Hey everyone! I’m a first-year med student, currently in week 4 of anatomy, and I’m already feeling pretty overwhelmed.

So far, we’ve covered osteology, the axial and appendicular skeleton, joints and movements, the spine and thorax, muscles of the limbs, and now we’re moving on to the muscles of the abdomen, thorax, and back.

My biggest question is: How much of anatomy is actual understanding, and how much is just pure memorization?

I’m also taking physiology, histology, biochemistry, and cell biology, so time is pretty limited.

Right now, I try to preview the PowerPoint slides or watch a short video before lectures. However, our professor mostly just talks through the slides, and I honestly don’t feel like I’m learning much. We also have a three-hour anatomy lecture followed immediately by lab, and some days I don’t finish university until 8 p.m.

By the time I get home, I’m exhausted and still have four other subjects to keep up with.

I’m struggling to figure out the most efficient way to study:
Should I go through every lecture slide afterward, or is that a waste of time?

Should I use ChatGPT to create Anki cards from the lectures and make that my first pass?

Should I focus on understanding the big picture first, or start memorizing everything immediately, including origins, insertions, innervations, and actions?

How do you balance anatomy with other demanding subjects without constantly falling behind?
I feel like I spend so much time trying to understand every detail that I barely make progress through the material.

If you could go back to your first year, how would you approach anatomy differently? What study method actually worked for you?
I’d really appreciate any advice, especially from people who’ve been in a similar situation!

Do you just use anking and then cram the in-house specific stuff closer to exams? I tried doing two decks but it got wayyy too overwhelming fast.

I’m not sure if you guys are familiar with PBL. To put it simply, we meet twice a week for three hours at a time reviewing a case and then presenting on it at the next session.

The doctor that leads my PBL sessions is a newly graduated doctor who had to drop out of residency for personal reasons. He is wildly inappropriate and asks us very concerning questions, but I’m not here to talk about him. There is a girl in my group who can be extremely toxic. For our midterm peer review, somebody commented on her way with words and said that she can come off as rude. They also said that she does not give much room for other people to speak. I personally left this girl a good review to not rock the boat. However, I come to find out that she thinks I am the one who wrote her the critical peer review. She has been telling a lot of our classmates that it was me and that she is also super hurt, basically playing the victim. I know that a lot of her classmates don’t care for her so I’m not too worried about my reputation. I am mostly worried for the toxic dynamic of the PBL sessions. Should I confront her? Should I just pretend nothing happened? What do you think I should do?

If you’ve made it this far, thank you so much for taking time to read this.

About to start my outpatient neuro rotation next week and was wondering if anyone has any advice and topics that are generally HY in this setting?

Using a throwaway. My partner is a med student in Quebec and recently started recovery from substance use. They are in therapy, peer support, and have contacted PAMQ.

We want to set up regular, random testing so there's real accountability and a record of their recovery, but we're not sure what's available to students or how it usually works.

- Who usually does the testing for med students: family doctor, addiction clinic, PAMQ referral?

- How often is typical early on?

- is formal monitoring (like the Collège's PSA) possible before residency?

- any advice for partners supporting someone through this while protecting their career?

Thank you. Any experience or resources would really help.

Discovered today that I unfortunately cannot post this in r/residency so hoping enough of y'all lurk around here.

I am blessed to be in a position with several II's from signaled programs (USMD, IM). I am generally an indecisive person so I want to get ahead of this. I would like to know, now that you are in residency, what should I ask/inquire about/look for in my interviews to help me make rank list decisions? What do you now know that you wish you asked about in the interview (or successfully inquired about that ultimately helped you make the right decision)?

USMD, just got an IV invite there without signalling.

I don’t know much about the program but would love to hear more about the good or bad about the program.

Also would like to know what it’s like to live in Albuquerque.

The title says it all.
I'm an intern, last year, and I've always wanted IM or neurology as my future speciality, there was no single moment of doubt. They fit my personality and the way I think, the perfect match for me. However, when I took a rotation in ER during my internship, I like it, I thrived in it, and now I'm starting to doubt my choices. Is it a bold move to think about ER? Will I regret it?

Any help!

Their med school has strict requirements, including no tattoos and no alcohol. How about for residency? I’m especially wondering if having a noticeable tattoo would cause any problems if I match there (peds). Same goes for drinking wine outside of the workplace. Any other insight regarding which religious rules the residents do or don’t have to follow would be greatly appreciated.

Obviously there’s other factors as well, but in terms of beds, does a 600 bed IM program train better than a 200 bed program?

Rip 😭🤪🫪🫥🥺

I only have 5 II, and all but 10 I applied to have sent out II. Of the 10 that haven't 4 are gold signal and 2 more are silver, with 4 being nonsignals. I am worried of only converting 1-3 more II and essentially not matching.

I go to a "good" school, but had an insane 19 point score drop on step 2 (actual score 244). I am honestly worried that even if i get 8+ interviews, the rank list meetings will not be friendly to me bc of step. My app is otherwise pretty decent.

Does 6-8 IVs mean bad things for me? What can I do at this point? Never thought I would have to soap Rads but if I did, what strategies should I prioritize? Just matching IM prelim somewhere and try to match a PGY2 spot next year?

Hi everyone!!

I’ve always been someone who loves finding patterns and making connections between things, especially when it comes to medicine. I feel like there’s something so satisfying about realizing how seemingly unrelated concepts actually tie together.

So I decided to turn that into a game!

It’s called Plexus, and the whole idea is to find connections between different medical terms, diseases, mechanisms, and concepts.

There are daily puzzles, organ system-specific challenges, a 3-minute timed mode, and even a race mode where you can compete against friends!

I really wanted to make something that’s fun to play rather than another study resource. But as a med student, I also thought it could be a nice way to reinforce concepts and recognize relationships between things we’re learning.

You can add it to your phone’s home screen so it works like an app without having to download anything! (on IOS: click share, then add to home page)

I’ve been working on this for a while now and am finally putting it out there. I’m genuinely open to any and all feedback, whether it’s the difficulty, the medical content, the design, or literally anything else. I really want to make something people enjoy coming back to!

Anyways, here’s the link if anyone wants to try it out:
playplexus.com

Hope you guys enjoy it!! :)

Got a community IM invite. Their resident career plans table at bottom shows 75% of people do “other career intentions or plans”.

I’ve never seen this number for this category so high.

What’s the reason?

You're in clinic on a chill elective, and at lunch break the resident is a bro and tells you to go home and live your best 4th year life. Next day, attending asks you if you stayed the whole time, and says that they will verify with the resident.

What do you do?

Case A: You say you stayed the whole time. Resident, being a bro, covers for you and agrees.
Result: Everyone lives happily ever after.

Case B: You and the resident both confess.
Result: You both get a stern talking to, or perhaps even a disciplinary meeting.

Case C: You say you stayed the whole time. Resident confesses to letting you out early.
Result: You are hanged, drawn, and quartered. Or worse, expelled.

Case D: You confess to leaving early. Resident nobly tries to cover for you.
Result: Attending asks why you left early.

Case D(a): You say you had an interview/lab meeting/family emergency. Turns out the attending is House MD and instantly sniffs out your pathetic attempt at deceit.
Result: See Case C

Case D(b): You say because the resident said I could.
Result: Your budding bromance with the resident is obliterated, shattered into a million shards that will lodge forever in your cold dead heart. For the rest of the rotation, you silently fulfill meaningless tasks from 8-5 under the contemptuous gaze of your betrayed resident. Your name will go down in infamy in the whispers of future generations of med students who will pay for the sins of their predecessors and suffer the toil of full clinic days.

I’m sure this is a common issue for a lot of med students based on this page but I’m an M3 and just feel like something has changed in me since being in med school and I can’t go back to the happy, grateful person I was before. It feels like no one in my life understands me and talking to my med school friends doesn’t help either. Maybe because I’m just constantly trying to prove myself at this point in clinicals and comparing myself to my friends as applications feel more serious, but I feel like I’m constantly trying to prove myself outside of medicine too and I just feel empty. Just trying to prove I picked the right field, that I’m not wasting my life, that becoming a doctor will be worth it in the end, that I can still have hobbies and a personality (I have 0 time), etc.

It’s just exhausting trying to be happy and live life and also finish med school and hopefully get into a decent program in a somewhat ideal place. I just want to feel happy again and just now realizing I’ll really never be the person I was before.

Seems like they are retaining the name Rush, but are moving forward with Endeavor Health's CEO. I'm curious what thoughts are from those at the medical school & residency programs or those experienced with either of these systems.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ChicagoSuburbs/comments/1x5xuso/rush_and_endeavor_announce_plan_to_merge/ there is another thread here with fairly negative opinions about the whole affair...

It feels awkward to ask if thank you letters are ok to send, or to spend a bunch of time getting individual emails for interviewers. After my first interview last week, I just sent a thank you to the program coordinator for keeping everything running smoothly and telling him what a great impression of the faculty and program I was left with. Is this ok or should I be doing more?