Things I wish I knew Before Starting Med School

1. If I had known what it was going to be like, I would never have done it.
2. You’ll study more than you ever have in your life.
3. You don’t need to know anatomy before school starts. Or pathology. Or physiology.
4. You may discover early on that medicine isn’t for you.
5. Your social life may suffer some.
6. Residents will probably ask you to retrieve some type of nourishment for them.
7. Most of your time on rotations will be wasted. Thrown away. Down the drain.
8. You’ll work with at least one attending physician who you’ll want to beat the shit out of.
9. You’ll work with at least three residents who you’ll want to beat the shit out of.
10. At some point during your stay, a stranger’s bodily fluids will most likely come into contact with your exposed skin.
11. Somebody in your class will flunk out of medical school.
12. You’ll work 14 days straight without a single day off. Probably multiple times.
13. After the first two years are over, your summer breaks will no longer exist. Enjoy them as much as you can.
14. You’ll be sleep deprived.
15. There will be times on certain rotations where you won’t be allowed to eat.
16. You will be pimped.
17. You’ll wake up one day and ask yourself is this really what you want out of life.
18. You’ll probably change your specialty of choice at least 4 times.
19. Nurses will treat you badly, simply because you are a medical student.
20. There will be times when you’ll be ignored by your attending or resident.
21. You will develop a thick skin. If you fail to do this, you’ll cry often.
22. Public humiliation is very commonplace in medical training.
23. It’s always the medical student’s fault..
24. You’ll look forward to the weekend, not so you can relax and have a good time but so you can catch up on studying for the week.
25. Your house might go uncleaned for two weeks during an intensive exam block.
26. There’s a fair chance that you will be physically struck by a nurse, resident, or attending physician. This may include slapped on the hand or kicked on the shin in order to instruct you to “move” or “get out of the way.”
27. Any really bad procedures will be done by you. The residents don’t want to do them, and you’re the low man on the totem pole. This includes rectal examinations and digital disimpactions.
28. You’ll be competing against the best of the best, the cream of the crop. This isn’t college where half of your classmates are idiots. Everybody in medical school is smart.
29. Don’t think that you own the world because you just got accepted into medical school. That kind of attitude will humble you faster than anything else.
30. If you’re in it for the money, there are much better, more efficient ways to make a living. Medicine is not one of them.
31. Anatomy sucks. All of the bone names sound the same.
32. If there is anything at all that you’d rather do in life, do not go into medicine.
33. The competition doesn’t end after getting accepted to medical school. You’ll have to compete for class rank, awards, and residency. If you want to do a fellowship, you’ll have to compete for that too.
34. You’ll never look at weekends the same again.
35. Somebody in your class will be known as the “highlighter whore.” Most often a female, she’ll carry around a backpack full of every highlighter color known to man. She’ll actually use them, too.
36. Rumors surrounding members of your class will spread faster than they did in high school.
37. You’ll meet a lot of cool people, many new friends, and maybe your husband or wife.
38. Your first class get-together will be the most memorable. Cherish those times.
39. Long after medical school is over, you’ll still keep in contact with the friends you made. I do nearly every day.
40. There will be one person in your class who’s the coolest, most laid back person you’ve ever met. This guy will sit in the back row and throw paper airplanes during class, and then blow up with 260+ Step I’s after second year. True story.
41. At the beginning of first year, everyone will talk about how cool it’s going to be to help patients. At the end of third year, everybody will talk about how cool it’s going to be to make a lot of money.
42. Students who start medical school wanting to do primary care end up in dermatology. Those students who start medical school wanting to do dermatology end up in family medicine.
43. The money isn’t really that good in medicine. Not if you look at it in terms of hours worked.
44. Your family members will ask you for medical advice, even after your first week of first year.
45. Many of your friends will go onto great jobs and fantastic lifestyles. You’ll be faced with 4 more years of debt and then at least 3 years of residency before you’ll see any real earning potential.
46. Pick a specialty based around what you like to do.
47. It’s amazing how fast time flies on your days off. It’s equally amazing at how slow the days are on a rotation you hate.
48. You’ll learn to be scared of asking for time off.
49. Find new ways to study. The methods you used in college may or may not work. If something doesn’t work, adapt.
50. Hospitals smell bad.
51. The best time of your entire medical school career is between the times when you first get your acceptance letter and when you start school.
52. Medicine is better than being a janitor, but there were times when I envied the people cleaning the hospital trash cans.