<p>Do med students, residents, and/or doctors have enough time to themselves during their day? After all the studying, do people working in or towards the field of medicine have at least an hour or two to kick back and watch a movie or something?</p>
<p>I've heard plenty of rumors about the stress, difficulty, time consumption, and high responsibility as a doctor and I want to understand just how serious one's life may revolve around the hospital.</p>
<p>Also, I'm a high school student who's interested in either internal medicine or neurology. I'm going to be honest and say that both are equally as interesting towards me, so if someone can help me choose based on their own experiences or observations, that would be good.</p>
<p>... you don't need to choose a specialty until your fourth year in medical school.</p>
<p>Just because I don't need to choose a specialty for eight years doesn't mean I can't choose one... What's so wrong with wanting to be a neurologist at a young age? Also, thanks for answering my question... Can someone give me some advice or answers to my question that doesn't involve.</p>
<p>"You're in high school, you shouldn't be worrying about this stuff."</p>
<p>I mean come on, what's so wrong with thinking about your career at high school. I would understand someone telling a middle schooler they didn't need to worry about high school or college, since middle school does not play as large in one's future. However, I think I'm old enough to understand that I want to be a neurologist (I'm leaning more towards neurology).</p>
<p>Just because I don't need to choose a specialty for eight years doesn't mean I can't choose one... What's so wrong with wanting to be a neurologist at a young age? Also, thanks for answering my question... Can someone give me some advice or answers to my question that doesn't involve.</p>
<p><em>Can someone give me some useful advice or answers to my question</em></p>
<p>Fine, then say you want to be a neurologist. </p>
<p>Just realize that most medical students change their minds multiple times within the first three years of medical school, often ending up at very distant specialties from where they thought they wanted to end up.</p>
<p>For example. I came to medical school thinking I wanted to be an Orthopedic surgeon.</p>
<p>Since my first day of medical school I've gone through the following progression of specialty choice: Ortho -> peds ortho -> foot/ankle ortho -> general internist -> pediatrician -> adolescent medicine -> peds cardiology -> peds endocrine -> peds -> med genetics -> peds cardio -> peds GI -> peds cardio -> neonatology -> to now switching regularly between the pediatric cardiology/GI/neonatology. And I'm ahead of many in my class by knowing I want to work with pediatric patient populations. </p>
<p>As for free time...as a first and second year medical student, there are certainly people who self impose extreme limitations on their free time. There are people who will literally leave class in order to spend 8 hours in the library every single day. Does that mean you have to follow suit? Of course not. I personally could never live that way. I need to find time for friends and myself, and am willing to sacrifice grades for having a healthier mental and physical state.</p>
<p>I start my 3rd year rotations on monday, and from what I can tell from our orientations and talking to the newly minted 4th years - free time is a highly variable concept. On some clerkships there's none, while on others there's a lot. The thing is that it varies within the clerkship dependent on where you're completing your assignment and even then on who your attending is. </p>
<p>For example, our university pediatrics rotation consists of 2 weeks in-patient peds, 1 week medical genetics, 1 week newborn nursery, 2 weeks out-patient peds, and then either two 1 week selectives or one 2 week selective for a total of 8 weeks. But we can also choose a "Community" track in an smaller community in our state. There it's 8 weeks of outpatient, clinic based pediatrics with a general pediatrician which is essentially a "regular office hours" sort of experience (not entirely as you may still have to round at the local hospital if any kids are on in-patient services, and there is a call schedule). The "free time" on these varies widely, and even when students are in the same service, their residents and attendings may have different demands on them. Some residents don't like anyone to write their progress notes for them, and may be more likely to send patients home. Others may get along awesome with their students and the relationship ends up being one where the resident lets the student do way more things on the service.</p>
<p>Free time varies greatly from person to person and month to month. In general, medical students at schools with pass/fail grading during the first two years have more free time. Free time in residency, especially during the PGY-1 year, is harder to come by, but most residents find some time to work out, have a family or even train for marathons.</p>
<p>For info on neurology see the abpn site <a href="http://www.abpn.com/public.htm%5B/url%5D">http://www.abpn.com/public.htm</a> or see the thread <a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=252828%5B/url%5D">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=252828</a>.</p>
<p>Good luck.</p>
<p>This isn't really relating to the topic of this thread...but what's medical genetics?</p>
<p>I was just wondering, in med school and during residency, would you have enough time to have a relationship, and maybe get married? Do you know anyone who has gotten married before they actually finished their residency, and when did they meet?</p>
<p>A few people actually enter medical school married.</p>
<p>Medical Genetics: The field of medicine dealing with the pre-natal prevention/screening, diagnosis and treatment of patients with genetically - linked diseases. This usually means diseases like inborn errors of metabolism, hemoglobinopathies, chromosome abnormalities, and neural tube defects, rather than other diseases that have genetic components (diabetes, cancer, etc).</p>
<p>On relationships: There are actually a lot of people in my class who have either come to medical school married (even people my age (24), so it's not just the 28-34 year olds), or have gotten engaged during the first two years - to people they were dating before they started medical school. In the defense of dating during medical school, there are 3 couples in my class who met in med school and started dating, and the safe money at this point is on betting that all three will eventually get married. And in my own personal life, I've actually just started dating a girl who is also a third year medical student at the other medical school in town. It's not the easiest thing in the world, and I'm not going to say we're for sure going to last due to our timing, but we've been able to make it work so far - and we understand what the other is going through so that helps. </p>
<p>In the end, love tends not to wait for the perfect time. Yes, you can prevent it from happening by sequestering yourself in the library every day, but for everyone else with a life, you can't predict when or who you'll fall for.</p>