agreeable when your job requires you to wear earplugs.

 

[theseeker4]

My hardest job was probably being a short order/line cook at a family restaurant, especially when they were under-staffed and when I, as a high school student, was the most senior member of the kitchen staff. Having a wheel full of tickets, all the grills full of food, waitresses yelling for their orders and being one of only two cooks in the kitchen (the second being the manager helping out) is very fast-paced and stressful. I actually prefer the pace of that job to my current job, and if it paid what I earn now, I would be doing that until I start medical school.

 

[LUCPM]

Two hardest jobs I held during my post-bac years were:

1) CNA - Although it could be rewarding at times, the job itself was both physically and mentally challenging. I usually went to work after evening classes and had to take a short nap before starting my 3rd shift work. Waking up and dragging myself out of a frigid car in the middle of winter night was the worst torture I had to endure. And a colostomy bag is something I never got used to no matter how many times I had to change.

2) Cab Driver - Although there was nothing special about driving all day and every day, it was by far the hardest job I’ve ever done, especially after quitting my nice, cushy office job. Dealing with drunks and criminal wannabes was one thing but sitting in a cab inhaling the toxic fume, working on Christmas Eve without even making enough money to buy a toy for my daughter, and crashing my cab after working 16 hour only to pay for the damage myself….I once thought there was nothing worse than driving a cab.

Looking back all those years, I can live my life with a little bit of gratitude and appreciation.

 

[MD Odyssey]

Prior to undergrad, I worked in the steel industry. Mostly outside, so was pretty wet, cold, hot, tired, dehydrated, etc. Plus, I was broke, so I couldn't afford Carharts my first winter - was pretty frosty. I made $10 an hour (this was in 2001) with no health insurance or anything like that. We worked 7:00 AM to 7:00 PM Monday through Fridays, and an occasional Saturday. Really dangerous environment - lot of guys I worked with were missing fingers and one guy had even lost his hand in a workplace accident.

In order to make ends meet, I also worked at a busy nightclub as the head of security - Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday nights. Thursday mornings were the worst, since I usually only got about 3 or 4 hours of sleep before heading to the shop.

A whole year went by that I don't really remember much of. Eventually, I decided that life wasn't what I wanted, so I got a job as a line cook in a restaurant and started teaching myself algebra and trigonometry so I could take a math placement exam and get into calculus.

Anytime I start thinking about how much I don't like my job, I remember what it used to be like. I sit in an air-conditioned / heated office building, reading email and making Powerpoint charts without fear of injury due to huge swinging metal or saws made to cut 15" steel plate. I can eat when I want. Poop when I want. Go home when I want. Plus, I get paid something north of $65,000 a year. As unpleasant as my job gets, It's really tough to call what I'm doing now work.

 

[hopeful22213]

Teach in an inner city school.

 

[dmf2682]

I can eat when I want. Poop when I want. Go home when I want. Plus, I get paid something north of $65,000 a year.

Will residency be any better???

Seriously though. Those first two points are my biggest concerns about intern year.

 

[MD Odyssey]

Will residency be any better???

Seriously though. Those first two points are my biggest concerns about intern year.

Undoubtedly, virtually all of my medical training will be worse with respect to my schedule and flexibility. I mentioned it so as to contrast what I do now relative to what I use to do.

I have no illusions about how different my life will be in a few years, if I'm able to get into medical school.

 

[azerkail]

Sweet fancy Moses. Reading this thread has made me revoke my own right to complain about anything, ever. Props to all of you.

this. especially that guy who went to ranger school

 

[MedWonk]

Toughest job was either teaching Japanese adolescents English, or working in a warehouse over a summer loading and unloading trailers with no A/C.

 

[gehr4733]

Grew up on a ranch, so I had the luxury of carrying buckets of grain out to 50 steers twice a day throughout the winter, bucking hay bails in the summer, fixing fences, shoveling manure, harvesting wheat for 12 hours in a combine and driving tractor. Monotony was the real drag if you ask me, the work was fairly physically demanding just boring. Needless to say I always had a blast moving cattle with our horses and running our Bobcat skidsteer.

Spent 3 summers spraying weeds for the Forest Service, sometimes the weather would get up to 110 degrees, and I had to get up at 4:30 every morning. Bleh, again it was the monotony that drove me nuts, I liked it when I was given new challenges. I went out on a couple of wildfires and helped fight them, that was pretty neat.

I was a caregiver during college for adults with disabilities, most had some form of psychiatric illness which posed a real challenge (like trying to get adults with disorders such as bipolar disorder, oppositional defiant disorder or developmental delays to comply with the renal diet, etc...) I worked overnight shifts, although on a couple occasions they were more like 20-24 hour shifts. I had to do suicide watch on a couple occasions. I actually liked this work quite a bit and this was what drew me further into medicine. I learned a valuable lesson: treatment plans are only as good as their compliance.

Now I work as a rehab aide in a large hospital, and am exposed to all sorts of illness, I absolutely love the medical complexities of my work. I am the unofficial "expert" for using the lifts and mobilizing large patients in our dept, I've had to help with 400+ lb patients before. Despite all the precautions I take for my back, 8-10 PT treatments with highly patients that need maximal assistance can get pretty tiring. But I'm learning alot, and I've come to see the importance of early mobilization, especially in the ICU. Once again though, I'm ready to move into a bigger role as I am starting to feel pretty darned constrained within my current position.

I've found that the mentally challenging jobs have been my favorite as I tend to get bored easily, and in that way the "harder" jobs have often been my favorite. Hopefully I'll feel the same about medicine

 

[dmf2682]

Grew up on a ranch, so I had the luxury of carrying buckets of grain out to 50 steers twice a day throughout the winter, bucking hay bails in the summer, fixing fences, shoveling manure, harvesting wheat for 12 hours in a combine and driving tractor. Monotony was the real drag if you ask me, the work was fairly physically demanding just boring. Needless to say I always had a blast moving cattle with our horses and running our Bobcat skidsteer.

Haha cool. Only steers and something else comes from texas, and you don't look much like a steer to me! Haha I've offended some folks. Sorry. Full Metal Jacket reference.

Sounds like you've had some times!

 

[CPA2doc]

During college I spent my summers as a fishing guide at remote lodges in Alaska. I worked 12 hour days every day all summer but found it to be some of the most enjoyable work I ever did. Until hunting season. Then I had to pack out moose and caribou that clients shot.

Moose hang out near creeks and rivers to snack on willow. Super Cubs land on the hilltops above said creeks. Client shoots moose. Holds up the head for some photo ops. Then waddles his fat butt back up the hill to fly back to camp, drink beer, smoke a stogie and ponder what he'll kill next. Packer flies in and quarters out the moose with the guide and then makes 8 trips (4 legs, 2 more loads of various meat, cape and horns) up said hill. And those quarters weigh about 150 lbs. One pack required about 1.5 miles and 500 feet of elevation gain. Easy if you have a light pack. Not so easy with a 150lb steak on your back in bear country.

 

[stick]

Moose hang out near creeks and rivers to snack on willow. Super Cubs land on the hilltops above said creeks. Client shoots moose. Holds up the head for some photo ops. Then waddles his fat butt back up the hill to fly back to camp, drink beer, smoke a stogie and ponder what he'll kill next. Packer flies in and quarters out the moose with the guide and then makes 8 trips (4 legs, 2 more loads of various meat, cape and horns) up said hill. And those quarters weigh about 150 lbs. One pack required about 1.5 miles and 500 feet of elevation gain. Easy if you have a light pack. Not so easy with a 150lb steak on your back in bear country.

Lol. Reminds me of a joke.

What's the difference between Sarah Palin's mouth and Sarah Palin's vagina?









Only one ******ed thing has ever come out of Sarah Palin's vagina.

 

[gehr4733]

During college I spent my summers as a fishing guide at remote lodges in Alaska. I worked 12 hour days every day all summer but found it to be some of the most enjoyable work I ever did. Until hunting season. Then I had to pack out moose and caribou that clients shot.

Moose hang out near creeks and rivers to snack on willow. Super Cubs land on the hilltops above said creeks. Client shoots moose. Holds up the head for some photo ops. Then waddles his fat butt back up the hill to fly back to camp, drink beer, smoke a stogie and ponder what he'll kill next. Packer flies in and quarters out the moose with the guide and then makes 8 trips (4 legs, 2 more loads of various meat, cape and horns) up said hill. And those quarters weigh about 150 lbs. One pack required about 1.5 miles and 500 feet of elevation gain. Easy if you have a light pack. Not so easy with a 150lb steak on your back in bear country.

Gotta love the tourists, let me guess you got alot of the guys who were supposedly "excellent" at riding only to find they could tell the stirrups from the bridle?

 

[thewilliams1]

I've had a few absolute suck jobs...
1. FedEx Box Bitch was bad. It was okay at the time but the work was stressfully fast-paced and grueling.
2. Flag crew for construction / road work sucked because it was so damn boring. I would stand in one spot for 10-12 hours a day. It was great sometimes because I'd be making $20-$30 / hour if it was a state or federal job.. other times I'd be making $7.50 on a township job. It got hot on the blacktop.
3. Landscaping. I enjoyed working outdoors and with my hands, but the bad days outnumbered the good ones 10:1.

I've been working in the Telcom industry for 6 years .. good job. Love the people, love the work, love the company.

 

[PMPMD]

Physically hardest: working on a ranch: digging post holes, clearing stumps, roping cattle (the seasoned hands were laughing as I got dragged around the pen)

Emotionally hardest: AIDS hospice - volunteered in undergrad.

 

[CPA2doc]

Gotta love the tourists, let me guess you got alot of the guys who were supposedly "excellent" at riding only to find they could tell the stirrups from the bridle?

We didn't do any riding out there. It was remote, fly-in only. We flew out on floatplane from the lodge everyday to a different location. For hunting, we'd fly around and scout where the moose were and then land on the nearest mountain top to hunt the following day.

A good childhood friend of mine's family uses horses out of their hunting lodge. All five boys and parents work together. They actually have a little reality show, R5Sons. A goofy crew to be sure.

Horses would be nice for packing out the animal but you have to worry about bears or wolves if you leave them alone.

 

[gehr4733]

We didn't do any riding out there. It was remote, fly-in only. We flew out on floatplane from the lodge everyday to a different location. For hunting, we'd fly around and scout where the moose were and then land on the nearest mountain top to hunt the following day.

A good childhood friend of mine's family uses horses out of their hunting lodge. All five boys and parents work together. They actually have a little reality show, R5Sons. A goofy crew to be sure.

Horses would be nice for packing out the animal but you have to worry about bears or wolves if you leave them alone.

Ha! My dad loves that R5Sons show! Small world...Sounds like you had a neat experience, my mother and a few family friends have worked on ranches like that, a great experience I'm sure.

 

[ThreadStalker]

Spent 3 summers spraying weeds for the Forest Service, sometimes the weather would get up to 110 degrees, and I had to get up at 4:30 every morning. Bleh, again it was the monotony that drove me nuts, I liked it when I was given new challenges. I went out on a couple of wildfires and helped fight them, that was pretty neat.

Where's you work? I've been on the Pike, Carson and Modoc NFs. Fire is fun for a bit, but it gets monotonous too. Just dragging sticks and throwing dirt, or, as I like to call it: "Savin' Babies!" That sounds better on dates.

 

[gehr4733]

Where's you work? I've been on the Pike, Carson and Modoc NFs. Fire is fun for a bit, but it gets monotonous too. Just dragging sticks and throwing dirt, or, as I like to call it: "Savin' Babies!" That sounds better on dates.

I was on the nez perce nf, agree on the monotony though, alot of hurry up and wait... To save babies of course.

Sent from my SPH-D710 using Tapatalk

 

[Teach4us2MD]

Hardest job I have ever had, teaching in Algebra in Watts (South Los Angeles). My school is a last chance school, so all of my students start off as aggressive and violent youths. They have smashed my windshield, windows and threatened physical harm daily in the beginning of the school year. Yet by the end of the year, they are angels, begging to take your class again and thank you for inspiring them to go to college and not giving up on them.

Hard work, life changing experience, yet I'll be happy to not have to replace my car windows so often

 

[ShoTyme]

Playing poker. I thought it would be fun. I could sit around, bs with people, and win money. It became a terrible grind. When I started to think about losing a pot as a lost rent payment, I decided to quit. In order to be good, I needed a total disregard for money, which apparently I no longer had.

 

[FilipinoAmMD]

The hardest job I have done was being a dish washer in a University hospital, I am filipino so i am relatively short, and at times i wash pots thats so big I feel like i would actually fit in there. When not washing pots I wash plates, probably about 1000 a day or so. Hehe

 

[Kadava Reviva]

The hardest job I've ever done was as an Infantry Reconnaissance Platoon Leader in Afghanistan. Hard because ground reconnaissance in Afghanistan is a total exercise in futility and frustration.

A distant second would be hauling alfalfa square bales (grew up on a farm).

The hardest thing I've ever done, physically, mentally, and emotionally was Army Ranger School. A 62-day suck-fest where you don't eat or sleep. I was in the shape of my life with a BMI of 22-23 going into it, and still managed to lose close to 30 lbs.

Ranger School.
You Sir are a glutton for punishment.
I learned my lesson in bootcamp.

 

[EdLongshanks]

A post that Bennie made in another thread got me thinking about this. As non-trads we have more life experience than our fellow students. Some of them have, so far, had life pretty easy and look forward to med-school like an expectant mother looks forward to natural childbirth.

I, for one, have a different attitude. I've had some really hard times in my life and the descriptions that I hear from med school (even the ones with Chopin backgroud music) aren't very horrifying. I doubt that I am alone.

My question is for the residents, attendings, and current med students. Is your current life harder than the experiences in this thread?

I'll start it. The hardest job that I ever had was in the fields of west-side Fresno, California. I showed up in the parking lot where the field workers gathered and followed them to the fields that they were working that day. I was the only person there who did not use Spanish as a first language. They taught me many new words. When I repeated them to my best friend - the son of the pastor of the local Iglesias De Cristo church, he turned pale.

The worst job I ever had was Ron's Jons, portable toilets. We're number 1 in the number 2 business. Rubber boots are bad insulators and when the temperature in Midland, TX reached 9 degress Fahrenheit, my feet hurt very bad. Minimum wage did not provide enough money to buy good boots.

The longest hours that I have put in were the weeks before the big oil show for the year. That was the first year that graphical programming for Unix had advanced to the place that we could actually show pictures of the data in GUI format. I spent days at work, catnapping on the couch, while I fixed last minute bugs. My wife and children saw very little of me.

The worst environment that I ever worked in was with a bunch of criminals who were either just out of jail or soon returning. They all chain smoked in the little office and if the job had gone on very long I would have ended up with emphysema. The FBI came in one day and arrested my team lead. They'd have fist fights in the middle of the work day. I couldn't quit because this was my only way to gain entrance to the sanctified halls of Unix programming and I desperately needed both the money and the experience. The paychecks eventually started bouncing. It took me 3 more months before I found another job. Bad days, bad days.

I think most of us could tell similar stories. Somehow med school just doesn't sound that bad.

OP, you're an idiot. Oops, that was me. This is the danger of starting a long-lasting thread like this. You get to read your own words, years later.

Ok, so the premise of the original post (two years ago this month) was that the horror stories of medical school are exaggerated by traditional students who have never done real work.

But that is not my experience with medical school. The more traditional the student is, the easier time he has and the less he complains. The complaints of my traditional class mates are more along the line of "your sentence on the sixth paragraph of the 7th page of the 12th objective contradicts page 5 of objective 10." They eat this stuff like candy. No, most of them have never worked hard. Yes, Dr. Daddy bought them their first corvette at age 16. But they have trained their minds to study and they like it.

We non-trads, however, have trained ourselves differently. We know how to put together a presentation, to run a meeting, to work hard in the heat all day long, or even to run ops for ranger teams. But the parts of our brains that sat down and memorized 35 pages of teachers notes each day has atrophied. You ought to hear all of us moan and groan and complain like a 5-year-old being told to brush his teeth. I'm slightly ashamed of us. It's not like I would be willing to go back Ron's Jons.

 

[NuttyEngDude]

Hi Ed,

if you do not mind (perhaps in a different thread), can you post your post-bacc or undergrad sequence and course-load per semester?

I think it would be helpful to evaluate and qualify the degree of change you endured from undergrad to med school.

 

[theseeker4]

OP, you're an idiot. Oops, that was me. This is the danger of starting a long-lasting thread like this. You get to read your own words, years later.

Ok, so the premise of the original post (two years ago this month) was that the horror stories of medical school are exaggerated by traditional students who have never done real work.

But that is not my experience with medical school. The more traditional the student is, the easier time he has and the less he complains. The complaints of my traditional class mates are more along the line of "your sentence on the sixth paragraph of the 7th page of the 12th objective contradicts page 5 of objective 10." They eat this stuff like candy. No, most of them have never worked hard. Yes, Dr. Daddy bought them their first corvette at age 16. But they have trained their minds to study and they like it.

We non-trads, however, have trained ourselves differently. We know how to put together a presentation, to run a meeting, to work hard in the heat all day long, or even to run ops for ranger teams. But the parts of our brains that sat down and memorized 35 pages of teachers notes each day has atrophied. You ought to hear all of us moan and groan and complain like a 5-year-old being told to brush his teeth. I'm slightly ashamed of us. It's not like I would be willing to go back Ron's Jons.

I have no doubt you are right about the first two years, but I would bet MS3 + through residency will be a different story. Sure, you will have exams and studying to keep up with, but you will actually be doing things, other than memorizing and regurgitating the information. I would expect you to have a leg up on your fellow students once you are in rotations....