The Grind
Four clerkships down, two to go. I start the Surgery clerkship tomorrow, and I have to confess that I'm starting to feel worn down. I'm still enjoying third year overall, but exhaustion is starting to seep through my entire being, and that's starting to affect my outlook on things.
I think what's kept me going so far is that I've really enjoyed my experiences in the last couple clerkships - the patient population was fantastic, my fellow medical students have been awesome, and the faculty have been very good for the most part. However, I'm now going to end third year with two clerkships notoriously known for having faculty and residents with malignant attitudes. And I'm going into these clerkships feeling mentally drained already. I don't know how I'm going to come out on the other side this time.
Part of this exhausting process is the constant evaluation going on. When you're in the clinic, you're always being watched - how you interact with your patients, the organization of your presentations, the quality of your progress notes, the breadth and depth of your knowledge. When you're not in the clinic, you need to be reading your ass off in the hopes that it's somehow going to get you through the end-of-the-clerkship exam. Let's get this out of the way: I am a really crappy exam taker. I get by okay, but I'm not knocking anyone's socks off. Which is fine because it's our clinical evaluations that carry more weight, and I'm doing very well with those. But these shelf exams that we take at the end are absolutely brutal - 100 questions in 2 hours and 10 minutes. That's one minute and 18 seconds for each question and you really need to complete these exams at a blistering pace. A minority of these questions are of the type that you read and know the answer right away. Most of them require reading of a medium-length paragraph with some lab values in a table afterwards. One can usually eliminate a couple choices right off the bat. Think a little harder, and you then get it down to the best of two choices. Me, I tend to agonize for way too long over those last two choices and I end up scrambling to finish at the end. This is the closest I've ever come to panic attack. When it's all over, I feel like someone's taken a blade to my stomach and spilled my guts all over the floor. I go into these things with absolutely no confidence and have to seriously consider getting prescription beta-blockers for these exams. I just don't feel like I have the energy to make it through this anymore.
My confidence after these things is so shattered that I end up extrapolating this experience into everything else going on - making me feel like I've hit my upper limit, as far as medicine goes. And I haven't even gone into the process of applying for residencies at this point. But I hold on to that little glimmer of hope somewhere - it's in here somewhere, I think - that if I can just finish this year then things will be okay. I just don't know where I'm going to get that second wind from. I need to recharge - quickly - and I don't know how.
I think what's kept me going so far is that I've really enjoyed my experiences in the last couple clerkships - the patient population was fantastic, my fellow medical students have been awesome, and the faculty have been very good for the most part. However, I'm now going to end third year with two clerkships notoriously known for having faculty and residents with malignant attitudes. And I'm going into these clerkships feeling mentally drained already. I don't know how I'm going to come out on the other side this time.
Part of this exhausting process is the constant evaluation going on. When you're in the clinic, you're always being watched - how you interact with your patients, the organization of your presentations, the quality of your progress notes, the breadth and depth of your knowledge. When you're not in the clinic, you need to be reading your ass off in the hopes that it's somehow going to get you through the end-of-the-clerkship exam. Let's get this out of the way: I am a really crappy exam taker. I get by okay, but I'm not knocking anyone's socks off. Which is fine because it's our clinical evaluations that carry more weight, and I'm doing very well with those. But these shelf exams that we take at the end are absolutely brutal - 100 questions in 2 hours and 10 minutes. That's one minute and 18 seconds for each question and you really need to complete these exams at a blistering pace. A minority of these questions are of the type that you read and know the answer right away. Most of them require reading of a medium-length paragraph with some lab values in a table afterwards. One can usually eliminate a couple choices right off the bat. Think a little harder, and you then get it down to the best of two choices. Me, I tend to agonize for way too long over those last two choices and I end up scrambling to finish at the end. This is the closest I've ever come to panic attack. When it's all over, I feel like someone's taken a blade to my stomach and spilled my guts all over the floor. I go into these things with absolutely no confidence and have to seriously consider getting prescription beta-blockers for these exams. I just don't feel like I have the energy to make it through this anymore.
My confidence after these things is so shattered that I end up extrapolating this experience into everything else going on - making me feel like I've hit my upper limit, as far as medicine goes. And I haven't even gone into the process of applying for residencies at this point. But I hold on to that little glimmer of hope somewhere - it's in here somewhere, I think - that if I can just finish this year then things will be okay. I just don't know where I'm going to get that second wind from. I need to recharge - quickly - and I don't know how.
posted by Mikey at 11:03 AM
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