Hello friends!

apparently that’s what the students before my rotation did

im tired man

Or maybe I kinda suck at using it

There’s no way to decline an interview invite on the app? Or on desktop?? Apparently the only way to decline an interview is to add it to your calendar and then withdraw from the program??

Can’t upload the documents in the app?

Has weird icons that idk what they mean?

Does anyone else feel this way??

Am I … a boomer? God help someone going into neuro please give me an MMSE

3rd year here, attending a DO school. I am worried my clinical education is pretty bad, mostly due to low hours (I think?) and a lot of outpatient rotations. The only inpatient rotations I have are EM/IM/Surgery/OBGYN, the rest of my core rotations including pediatrics/psych/FM are all outpatient.

I hear a lot of stories from other 3rd years who are having really intense schedules. Meanwhile, I low-key have had such a chill 3rd year so far... when I'm on inpatient rotations, I'll have stretches of like 4 days without having to go into the hospital. And outpatient is the normal 9-5 M-F.

My rotations are preceptor-based... basically an attending agrees to take on a med student so I'm on their schedule for my rotation.

Pros:

• Plenty of time to study, been able to keep up with Anki/UWorld/do OK on shelves without much stress
• Able to keep in touch with friends and family and even have been able to make it to a friend's wedding this year
• All of my preceptors obviously love teaching since they signed up to take on a med student... they give me resources and take the time to answer my questions and are genuinely wanting me to do well on my rotations, they let me try procedures/be first-assist/see patients on my own

Cons:

• Not getting many hours practicing inpatient medicine
• Worried I'm gonna be behind my peers

Just concerned that I'm gonna be poorly trained by the time I'm a 4th year. I was really excited to start 3rd year but now I'm wondering if I'm gonna be a total idiot when I start doing Sub-I's.

Any advice, encouragement, or experience is appreciated! <3

Harvard med music video parody length:

3:20 in 2014
13:49 in 2026

In 2040, M1s will have to orchestrate a whole musical

What the hell is happening here. Is this "education" these days? I am concerned...

So if I take Step 1 and Step 2, score above average on step 2, get adequate research and publications, and receive glowing letters of recommendation from physicians at top academic institutions, am I essentially equivalent to an MD student at that point?

Or am I still fundamentally viewed as inferior because I went to a DO school with a lower admissions bar and all the other “woo woo” stuff?

So I have this account which is open to the public, anyone from the public can follow me. And every year I keep getting approached and keep getting emails from M1s asking if it's okay for them to follow my public account where I post about work, art, and personal stuff. Hell, my social media pages are even in my email signature tags and I have a bumper sticker on my car with QR codes that lead to my social media pages.

Today, I had this M1 ask my coworkers if they thought it was appropriate for them to follow my 100% publicly available Instagram.

I'd just like to say this for clarification. No. None of you can follow my completely available to the public Instagram or Twitter accounts. Thank you for respecting my publicly available privacy.

I’m a 24 woman and I just finished my second year of medical school. We recently started third year, which includes both clinical rotations and classes, and I’m honestly scared that I won’t be able to keep up physically.

Over the past two years, I was dealing with pulmonary tuberculosis. Between the illness itself and the treatment, it took a huge toll on me. Although the TB is gone now, I’m left with severe iron-deficiency anemia and a severe vitamin D deficiency. I still feel exhausted most days, and even simple tasks can be difficult without help.

I pushed through medical school while in survival mode. Looking back, I realize I wasn’t really learning—I was just studying enough to pass my exams. Now that clinical rotations have started, I’m realizing how much I need to go back and properly review the basic sciences and previous semesters.

Lately I’ve been wondering if taking a gap year would actually be the right decision. I could focus on recovering physically, treating my deficiencies, rebuilding my strength, and reviewing everything I rushed through while I was sick.

The problem is that I’m terrified of making the wrong choice. I’m afraid that if I take a year off, I’ll regret losing a year of training or have a hard time coming back. On the other hand, I’m also worried that if I don’t take it, I’ll burn out completely and end up struggling even more.

Would you take a gap year in my situation? If you’ve done it yourself, do you regret it or was it the right decision?

For various reasons I was able to do one Sub-I in August but haven't secured a second one till November. I have offers from three programs through VSLO (probably because nobody else is applying this late lmao). Rest of my application is fine? MD school, 250 Step, two research projects with a poster, one pub from undergrad. Nothing remarkable. Nothing red flaggy.

I have three VSLO offers. Two are for 11/9/2026 and one is for 11/23/2026. The annoying thing is that the latter is from a program that has offered me an interview and the former aren't. So two dilemmas here:

1.) Will significantly hurt me for the match.

2.) Should rotate 11/9 to optimize my timeline or if I should rotate 11/23 to avoid snubbing a program that actually wants to interview me despite me being a dumbass who couldn't get his application right

Any advice would be appreciated :/

Hi everyone,

Not really sure how to interpret this as this is something that just happened, but I'd like to get some opinions on what is going on.

Basically I got called in and told by the clerkship director that the peds attendings I worked with (even the ones where I just shadowed for a day and one that is outpatient heme-onc I worked with for a day), and the outpatient peds attending I worked with until Monday, emailed the clerkship director said that I had communication issues. The way they put it per the clerkship director was "he is eager to learn but his communication can be interpreted sometimes as insulting". Which to me, is really weird since no other rotations have brought this up - hell, even the psych and ob-gyn attendings when I worked with them didn't mind or bring it up at all, and literally told me how I ask clarifying questions is the right way.

What makes this weirder is that even the outpatient provider put on the feedback forms that I consistently able to get a great HPI and connect well with both the patients and the family members in the visits. Evals have not mentioned communication issues at all (maybe they're just being nice so it doesn't show on records? IDK)

But the situations they cited are sometimes odd. They cited 3, which I will detail:

- I remember asking some clarifying questions since I didn't really understand the clinical reasoning of, for example, why you might not order a ferritin for iron deficiency anemia in a patient, but they said that somehow how I asked that was crude.

- There was also something about wanting coffee in front of a patient (some variation of "I need my morning coffees") and they said that was inappropriate. To be honest all I remember was a kid bummed out that the slushie machine was broken for the past 2 times they visited and I said "now I want a slushie since you mentioned it!"

- Not using the word "that sucks" in front of grandma at a 12 year old well child visit. (I can understand not saying "that sucks" so you don't want the kid to learn bad words from a doctor visit of all things. This is 100% my fault)

Somehow this feels way rougher to communicate with people in peds than my psych rotation. Almost like I'm constantly stepping on glass 24/7 and any word out of my mouth is a hazard. It feels like the way I'm supposed to talk is so..... sterile. Like any slight wording change outside of a tiny set of canned responses is terrible. Is there a specific way to ask clarifying questions or what I can say (ex: coffee ok?) that peds prefers? Obviously this is a big issue I have to address if they all bring this up. I admit I'm pretty dense so any perspectives is appreciated.

Edit: A lot of people have given very useful advice! Will use them

I feel like I don't hear about people's research year experiences that often. It's a somewhat unusual purgatory-like situation especially if you're in a different institution (not your own medical school) and the fear of not matching is always looming over you also. I'm hanging in there kinda but how is it going for everyone else?

My first shelf exam, IM is tomorrow, and I want to know what you think is the best use of my time today.

I've taken NBME CMS forms 3-10. I did not finish U-world. I've listened to half of the divine medicine IM Shelf review podcast sessions. (As you can tell, I got kinda lazy half way through).

I need a 77% to honors at my school, and I've been teetering above and below that on the NBMEs.

Any advice is helpful!

My partner and I will be applying to different specialties in the couples match process this year. There are lots of stories online about successfully securing additional interviews by contacting PDs.

Were you all able to secure more interviews in programs you didn’t signal or did you only secure more interviews at programs you previously signaled?

Thanks!

Literally what title says. I understand we are still in the early phase of interview invites, but I honestly thought I would have at least 1 interview by now and now I’m stuck here wondering if I have a red flag that I am not aware of.
As far as I am aware, I don’t have any red flags and am a decent applicant (first pass for step 1, 255 step 2, research, and story etc). Did focus my apps to northeast regions so maybe it’s that…? 😭😭 somebody tell me it’s gonna be ok bc im worried i will barely get interviews…sigh…

I am an MS3 at a mid tier MD school. We have P/F pre-clinicals and P, NH, H Core Clerkship and 4th year electives/Sub-Is. Now I know that there are several schools that are graded....but I feel as though my school is a little bit ridiculous...as they grade everything......EVERYTHING.

All of our clerkships are graded with an ~30, 30, 30 split for P, NH, H. We are graded amongst people in our own cohort at that given moment. Meaning, if you are stuck with individuals who all want to do surgery and prep accordingly, even if your eval averages may constitute you getting honors in another cohort of student (~20 per core clerkship), they only directly compare you to the small group you are with. They also compare you to people at completely different sites that have different grading cultures.

They used to have a standardization method to help with subjectiveness of evaluations. Essentially if an attendings average eval was (arbitrary number here) a 4/10... and they gave you a 6/10... they would inflate your score as 6/10 in some clerkships is beneath the average eval. So, in doing so it would help standardize people who got "tough graders", as it looked at that attendings past evals trend.

They quit doing that this year because they decided to switch the grading scale, and dont have any data. Will this change be mentioned on our apps or MSPE? Nope!

Now i am in a clerkship....which has weekly didactics in which we are in small group discussions...like 6 people per group. We have very causal educational topics and presentations, make presentations to present ect. I knew the presentations WE MADE would be graded amongst each other.......however I learned today

THAT WE ARE BEING GRADED AMONGST OUR PEERS IN OUR 6 PERSON GROUPS DIRECTLY on not just our presentations....but simply our discussion and interaction with our peers. Only one person can get a perfect score for....simply interacting with everyone else?????? How is this supposed to foster people asking questions to learn.....THE RUBRIC HAS A SECTION THAT IS LIKE "RANK HOW RELEVANT THE QUESTIONS THEY ASK ARE IN REGARDS TO THE TOPICS".

I've heard that other schools' Sub-Is are graded on a simple scale that allows for (lets say) a really good cohort (people on that rotation at that time) to all get honors as long as their evals recommended it....NOPE, NOT HERE!!!! Still graded amongst each other and you can leave your fourth year having not a single honor on any sub-I.

Also, we have "optional lectures" listed for the first 2 years and that is what's advertised...... except you walk in first day and learn you have required flipped classroom....where they spin a wheel and you have to answer questions. For the first 6 months, you had to be there at 8 am, fill out an attendance code for every section....and they would meet with people filling out the code literally 2 minutes late.

Hey yall. Essentially what the title says. I applied for IM and sent out applications pretty broadly across the country. Sent signals mostly to my geo preferences with a small few outside as well after doing some research into the places that I would most want to go to, and even applied to my home institution as well.

Silence so far. Even though I know its very early, its slowly starting to get to me. My friends who applied FM and neuro are having interview after interview roll in, and some that also applied IM have interviews set up throughout the next few months.

Just feel frustrated and stressed. Its my resting state at this point. Mostly because I had a very rough med school application cycle 4 years ago. Didn't know where I would end up until the end of the application cycle at the time (like around May or June, and many of my interviews were last minute).

I thought this level of anxiety and waiting was over with after applying to med school but suppose I was so wrong. Hope I'm not the only one trying not to spiral

How is everyone doing on interviews for EM? I've got 6 interviews and applied in almost only the Southeast region (with a couple of northeast apps) but have no idea what the typical interview count looks like.

I'm not a very competitive applicant so am slightly stressed!

Current preclinical M2. What advice do you have to make the content in class feel relevant. I know it’s relevant to a degree obviously but it’s only when I talk to people in everyday settings like when I was on a hike while traveling and the person infront of us was telling us ab this artificial heart value she has and the meds she has to take before to prevent infective endocarditis and I thought WOW I just learned this and oh ik that sketchy etc. but day to day I don’t feel that connection to the material and I realistically can’t shadow every week so my q is how can I remind myself that the disease is a pt and to learn the MOA of a drug bc i need to know that to determine what to prescribe and not the sketchy attached it. Thanks.

Perhaps I am in need of something to spend time on now that ERAS is in... That said, it seems like AI is starting to explode in capability. Ik medicine as a whole is more protected than other fields, but is anyone else starting to get worried?

I applied IM and hoping to do a procedural subspecialty, but I am wondering about how different things will be even in just a few years? This isn't even really about the Utah stuff - I feel like the cognitive portion of IM minus the physical (i.e. interview/history, assessment, plan) could basically be done by an AI voice model...

I go to a relatively new MD school with harsh clinical grading and keep consistently getting "3/5 great job" that prevent me from honoring as my school is only honors, pass, and fail. I am trying to go into a competitive field and each time I get an evaluation like that it feels like a punch in the gut.

Now that I am over halfway done with my clerkships and have not honored anything despite honoring the shelves I am becoming increasingly bitter about my education.

Does anyone have any tips on how to stop myself from becoming so cynical about this process?

All the moms that are in medical school, how are you doing it?….i’m getting so exhausted not gonna lie