A Med School Memoir

While every day in the life of a med student is unique with respect to what is learned, the days still tend to blur together with regards to the overall theme and tone.  For instance, yesterday I learned about B cells, and today I learned about T cells, but aside from this remarkably small difference in the content of my learning, the two days were essentially indistinguishable.  In fact, so far this year, very few days have stood out as being remarkably unique (with the exception of test days).  A day in the life of a med student is essentially the same from one day to the next.  It’s like the movie Groundhog’s Day, except if you kill yourself, you don’t come back. Here’s about what it’s like.

6:45 Awakened by alarm clock.  Hit snooze.

6:48 Awakened by alarm clock.  Hit snooze.

6:51 Awakened by alarm clock.  Find the strength to open eyes, put feet on floor.   Drink coffee.  Shower, shave, brush teeth.  All that boring morning ritual stuff.

7:45 Arrive at school.  Drink more coffee.  Pre-read for morning lectures.  This usually involves highlighting words from the syllabus that appear important.  Remind yourself to figure out what they mean.  But not now.  Later.  Drink more coffee.

8:45 Migrate to the classroom.  Chat with friends.  Be chummy with people you don’t like sheerly because you have to.

9:00 Lecture.  Try to focus on the lecturer instead of the dude in front of you playing flash games on his laptop.  Drink more coffee.

9:20 Nudge your buddy sitting next to you when the dude who’s always 20 minutes late comes in wearing the exact same clothes he’s worn for the last month.  Consider consulting the Guinness Book of World Records to determine the record for “longest time spent wearing an ugly shirt.”

9:50 Break time.  Chat with whoever is sitting next to you.  Watch stupid cat videos on the internet.

10:00 Lecture.  Try to focus on lecturer.  Instead, read failblog over the shoulder of the guy in front of you.  Drink more coffee.

10:50 Break.  Chat, go get more coffee.  Listen to that one whiny dude in class who always complains about how he couldn’t understand the lecturer on account of his/her foreign accent and/or blazing pace with which he/she went through the material.

11:00 Lecture.  Fight urge to check email fifteen times.  Drink more coffee.  Check email fifteen times.

11:50 Lunch time.  Since you now live on student loans, you can’t afford to eat out all the time anymore.  (This lesson may not be learned until after your first semester, when you run out of money in October and have to scrape by until January.)  Instead, you now bring your lunch almost every day.  It’s usually the same.  A boring sandwich, some carrot sticks, maybe some yogurt or an apple.  Your lunch is so healthy for a couple reasons–one, you can’t really afford anything better, and two, you’ve heard a lot about high cholesterol/hypertension/diabetes in the last year.  You want to avoid this, but you still wish you were eating a burrito or something significantly more awesome.

12:30 Check your e-mail, drink more coffee.  Consider pre-reading for the next lecture.  Watch stupid videos on youtube instead.

1:00 Lecture.  Despite your best efforts, you will, almost assuredly, faze out almost immediately and retain next to nothing from the lecture.  Every few minutes you catch yourself falling asleep and look around to make sure no one caught you napping.  Look over to see people pointing and smirking.  Drink more coffee.

1:50 Break.  At this point, after all the coffee you’ve had, you may have to sneak off to a secluded bathroom somewhere on campus to take a dump.  This is quite possibly the most anxiety-provoking event of your day.

2:00 If you’re lucky, you’re done with classes.  If not, you have to go back and try to focus on another lecture. Why is it that the lecturer for the last afternoon class is always the guy trying to be “cool” by cramming his lecture full of stupid puns and filling his powerpoint full of “funny” pictures as old as the internet?  Cue instantrimshot.com and prepare to deny any culpability.

2:50 Freedom!  At this point, there are a couple options.  Either

• go home and zone out in front of the TV for an hour
• go to the gym to work on your sweet biceps, if you’re like me and like to keep your immaculately toned body immaculately toned.
• go home and begin studying.  (aka: go home, open a book, and watch TV for an hour with an open book on your lap.)

3:50 Check e-mail.  Browse reddit.com.  Tell yourself that you’ll begin studying again at 4:00.

4:45 Realize you’ve been surfing the internet way too long.  Tell yourself you’ll begin studying again at 5:00.

5:00 Realize you’re getting hungry.  Tell yourself you’ll eat dinner and then start studying again at 5:30.

5:10 Eat dinner (probably something from a box or the freezer, despite your good intentions.)

5:30 Sit down in front of the TV, tell yourself you “need to digest” for a bit, then you’ll start studying again at 6:00.

6:00 Realize that there is a good House, MD rerun on.  Tell yourself it will be good for your education to watch it, and that you’ll start studying again at 7:00.

7:00 Open up textbook.  Attempt to read.  Get caught up in thinking about how you really need to get good grades in order to get a good residency.  Search google for doctor’s salaries.  Realize that the dude in your class who you really don’t like is probably doing way better than you, and he’s going to make a lot more money than you if you don’t study and get a better residency than him.

7:30 Get frustrated that you’ll never make good enough grades to get into a really high-prestige residency slot.  Search google for med school study tips.

8:00 Actually begin studying.

9:00 Still studying.

10:00 Yup, still studying.

11:00 Notice the time, realize it’s time for bed.  Wonder why your eyes hurt and you’re always so tired.

So, that’s it, to my best approximation from what I can gather from my life and what I hear my classmates tell me.  (Okay, I’m exaggerating somewhat–I actually do spend quite a bit more time in the evening studying than that…)  Still, I’d like to hear from any other med students to see roughly how well this correlates to their daily routine.

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