<p>For current med students or past, how was the classroom experience?</p>
<p>I've met some people who say they've hated it. How hard was it? A lot of memorization? Do you feel like the stuff you learn is useful/interesting?</p>
<p>The first two years of med school are by far the worst two years of my life. I’m not sure I could come up with a dollar amount that would get me to reconsider reliving them, but it starts with getting my loans paid off and some sort of awesome stipend, at least equal to what I’m making as a resident.</p>
<p>The best way I can describe it is that it’s like drinking from a firehose. There is so much information, and the required depth of understanding needed to do well is immense. They have to test really inane details to create separation in the scores.</p>
<p>Certainly some of it’s useful and interesting, but I’d say that for me, the things that were most beneficial were outside the basic sciences and more from the “how to be a doctor” class that most schools utilize to cover physical exam maneuvers, history taking, etc. I am becoming a bigger fan of physiology now that I’ve finally found the place where it applies more directly to patient care (in the ICU). But I genuinely despise the constant hours at the library trying to smash whatever knowledge I could into my brain.</p>
<p>All that said, some people want to become doctors because of the science. I’m definitely someone who is drawn to the social aspect of the profession. So there may be some people who actually really enjoyed learning how the body worked more than clinical practice.</p>