Is it possible to have fun in medical school

In life, we usually have a binary system of describing activities: work or pleasure, study or fun, as if they were mutually exclusive. We implicitly describe studying or working as inherently not pleasurable and not fun. Maybe you love running, which most people despise. He suggests flow states as the path through which students should find enjoyment in school. Flow is a powerful experience.

Activities where I have experienced flow at much higher frequencies include racing my car and doing plastic surgery in the operating room. These two activities are much more readily applicable to the five elements that facilitate flow:. One of the beautiful things in surgery is that you have a clearly defined goal before you ever enter the operating room. Is your goal to learn the information, or to get a good grade in the class?

Measuring progress in the operating room occurs in a stepwise manner. On the race track, you can similarly measure your progress with segment times and see if your skills are trending in the right direction.

In both instances, progress is easily measured and feedback is immediate. With school, you may spend weeks studying for a large test or the MCAT , but the feedback, meaning your score, is delayed by days to weeks at minimum. Part of the excitement of both operating and racing a car is that both demand your full attention. Failure to do so would be disastrous for the patient or could result in a dangerous crash on the race track.

How many times has your mind wandered while studying or taking a test? My point exactly. With racing a car, there is a similar stepwise progression. Proper preparation is rewarded handsomely, but the flip side is that with this level of control, a failure on your part can be disastrous to your patient or to other people on the race track.

With school, you have control over objective tests, like math and science. We manage what we measure, and as humans we enjoy seeing progress. Have you ever tried losing fat or gaining muscle? In both instances, regularly measuring your progress, whether with pictures, a scale, or body fat calipers, is a key component of providing feedback and helping you stay motivated. With school, you can measure your progress too. Some jump to the score they received on a test. However, no two tests are the same, and rather than measuring an absolute score, looking at percentiles would be more useful.

An easy way to regain your confidence and help someone at the same time is to mentor a premed. Nonetheless who better to mentor a premed than a med student. Similar to the mentoring point above, volunteering is also a great way to have fun during medical school.

Many students sign up to volunteer in student-run clinics. Volunteering in a clinic will remind you. My favorite volunteer experiences dealt with exposing primary school students to the field of medicine. Figure out which volunteer activities are most fulfilling to you, then make time to do them.

In the end, I firmly believe that people are most fulfilled when helping others. Find a hobby. Med school might as well be called the hobby killer. Too many students start with a hobby they love, and graduate with it as a distant memory. I was always impressed with classmates who kept up with gymnastics, music, and other things of the sort. It was easy to see that they tended to be some of the happiest students in the bunch.

Cancel reply You must be logged in to post a comment. Not recently active. Not an alcoholic beverage in sight. No one was drinking because we had orientation the next day.

It was a sad state of affairs, and I was both embarrassed and worried that this would be the story of the next few years of my life. However, after that orientation-week mood of trying to make good impressions, everyone chilled the hell out. We spent the remainder of the summer bonding by drinking by the pool, buying each other shots at the bars, and living life like normal people.

Despite the initial weirdness, most of my classmates turned out to be everyday people who like to party just as much as me, some even more. As a budding doctor, I have learned that it is absolutely imperative to work out, socialize, and adhere to a strict drinking regimen for your health. Mental health, that is. Now, I attend a medical school that has a systems-based curriculum, meaning that we learn about the anatomy, physiology, pathology, pharmacology, etc.

So: death. Rinse and repeat. Aside — I have a friend at a top 15 medical school in the country, and judging by her snapchat stories, she parties more than any other medical student I know. So, the amount of free time you have is NOT correlated to the ranking of your school. Not everyone likes to spend their free time partying, and that is completely understandable. And, you will still find plenty of friends whose values align with your own.

You simply have to prioritize what is important to you. With that said, yes, you can have a life in medical school, whether that be a social life, a sex life, or a fitness life, is entirely up to you. Like Like. Thank you! You are commenting using your WordPress.

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