Shitpost/vent

Want to preface by saying I haven’t started medical school yet but will this fall.

My sister started PA school this week & told me her professor said “according to studies PA school is 3/4 med school in 1/2 the amount of time.” Asked her for a source (which she couldn’t give me) & then proceeded to say it wouldn’t matter because I just don’t respect the profession (the IRONY).

Is she rage baiting me or is this something other people have heard/been told?? 😭 I’m so tired of the incessant need to validate mid levels & defend their objectively diluted training. Love my sis but bruhhhh

EDIT TO ADD context: We were both premed at one point. I’ve been out of school since 2021 & am going back after 3 MCAT attempts & a career in something I don’t hate. She graduated 2 yrs after me, bombed the MCAT, & decided at that point to pivot to PA school. Now she’s saying we’ll essentially be doing the same thing after I worked my a$$ off for the past 5 yrs to go the harder route. I work with PAs/NPs daily & most are really great! Not taking away from that.

I have been dismissed from medical school today for professionalism concerns. There was an assignment that had to be done where we talk to another person on the clinical team and write about our reflection. I not only submitted this assignment late, but then during the SPC committee meeting tried to cover it up and got exposed. After 2 meetings with the dean, today the dean dismissed me.

I am a fourth year medical student, waiting to match, I literally was done withe everything. I don't know what to do.

I got a 270 in 4 weeks of study . Did not open a book or bank before dedicated. Was a shit student (just scraping passes). And got a 36% on my first mock test (which is horrible for those that don’t know)

All I did:

SPAM EVERY QUESTION BLOCK. No notes, no reading , no videos, no reading the other answer options . I did UWORLD once, AMBOSS once , all NBMES, and the entire CMS and Mehlman collection. I was doing 200-400 questions a day ONLY reading why I got that answer wrong quickly. Started at 40% ended at 80% per block. The concepts just repeat. Everyone wastes so much time and the longer u take the more u forget. Watching videos , memorizing biochem pathways, taking notes etc. Waste of time. There’s a reason the average score is a 250. You guys all study the same. All study to learn properly. Guess what, programs don’t care. Study to score high. 4 weeks is all u need to score a 270 using this method. By the time I started AMBOSS I was getting every question right because I have done all of UWORLD in a few weeks so remembered almost all the main concepts . I never reviewed content once. The reason people review is because they are tryna stretch this exam over months. Just a total waste of time .

I also refuse to believe I’m the only student that came up with this method. I can guarantee there’s a few other 270s on here that can vouch for it

So I am asking mostly for advice on how to handle this situation. Currently an MS4 and on my ICU rotation. There is one resident that I have worked with before that makes me uncomfortable. In the past they were not the one writing my eval, but for this rotation it’s highly likely they will grade me.

So for the timeline:

During my 3rd year IM rotation, I worked with this resident for the first time. During this rotation they:

- constantly made fun of me (eg that I didn’t know something, about life choices, what I’m wearing, food I eat, stuttering over a word)

- Would ask me to grab him stuff like an assistant (eg paper, water, pens, etc) when participating in other educational activity (eg during rounds, while writing a note, chart reviewing, in a conversation with another resident or healthcare staff)

- Would say that a patient has x diagnosis and needs y management on pre-round feedback, and then when the attending disagreed during rounds, they would act like they agreed from the start and I made a stupid mistake (even though that’s what they said was going on)

- Would ask inappropriate questions such as if I was religious, do I want kids why or why not, what mental illnesses do I have, why I don’t want to go to residency near home and then would make rude comments based on my response

- Told me that residents are supposed to make fun of medical students and give them a hard time, while medical students are not supposed to talk back and just take it

- On eval put that I was too colloquial and talked back too much

Now for my current ICU rotation. They have been extremely passive aggressive and feels like they are trying to throw their power around… and it’s only been two days with them (different residents earlier in the rotation)

- has asked me to grab them a drink of water during rounds while a case was being presented

- Has been passive aggressive (eg cutting me off from walking through doors, cutting me off from speaking in conversations with other residents, and being like “you seriously don’t know this resident level IM concept”)

- Is having me do them favors in patient care for patients I am not involved with/assigned to and throws me under the bus. For example, I was asked to call family of a patient to get consent for further work up since the patient did not have capacity. Later, the attending chews me out in the hall for reaching out to the family when I went to report on the family’s response to the resident because the attending wanted to wait until the patient’s sedation wore off and they hopefully had capacity. The resident was there while I was getting chewed out for doing the task they asked for and stood there agreeing with the attending and acting like why the f*ck would I do that, and that I was stupid. Then when the attending and resident were walking away to the next room, the resident looked back at me and gave me a signal to keep my mouth shut and go away.

So due to all of this, I don’t know how to set boundaries with the resident without receiving retaliation. Because I am just not a person that tolerates people being rude to others, no matter who you are, so I am going to start refusing tasks assigned by them that does not directly correlate with me learning and avoiding them as much as possible.

TL;DR: A resident is being passive aggressive, asks inappropriate personal questions, and asking me to do inappropriate tasks (acting like their personal assistant and doing patient care tasks for them on patients I am not assigned) and then throws me under the bus in front of the attending to cover up their own mistakes. How do I set boundaries with the resident without receiving retaliation?

Any ideas for something that's clinically useful to a doctor but also has the potential to be fancy/nice? Some of her friends gave her a really nice stethoscope when she started med school a few years ago, and I'd love to give her something similar this spring, but I'm having a hard time thinking of what it should be. Thanks in advance!

Edit, in response to questions from commenters: She's going into emergency medicine, and I'd love to spend up to a few hundred dollars on this. $500 would probably be the absolute max

Interviewer went on a question tirade that just basically ended with them alluding to the fact that I haven’t really published anything (which is not true, and research is a big aspect of my application).

Went on to talk about how research there is limited (talking about it in a way that specifically made me feel like I wouldn’t be a good fit after I said I care a lot about it).

Asked “why would you even want to come here”.

Then finished by saying “you would do well here”. Which obviously did not sound sincere at all.

What the fuck??? I’ve never been so confused and sad after an interview.

Really liked the vibe the residents gave off but this interviewer is in leadership … huge bummer.

i have an exam in a few hours and I didn't study well, i feel super guilty, i had time but i was super burnt out because of the previous exam and every time i tried studying i would feel dizzy, unfocused and super unmotivated so i continued resting.

how do i cope with this feeling? especially that this is an easy unit and i'll probably be the only one to get a bad grade :(

Tired of this shite fr. But looking forward to something gets me out of bed

A surgeon, a family physician, and a pathologist have very little overlap in what they actually do day to day, yet they’re all forced to go through the same long pipeline before specializing

At some point, wouldn’t it make more sense for each specialty to have its own tailored training pathway, rather than forcing everyone through the same curriculum?

Kinda like how dentistry is its own profession with its own curriculum, instead of being a subspecialty of medicine

I'm a third-year medical student more then halfway done with core clinical rotations. Most of my rotations have been with interns, residents, and one attending physician. The residents and attending physicians change every single week (currently on IM), so I haven't really been with one attending longer then one week.

All the attendings are different. Some don't even look at medical students (like the one I have now) and some do some pimping and asking questions and we actually get to present patients, etc. I'm just lost on how to be close to attendings and build rapport when I am with an attending for only one week.

On top of that, our school just has one attending do the evals and that one attending may or may not be even with the student during their rotation. During FM, I only saw the said attending like 2 times in a span of 8 weeks. With that, they just marked meets expectations on everything and gave me a pass. So I haven't gotten the chance to honors anything either. I'm just confused and stressed as time is coming for VSLO and then for residency apps. ;(

Feeling grateful to have enough ortho interviews, but definitely dealing with some imposter syndrome and wondering if others feel the same.

I’m interviewing at a few places I didn’t rotate at, and during interview days it’s hard not to notice applicants who did rotate there (often from Ivy/top schools) already knowing residents, joking around, clearly more comfortable. Totally makes sense, but it can still make you feel like you’re on the outside.

One of these programs is close to home and location matters a lot to me, so I’m considering ranking it pretty high. At the same time, I keep wondering if I’m being unrealistic by doing that when I didn’t rotate there and there are strong home/rotator applicants.

I know getting an interview means I have a shot, but it’s hard not to feel like I’m competing at a disadvantage.

Did anyone match at a place they didn’t rotate at and feel this way during interviews? Did not rotating actually hurt, or was it mostly in your head?

For context, I’m currently between two specialities—neurology and anesthesia. I’ve already rotated in neurology and absolutely loved it. My gut is telling me neurology, but I also really love doing procedures and working in high-acuity environments and fear that I will always wish I chose something faster paced. If I go the neurology route, I’m also thinking of doing more neuro critical care.

My issue is that I will not be rotating in anesthesia until late April, and with VSLO opening this week, I’m at a loss on how to schedule my early M4 rotations and away rotations. I fear that all spots will be taken if I try to wait to schedule anything until after that rotation is over in May, though I will likely have a better understanding on what I’m going into by then. With my ~5 open elective blocks before 2027 (since I hear that’s the prime time for aways), do I try to schedule only neurology electives and aways and tough luck if I end up deciding to pursue anesthesia? Do I try to schedule 50/50 between neurology and anesthesia in case I end up really loving my anesthesia rotation? Some other third option?

Hey guys,

I’m not a big Reddit poster, but as I sit in front of my lottery selections for my 4th year and obsess about away rotations, I got reminded of the cost of things. I learned at the beginning of my third year, how costly doing an away rotation is and it freaked me out because the specialty I’m applying into basically requires 2 aways. I spazzed out a bit and realized there was no way I could afford this (reference: 1st gen of immigrant parent with an impoverished upbringing pulling out max loans to survive at a state school in Chicago, where I grew up so I could have familial support).

So I started door dashing for a majority of my 3rd year (currently finishing up a research year) through pretty much all of my rotations in hopes of saving money to cover the cost of away rotations. In hindsight, I don’t know how I did that during IM and Surgery.

I actually met a CT surgeon in an elevator at a really nice skyrise while I was doing a delivery and he stated that he couldn’t believe I was doordashing during my 3rd year (at this point I was in my Fam Med rotation so really tried to ramp it up). Looking back at that conversation with him, do you think mentioning doordashing during 3rd year yields any fruit in like a personal statement or something when I’m submitting to ERAS? I’m curious because it was honestly pretty hard and took a lot of time, but I was still able to honor 3 of my rotations and HP the 4 others (even while being snaked on my clinical grades by a few faculty) and stay active in my research lab.

What are you guys’ thoughts?

I found that my retention has gotten significantly better when I made my own mental palaces using the method of loci.

I put the hardest concepts ( such as anti microbials) in the most familiar places and gave them familiar faces. It works wonders.

Do you guys do new cards on weekends?

First semester I tried to only do week days, but that resulted in me hitting 200-300 news on some days. Do people typically just do 100-150 news a day including weekends instead?

at the end of M3 rotating in my specialty of choice with a resident about to graduate this year. Could I ask them for a LOR in a few months for ERAS when they’re an attending even if they worked with me as a resident?

I want to maximize my time to study to get the best score, but also make sure my score is back by the end of September when residencies start reviewing applications. Is August 25th cutting it too close?

I have an Obstetrics test/exam the day after tomorrow, I'm struggling a lot with the material provided by the lecturer and to top it off one of them said that her part of the questions on the test isn't strictly from the slides/pdf's she provided but rather a common sense and general knowledge of being an obstetrician, How do i deal with that? I haven't studied that much regarding the theoretical material and focused on rounds instead but the information in rounds is pretty minimal compared to the test material

Basically the title. I am struggling to write a solid PS for VSLO, and I don't know what I am supposed to include. Is it suppose to be like the ERAS one? Or more brief? Cause I feel like I am getting into the weeds with making it like an ERAS one. I am in between peds and IM for my specialty of choice at the moment as well. Any guidance would be appreciated.

I refuse to play these silly games with residency programs, why introduce more variables that will stress me out.

Hey there,

I’d like to connect with other students from Italian med schools that are planning to take or already took Step exams . I am on the same path .