HannahArabi14a wrote:Being a current medical school student, or graduated by now what advice do you have to do well in medical school? How many hours do you dedicate to studying and how do you manage your time while staying on top of everything as well as your mental and physical health?
Also, in a previous post you said that pre med is more bio based. I finished the biology requirements but I didn’t like my general biology classes, because I thought they were rather broad and non medical related, like taxonomy. Should I be concerned about this? Thank you. Good luck and hope residency goes well!
In medical school, there’s a lot of studying. The first two years when you’re in the classroom, you do a lot of studying by the books just like in college. Most weekdays were spent studying all day after class. Weekends I had some free time to do fun activities but I was studying about 7d a week. Third and fourth year of medical school, you study the clinical material. You see an interesting case in the hospital and you read up on it at home so that you know how to treat the patient better (what tests to order, next steps for treatment, etc). It can be a lot but you need to find things to do that make you happy and be sure to set aside time each day to do something that makes you happy. If you study 24/7 you won’t retain anything after a while. And you come to a point of diminishing return where you’re reading but not retaining.
For your question regarding bio, I wouldn’t be too worried. They will teach you everything you need to know in courses in Med school. It just may not be as familiar to you. But there’s a lot of general bio in medicine that isn’t medically related but you still need to understand the underlying biological mechanism. So if you’re general bio wasn’t what you thought it would be, don’t worry too much. But at the same time if it was something you hated then also use it as something telling you maybe it’s not the field you want to go into (take that advice for any course in the future, don’t try to force yourself to like something and don’t try to force yourself into a career you won’t like. It’s not worth it). Hope this helps!