I'm so thankful to be at a school where grades are truly pass/fail, the students help each other, the professors aren't out to trick you, everybody acts like everyone else is equally intelligent, and it's fun to go to school. It's odd to be in an academic environment where the professors assume you're bright by default simply by virtue of being in med school.... and you don't have to prove yourself to anyone. Much different from pre-med when a professor will stand up in front of an entire o-chem class and say how this class is going to "separate the boys from the men" or how it's a "weeding out process for med school". That was always sooooo encouraging. Anyway, it's nice to be taken seriously when you ask a question or have an opinion. And I LOVE that the attitude here is largely "everything is fine, do you best, relax, you'll be a doctor at the end of this... even if we have to bottle feed you the whole damn way".
If you can't tell, I have block exams this week.... and I'm oddly not freaking out. I don't have to worry about being at the top of my class, and my grades so far are nowhere near failing... so I just feel really happy overall. And nobody seems to be freaking out that much. Granted, I don't know how everybody feels... but I haven't seen anyone in dry heaves or obviously strung out on adderall... so I'll take that to mean that everyone else is doing reasonably well also.
Wow, what a difference from my school! I think this is the best way to do medical eduction. Any student to get that far is already pretty self-motivated, so no real need to beat them into submission to get hard work out of them. Humanity remains intact.
ReplyDeleteMy school ranked us. Everyone was worried about rank. I was somewhere in the middle and that was just fine.
PS -Ella you are rapidly becoming Doctor D's favorite medblogger!