#my friend ben going through the same thing had a full scale breakdown last week due to this + other bad shit that happened in his life

[shiningneedlecastle]

You uhh... you wanna talk about the med school residency, bud?

oh lol i didn't think i was gonna get an ask about it, thanks for asking. i'm actually not quite in residency yet, just med school. 2nd year

just so happens to be the part of med school where you study for this fuckmassive 8 hour exam named USMLE step 1 that covers every part of the curriculum (and also a bunch of outside shit since too many students passing = less money the host company gets to charge us to retake the exam). for perspective, the summary book for it named first aid is ~750 pages long and everything in there is fair game.

people regularly study for this exam with a schedule of ~10 hours a day for 6 weeks straight no breaks. that's what I'm doing now but i wanted to be careful so i planned mine to be 9 weeks. that's bc my med school itself didn't prepare us well for that despite us paying 60k+ tuition a year. a real shit tier lectures and wasted money type of thing. people also regularly experience both physical and mental health problems from studying for the exam to the point it's just expected

i've heard things from current M3s (3rd year med school students) about 24 hour straight shifts while having to study for board exams at the same time. also stuff about residents often having 80 hour work weeks, sometimes without one/both weekend days off. the work itself is naturally strenuous since it's doctor stuff. the sort of situation that gets overworked residents into car crashes from falling asleep at the wheel due to how exhausted they are. fun little article about that phenomenon here. notice that first line "Resident physicians often work longer than 24 consecutive hours with little or no sleep." btw residents get paid ~$20 an hour on average

currently wondering what to do with the fact the next couple years for me are gonna be the (probably? hopefully it won't get worse later?) shittiest time of my life. i can't really get out of that without wasting the preparation i did specifically for this, aka SHITLOAD of grinding i've been doing since start of university so close to a decade now. i realize at this point that this field might not be for me but the concept of exiting now and losing so many years of my life to stress and endless studying for nothing in return + a fuckload of debt makes me pretty unhappy

this probably sounds whiny or something but i'm in not a great spot mentally tbh.

#my friend ben going through the same thing had a full scale breakdown last week due to this + other bad shit that happened in his life #it got me thinking about this whole damn awful process #yeahhh without exaggerating this is the worst time of my life so far. operative words: so far #if any of my followers noticed i've been gone a whole lot this is why #anon