You're back to your 1st year of medical school. What would you have done differently?

[kagman]

Loved reading everyones stories.
Regrets- Being an IMG not deciding to pursue residency in the US while being a MS, much earlier rather than in my sixth year of med school.
And passing CS in my first go.


Psychiatry Applicant 2016.

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[FlowRate]

2. Tried to get an M3 schedule that frontloads medicine and/or FM, because those rotations really do lay the groundwork for doing well in everything else.

Biggest piece of advice I give to second years. Medicine or peds first. They'll teach you how to present without expecting you to be able to present (if it's your first rotation). Surgery teaches bad habits and psych and neuro won't give you the core medicine foundation/aren't usually quite as strict with how they want you to present.

 

[strangeglove]

Throw out all of your associations with undergrad fraternities.
Medical fraternities are basically coed residential study groups.

I was a member of a medical fraternity, mostly because it was a convenient and cheap cooperative living situation. It was co-ed. We did a lot of studying together. We also drank a lot of beer and had a hot tub out back. I made some great friends and I would like to think I enjoyed the less problematic parts of fraternity life.

 

[clausewitz2]

Biggest piece of advice I give to second years. Medicine or peds first. They'll teach you how to present without expecting you to be able to present (if it's your first rotation). Surgery teaches bad habits and psych and neuro won't give you the core medicine foundation/aren't usually quite as strict with how they want you to present.

See I think family medicine is an ideal first rotation if possible. You are forced to become concise and efficient when you have exactly ten to fifteen minutes to talk to patients as a hard limit. Also everything is fair game.

This of course assumes a real FM rotation and not glorified shadowing.

 

[FlowRate]

See I think family medicine is an ideal first rotation if possible. You are forced to become concise and efficient when you have exactly ten to fifteen minutes to talk to patients as a hard limit. Also everything is fair game.

This of course assumes a real FM rotation and not glorified shadowing.

Oh I edited it out of my comment--ambulatory is part of our IM rotation, but FM makes sense.

 

[lockian]

I think it's somewhat institution dependent, too. For instance, my home institution's pediatrics rotation is known for having high standards, and it's almost impossible to get higher than pass if you haven't already had medicine.

Also, I don't unilaterally agree that surgery teaches bad habits; it's just a rather overwhelming rotation hours-wise where the things you learn on the wards and in the OR are the least high-yield for the shelf exam or step 2.

...
Oh, and to add to my list of what I'd do differently, I'd take CS early in 4th year to get it over with, so I don't have to spend all of interview season worrying about not passing it and my whole life falling apart.

 

[JKinSC]

I'd take CS early in 4th year to get it over with, so I don't have to spend all of interview season worrying about not passing it and my whole life falling apart

So much this! I took it November 4th, and just got results this past week. Hell, if I'd only taken it a week earlier, I'd have gotten them before Christmas. Not a terribly big deal, but I did get asked about results on three different interviews.

 

[drashes]

See I think family medicine is an ideal first rotation if possible. You are forced to become concise and efficient when you have exactly ten to fifteen minutes to talk to patients as a hard limit. Also everything is fair game.

This of course assumes a real FM rotation and not glorified shadowing.

Only problem is that that family medicine shelf is really comprehensive. Sure, everyone is in the same boat, but it's still a huge pain to study for. Medicine is sort of like that too, but at least those rotations tend to be longer and there's a lot of overlap with step 1. Also a good time to figure out how to round, write notes, and all the other procedural stuff you don't get earlier.

 

[Rogue Penguin]

This isn't quite what you were asking, but I would have gone to my state school instead of paying almost twice as much to go to the private one I currently attend.

As far as med school, I'd take first year a lot more seriously and try harder to get good grades instead of trying to get by with as little work as possible.

 

[scudiera]

I think it's somewhat institution dependent, too. For instance, my home institution's pediatrics rotation is known for having high standards, and it's almost impossible to get higher than pass if you haven't already had medicine.

Sounds like my home institution!

So, I liked RP's post for the state school comment, not as much the trying harder to get good grades. Didn't find much of the basic science stuff to be super-interesting so I didn't take it seriously. I learned it but we're P/F so I just aimed to clear the class average on each exam, and this usually turned out fine. Had no bearing on how I did on Step 1, but it did prevent me from being AOA. Which doesn't really matter for anything except Derm and the surgical subspecialties (and even then...).

I would have pushed myself to find some research project that interested me enough to follow through and write up for publication, I didn't do that in medschool because nothing excited me and I find academic writing to be quite mind-numbing. This would have certainly helped me get a few more interviews and I'd feel more confident in those abilities heading into residency.

Something I did do that I'd recommend to others/wish I did more of is I started reading more for pleasure (poetry, mostly) and also writing/journaling intermittently. It's been nice to flip back through reflections and experiences in the past year, and when it came time to write my personal statement, it wasn't as much a bear as I thought it would be. My school has a number of pre-clinical and clinical med humanities electives and I took a number of them. Prior to these experiences I wasn't particularly interested in the arts or literature, but these electives set something off for me and now they're an important part of how I find balance and expression in my daily life. Naturally my limited writing output is quite medicine-related, but it still feels different. Find a writing buddy if you feel stuck! A friend of mine challenged me to write a poem for some medical humanities contest after gifting her a book of poetry, and since finding somebody to write with it's become much easier for me. I haven't published or posted these anywhere yet, I'm not sure how I feel about that, but yeah, I encourage it. I think if you're the sort to be browsing the SDN Psychiatry boards this could really appeal to you