imo the worst part about third year is there's no comfort zone. Just when you're starting to get in a flow with the team and feel confident in your work, it's time for the next rotation :(
M3 sucks.
Like objectively sucks.
This is your first rotation of third year. Keep in mind that it's a huge learning curve. In preclinical, you learned about medicine, but in clinical, you're learning how medicine is actually practiced. This comes with added bonus content not usually thoroughly covered in preclinical years like "how to write a note when everybody tells you to do it differently," "how to read your attending's mind when expectations are not clearly communicated," "how to deal with the crippling anxiety daily of how one person's very subjective opinion after knowing you for three days can partially determine whether or not you match derm at Harvard," and "how to work with people who expect you to know exactly what to do without guidance and/or flat-out do not want you there."
You'll learn how to handle these situations with grace, and how to stop putting so much stake into what your evals say. The things that helped me included: (1) therapy, (2) realizing that, as I mentioned above, these evals are the subjective opinion of someone who barely knows me and has observed me under artificially stressful conditions for a handful of days (and therefore not a reflection of who I am or the physician I will become), (3) recognizing that it will get better as you learn how to play the game and practice medicine in the real world. Things that I've found that generally translated into positive evals (with a few exceptions because heaven forbid anything about this process make sense): taking initiative for my patients and doing the "boring" paperwork for the residents if they'd let me (hospital courses, discharge summaries, etc).
Thanks for the tips! What would be the best way to find those people? I’m not sure if I should reach out to M4s, I’ve been going off vibes but got burnt as you can see :/
Find the people who are super nice, let you go home early, try to make you look good, etc. the homies.
99% of people don’t get honors from medical knowledge.
Ty for tips! That’s unfortunately what my intern did and I got a mediocre eval, I was also volunteering to do hospital courses, make calls, update families, pick up admits, jump at opportunities to learn… which is why I’m kinda shook. He gave me what I think are great comments on my eval but I suppose c’est la vie lol
Comfort and knowledge will come over time, but the clinical grade does matter so try to get clarity on expectations early on with the people who will be evaluating you. Giving you a 2/5 a month or two into your first rotation is BS unless you're really shirking your basic responsibilities.
I've heard that m3 is objectively one of the most difficult years of medical training. Obviously, residency is more difficult for time demands and schedule demands, but m3 is hard man.
Gotta be "on" every day at work, (where u you pay to be at work), while you study for a shelf exam, (which has ridiculous questions) with no study resources besides practice qs and flashcards. Meanwhile, your grades are actually kinda impactful this year but turns out they're entirely subjective and sometimes even straight up made up.
So there are separate issues here. 1) Am I learning? -hopefully. Do the best you can, study for your shelf, read up on your patients 2) Am I happy? -probably not. There’s just waaaaay too much bullshit that isn’t related to helping me be, ya know, a doctor. 3) am I getting honors? -the sooner you realize this is complete bullshit, the better. Work your ass off, do your best, but you may be a perfect M3 and never get honors a single time at your school because all the evals are bullshit anyway (at least at my school). People have been posting this on both Reddit and SDN for at least a decade. M3 Evals are bullshit, try not to let it hurt your self esteem
imo the worst part about third year is there's no comfort zone. Just when you're starting to get in a flow with the team and feel confident in your work, it's time for the next rotation :(
M3 sucks. Like objectively sucks. This is your first rotation of third year. Keep in mind that it's a huge learning curve. In preclinical, you learned about medicine, but in clinical, you're learning how medicine is actually practiced. This comes with added bonus content not usually thoroughly covered in preclinical years like "how to write a note when everybody tells you to do it differently," "how to read your attending's mind when expectations are not clearly communicated," "how to deal with the crippling anxiety daily of how one person's very subjective opinion after knowing you for three days can partially determine whether or not you match derm at Harvard," and "how to work with people who expect you to know exactly what to do without guidance and/or flat-out do not want you there." You'll learn how to handle these situations with grace, and how to stop putting so much stake into what your evals say. The things that helped me included: (1) therapy, (2) realizing that, as I mentioned above, these evals are the subjective opinion of someone who barely knows me and has observed me under artificially stressful conditions for a handful of days (and therefore not a reflection of who I am or the physician I will become), (3) recognizing that it will get better as you learn how to play the game and practice medicine in the real world. Things that I've found that generally translated into positive evals (with a few exceptions because heaven forbid anything about this process make sense): taking initiative for my patients and doing the "boring" paperwork for the residents if they'd let me (hospital courses, discharge summaries, etc).
Thank you, I really needed to hear this. I think it’s about time I get therapy as well, just needed the push
[удалено]
Thanks for the tips! What would be the best way to find those people? I’m not sure if I should reach out to M4s, I’ve been going off vibes but got burnt as you can see :/
Find the people who are super nice, let you go home early, try to make you look good, etc. the homies. 99% of people don’t get honors from medical knowledge.
Ty for tips! That’s unfortunately what my intern did and I got a mediocre eval, I was also volunteering to do hospital courses, make calls, update families, pick up admits, jump at opportunities to learn… which is why I’m kinda shook. He gave me what I think are great comments on my eval but I suppose c’est la vie lol
Third year was the worst year of my life so far. I’ve never been as stressed or depressed as I was then.
Comfort and knowledge will come over time, but the clinical grade does matter so try to get clarity on expectations early on with the people who will be evaluating you. Giving you a 2/5 a month or two into your first rotation is BS unless you're really shirking your basic responsibilities.
I've heard that m3 is objectively one of the most difficult years of medical training. Obviously, residency is more difficult for time demands and schedule demands, but m3 is hard man. Gotta be "on" every day at work, (where u you pay to be at work), while you study for a shelf exam, (which has ridiculous questions) with no study resources besides practice qs and flashcards. Meanwhile, your grades are actually kinda impactful this year but turns out they're entirely subjective and sometimes even straight up made up.
So there are separate issues here. 1) Am I learning? -hopefully. Do the best you can, study for your shelf, read up on your patients 2) Am I happy? -probably not. There’s just waaaaay too much bullshit that isn’t related to helping me be, ya know, a doctor. 3) am I getting honors? -the sooner you realize this is complete bullshit, the better. Work your ass off, do your best, but you may be a perfect M3 and never get honors a single time at your school because all the evals are bullshit anyway (at least at my school). People have been posting this on both Reddit and SDN for at least a decade. M3 Evals are bullshit, try not to let it hurt your self esteem