Hey Maddie, You made a great decision. And I say this with just a few months left to finish MD school. You are brave, and insightful, and believe me I'm so glad you found out what really makes you happy and you are going for it. I was under different circumstances, but I thought multiple times about leaving med school, was not as brave as you and kept going, despite of feeling miserable. I noticed you explained to someone that you felt guilty about "taking a spot" and now leaving. In all honesty, only those of us who are in medicine truly know how awful it can be. How hypocritical it is to tell your patients to eat well, and sleep well, when medical ed.does not give us the time to do this for ourselves first...I can keep going, but for now I just want to say you don't have to give explanations to anyone and keep going, great decision!!! wishing you the best in your new journey:)
Hi, I can see exactly where you are coming from. I studied health promotion and disease prevention in college, and I was accepted to medical school. I also just finished my sports nutrition internship and my masters and this was the best decision I have made. There are ways to do preventative care but the medical system does not profit off of making sick people, healthy people. Nutrition, does.
Hi Bill! Thank you for your comment. Preventative care is crutial for patients but not big pharma/helathcare system. Nutrition is amazing and I think it really puts people and their health first.
You should give step 1 one more shot. You clearly want to still do medicine but the pressure and fear of failing again and the fear of letting others down who support you are making you want to switch careers that will immediately make you no longer have to deal with the pressure and stress. People fail and that is life. The next few years will determine the next 50 years and forget about how long it takes you to become a doctor. Focus on yourself, believe in yourself, and study. If you feel pressure from those who don’t believe in you or have unrealistic expectations of you, get away from them. I know you can do it, just have to have confidence in yourself
yea that’s seemingly the only reason she dropped out. her not wanting to do medicine anymore because of the liability, etc would’ve been way different imo.
It sounds like she would have been a great fit in endocrinology or even family medicine where you get to know your patient at a very personal level, especially if you do private practice where you don’t have the time restraint that she seems to be referring to. You can be whatever type of doctor you choose to be and change what you don’t like about medicine in your own practice.
I'm 24 currently in my third year, and feeling pretty burnt out. I don't really enjoy my time at the hospital anymore, like I did at the beginning of the year. I feel like the whole time I'm there I'm just standing around not learning anything and generally being useless (feeling compounded by the fact that I'm on subspecialty outpatient clinics right now where I'm essentially shadowing providers). Every day, I wake up and feel fine when I go in, but then it's just a matter of time before some small problem makes me angry or frustrated and I feel shitty for the rest of the day. It's like I have no reserve left. At home on weeknights, all I really do is sleep (up to like 10+ hours a lot of nights now). I look forward to drinking a lot more than I used to. My friends notice that I'm more irritable. I don't work out nearly as much as I used to. I usually feel a lot better at the end of weekends/time off, but then I get slapped in the face with the sisyphean tasks of third year again first thing on Monday, and I'm right back where I started. One of the most bothersome things is that I'm also getting really cynical, to the point that essentially every time I see a bad outcome or a patient suffering, I think something along the lines of, "why does medicine have so much power and authority if this is the best we can do?" or "this person would have been better off if they had never even come to the hospital" or "I should have gone into research where you can actually do something good for the world rather than just dispense pointless, expensive treatments that make people suffer." I also have a lot of thoughts along the line of "you're not going to learn anything today because all this shit is below you" and "the expectations for you are so low and you're sufficiently smart that nothing you do today will affect your grade." Do I actually believe that stuff if I sit down and think through it? Definitely not. But it's like those thoughts are always sitting right at the edge of my thinking, ready to jump in the second I get a little bit down during the day. It's pretty exhausting trying to challenge them all the time, and they're definitely negatively impacting my ability to learn stuff in clinic. Needless to say, this is making it hard to get through the remaining (pretty tough) rotations I have left to complete. I don't know how much longer I can keep up the "interested med student" act and cynicism suppression that have pulled me through the last 6-8 weeks of feeling like this. I might just drop out. how do you deal with this kind of cynicism and burnout?
Hey william, I want you to give yourself some grace. No seriously, I want you to tell yourself that it's okay to feel tired and burned out. Going at 110% all the time is unbelievably draining. You may feel like you are tasked with keeping a thousand candles lit in a rain storm and that can be overwhelming. How do you deal with self-doubt, cynicism, and constantly being tired? First thing is to talk to someone about the possible depression you maybe feeling.
I completely understand and I know that with dropping out there are so many things to take into consideration. I know that a lot of people can tell you to just finish because you're in 3rd year but I also know how hard it is to struggle EVERY SINGLE DAY! I think that mental health is the priority. If you're able to take leave, do it and take some time for yourself. If not, its all about perspective. You're 24, you're extremely young, and can start over med school if you drop out or start a business or whatever you want because youre that young. Yes, if you can stand it, finish it. If you cant, make sure that you get well informed about the consequences of leaving and whatnot. Make sure you make an informed decision, that's what's important. If you want to drop, do it, but make sure you covered all that you wanted to cover. Doubts, options, future plans and whatnot. I know that its hard, I really do. But again, you're 24 and you're just starting out in life. Think of how many 24 yr olds aren't even in med school and just do their 9-5. The world keeps turning and the sun comes out everyday, don't worry about what people say. Those people won't be at your funeral or will give money to your parents or whatever if your mental health declines and you decide not to exist anymore. Sound crude but its is what it is. "Life is simple, you make choices and you don't look back" - Han, Fast and the Furious Tokyo drift (good scene if you want to have some perspective on tough choices)
@from one william to another, I know I’m late to the party here, but if it makes you feel any better, same. The fear of regret (regretting withdrawing from school/quitting) was the only thing keeping me going. I hated medicine more and more every block but I kept telling myself I didn’t have to actually practice medicine/be in healthcare. I convinced myself I’d finish and if I really didn’t like it then, I could advise a VC group or start some biotech 3DP pipe dream. but that’s not a reality with $500K in student debt. Get out while ya can if you haven’t Already. Best decision I ever made.
Maddie- you are the most transparent when it comes to this topic. I am soooo happy for you and you accomplishments. Protect your peace and mental health and please keep posting. I am very interested in your content! 🥰🥰🥰
Hey Maddie. Thanks for sharing the video and being open and honest about your medical school experience. Will definitely be checking out your other videos!
i realize this video is a year old, and I should probably watch your newer videos before suggesting anything to you, but I thought I would share my "back up plan" if I fail step1 in a few weeks. I was thinking of still completing the MD and then instead of trying to match I was going to try and pursue some kind of MSL/director position with either industry or hedge funds. Since i already have my pharmD, i am under the assumption that the MD-pharmD has a lot of unique usefulness in the industry clinical trial world, only problem is I actually hate doing research myself... but that was more from undergrad and pharmacy school experiences. I was honestly leaning more towards soliciting some kind of internship/consulting with hedge funds, or ironically going back and taking some post bac classes to study finance. I actually have been really into the clinical trial stock market side of things and have built up somewhat of a portfolio of analysis and clinical trial FDA predictions which has somehow basically paid for all of my schooling so far. One of the most famous investors now days is this.... "neuro atypical" guy called michael burry who hated being an MD and eventually quit to do investment hedge fund stuff. somehow he predicted the 2008 financial crisis and made billions off of the big banks... theres a movie about it called the big short. anyways I dont think im the next michael burry but i thought i would point out that some people basically just get the MD title for credibility and never do anything in medicine. I have another friend who dropped out during their intern year and started a vitamin company and has made more money doing that than they likely ever would of made in medicine as a hospitalist... theres another youtuber who i think runs the most popular firearms related channel who basically dropped out during their 4th year of medschool too lol. best of luck to you, they tell us this whole time what we need to do and when we take some other path it feels like we are messing everything up.... and maybe sometimes thats true but its not absolute.
I mean this in the most non creepy way possible but you have very emotive and captivating eyes. Good luck with your future career. Medicine isn't everything in life.
Thanks so much for sharing your experience, I really appreciate your transparency! I'm happy for you that you've found your passion and did the right thing for you :)
Hi, Thank you for sharing your experiences I could really relate when you said that you do not want to just prescribe drug to a patient for something instead you want to go to the root cause And the same is true for me but i was never able to put it into words like you did I am a very curious person always reading something new / facts / information which was random spanning across all fields of study , but medicine has started to kill that inside me. When i entered med school things were great learning about the human body physiology , pathology but slowly over the clinical years and internship i realised i hated hospitals and due to constant exams and toxic culture there is no space left to do something else and it feels more of a sin to do something else which you could have used for studying. From the outside it seems medicine is for someone who is very curious and analytical in nature but practicing medicine and studying medicine academically are totally different I do not mean that medicine is not for people who are analytical and curious and others are not curious / analytical enough but specifically i mean that Its a lot different to practice than study and you do not become aware of that aspect until you are in the system.
Great video. I would definitely be interested in seeing the journey of becoming a dietitian and I'm still interested in seeing the journey of becoming a doctor.
some specialties afford you to have a lot of your own life as well. derm, pm&r, optho, psychiatry, nuclear med but you do need to work hard to get a spot in one of those
I love that you made the conscious decision to do what is BEST FOR YOU and makes you happy. We all have 1 life to live and do what you want as long as your not hurting anyone. WITH that being said its upsetting/frustrating to someone get into medical school and go ALL the way to STEP-1 and decide to back out, there are sooo many students that apply, reapply and get rejected and for you to now say this isn't for me is a slap in the face to thousands of pre-med students. But with that said BEST of luck with your future goals
Hi Jacob! Thank you for your comment and I appreciate your take. Believe me when I say I completely understand your thoughts. One of my apprehensions for leaving was that I felt guilty for taking up a spot in med school when someone else could have used it and gone all the way. However, I sacrificed A LOT when it came to preparing for and coming to med school. I would not have sacrificed that much if it was not what I thought I truly wanted to do. It took actually being in med school for me to realize that this profession is not for me (and not at all what I thought it was). My hope for those who did not get accepted is not dwell on what could have been and trust that they are on the best path for themselves. This is a mantra I try to tell myself daily. It may not seem that way right now but I hope that down the road they will see that not going to med school may have been the best thing that could have happened to them. I hope this helps and we appreciate your support of our channel (:
thanks for your insight! that is weird that ur school released the schedule a week before. what was the passing grade for your exams? and what happened if you failed an exam?
Great question, Amanda! I could go back but at this time that isn't something that I want to pursue. I entered med school with the intention of counseling patients on nutrition. A physician's role is more managerial and that's not what I'm looking for in my career
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Hey Maddie,
You made a great decision. And I say this with just a few months left to finish MD school. You are brave, and insightful, and believe me I'm so glad you found out what really makes you happy and you are going for it. I was under different circumstances, but I thought multiple times about leaving med school, was not as brave as you and kept going, despite of feeling miserable. I noticed you explained to someone that you felt guilty about "taking a spot" and now leaving. In all honesty, only those of us who are in medicine truly know how awful it can be. How hypocritical it is to tell your patients to eat well, and sleep well, when medical ed.does not give us the time to do this for ourselves first...I can keep going, but for now I just want to say you don't have to give explanations to anyone and keep going, great decision!!! wishing you the best in your new journey:)
Hi, I can see exactly where you are coming from. I studied health promotion and disease prevention in college, and I was accepted to medical school. I also just finished my sports nutrition internship and my masters and this was the best decision I have made. There are ways to do preventative care but the medical system does not profit off of making sick people, healthy people. Nutrition, does.
Hi Bill! Thank you for your comment. Preventative care is crutial for patients but not big pharma/helathcare system. Nutrition is amazing and I think it really puts people and their health first.
You should give step 1 one more shot. You clearly want to still do medicine but the pressure and fear of failing again and the fear of letting others down who support you are making you want to switch careers that will immediately make you no longer have to deal with the pressure and stress. People fail and that is life. The next few years will determine the next 50 years and forget about how long it takes you to become a doctor. Focus on yourself, believe in yourself, and study. If you feel pressure from those who don’t believe in you or have unrealistic expectations of you, get away from them. I know you can do it, just have to have confidence in yourself
yea that’s seemingly the only reason she dropped out. her not wanting to do medicine anymore because of the liability, etc would’ve been way different imo.
It sounds like she would have been a great fit in endocrinology or even family medicine where you get to know your patient at a very personal level, especially if you do private practice where you don’t have the time restraint that she seems to be referring to. You can be whatever type of doctor you choose to be and change what you don’t like about medicine in your own practice.
I'm 24 currently in my third year, and feeling pretty burnt out. I don't really enjoy my time at the hospital anymore, like I did at the beginning of the year. I feel like the whole time I'm there I'm just standing around not learning anything and generally being useless (feeling compounded by the fact that I'm on subspecialty outpatient clinics right now where I'm essentially shadowing providers).
Every day, I wake up and feel fine when I go in, but then it's just a matter of time before some small problem makes me angry or frustrated and I feel shitty for the rest of the day. It's like I have no reserve left. At home on weeknights, all I really do is sleep (up to like 10+ hours a lot of nights now). I look forward to drinking a lot more than I used to. My friends notice that I'm more irritable. I don't work out nearly as much as I used to. I usually feel a lot better at the end of weekends/time off, but then I get slapped in the face with the sisyphean tasks of third year again first thing on Monday, and I'm right back where I started.
One of the most bothersome things is that I'm also getting really cynical, to the point that essentially every time I see a bad outcome or a patient suffering, I think something along the lines of, "why does medicine have so much power and authority if this is the best we can do?" or "this person would have been better off if they had never even come to the hospital" or "I should have gone into research where you can actually do something good for the world rather than just dispense pointless, expensive treatments that make people suffer." I also have a lot of thoughts along the line of "you're not going to learn anything today because all this shit is below you" and "the expectations for you are so low and you're sufficiently smart that nothing you do today will affect your grade." Do I actually believe that stuff if I sit down and think through it? Definitely not. But it's like those thoughts are always sitting right at the edge of my thinking, ready to jump in the second I get a little bit down during the day. It's pretty exhausting trying to challenge them all the time, and they're definitely negatively impacting my ability to learn stuff in clinic.
Needless to say, this is making it hard to get through the remaining (pretty tough) rotations I have left to complete. I don't know how much longer I can keep up the "interested med student" act and cynicism suppression that have pulled me through the last 6-8 weeks of feeling like this. I might just drop out.
how do you deal with this kind of cynicism and burnout?
Hey william, I want you to give yourself some grace. No seriously, I want you to tell yourself that it's okay to feel tired and burned out. Going at 110% all the time is unbelievably draining. You may feel like you are tasked with keeping a thousand candles lit in a rain storm and that can be overwhelming. How do you deal with self-doubt, cynicism, and constantly being tired? First thing is to talk to someone about the possible depression you maybe feeling.
I completely understand and I know that with dropping out there are so many things to take into consideration. I know that a lot of people can tell you to just finish because you're in 3rd year but I also know how hard it is to struggle EVERY SINGLE DAY! I think that mental health is the priority. If you're able to take leave, do it and take some time for yourself. If not, its all about perspective. You're 24, you're extremely young, and can start over med school if you drop out or start a business or whatever you want because youre that young. Yes, if you can stand it, finish it. If you cant, make sure that you get well informed about the consequences of leaving and whatnot. Make sure you make an informed decision, that's what's important. If you want to drop, do it, but make sure you covered all that you wanted to cover. Doubts, options, future plans and whatnot. I know that its hard, I really do. But again, you're 24 and you're just starting out in life. Think of how many 24 yr olds aren't even in med school and just do their 9-5. The world keeps turning and the sun comes out everyday, don't worry about what people say. Those people won't be at your funeral or will give money to your parents or whatever if your mental health declines and you decide not to exist anymore. Sound crude but its is what it is.
"Life is simple, you make choices and you don't look back"
- Han, Fast and the Furious Tokyo drift (good scene if you want to have some perspective on tough choices)
@from one william to another, I know I’m late to the party here, but if it makes you feel any better, same. The fear of regret (regretting withdrawing from school/quitting) was the only thing keeping me going. I hated medicine more and more every block but I kept telling myself I didn’t have to actually practice medicine/be in healthcare. I convinced myself I’d finish and if I really didn’t like it then, I could advise a VC group or start some biotech 3DP pipe dream. but that’s not a reality with $500K in student debt. Get out while ya can if you haven’t Already. Best decision I ever made.
Maddie- you are the most transparent when it comes to this topic. I am soooo happy for you and you accomplishments.
Protect your peace and mental health and please keep posting. I am very interested in your content! 🥰🥰🥰
Hey Maddie. Thanks for sharing the video and being open and honest about your medical school experience. Will definitely be checking out your other videos!
Hi Beverly! I'm so glad you liked my video. I really appreciate your comment and support :)
i realize this video is a year old, and I should probably watch your newer videos before suggesting anything to you, but I thought I would share my "back up plan" if I fail step1 in a few weeks.
I was thinking of still completing the MD and then instead of trying to match I was going to try and pursue some kind of MSL/director position with either industry or hedge funds. Since i already have my pharmD, i am under the assumption that the MD-pharmD has a lot of unique usefulness in the industry clinical trial world, only problem is I actually hate doing research myself... but that was more from undergrad and pharmacy school experiences. I was honestly leaning more towards soliciting some kind of internship/consulting with hedge funds, or ironically going back and taking some post bac classes to study finance. I actually have been really into the clinical trial stock market side of things and have built up somewhat of a portfolio of analysis and clinical trial FDA predictions which has somehow basically paid for all of my schooling so far. One of the most famous investors now days is this.... "neuro atypical" guy called michael burry who hated being an MD and eventually quit to do investment hedge fund stuff. somehow he predicted the 2008 financial crisis and made billions off of the big banks... theres a movie about it called the big short. anyways I dont think im the next michael burry but i thought i would point out that some people basically just get the MD title for credibility and never do anything in medicine. I have another friend who dropped out during their intern year and started a vitamin company and has made more money doing that than they likely ever would of made in medicine as a hospitalist...
theres another youtuber who i think runs the most popular firearms related channel who basically dropped out during their 4th year of medschool too lol. best of luck to you, they tell us this whole time what we need to do and when we take some other path it feels like we are messing everything up.... and maybe sometimes thats true but its not absolute.
I mean this in the most non creepy way possible but you have very emotive and captivating eyes. Good luck with your future career. Medicine isn't everything in life.
Thanks so much for sharing your experience, I really appreciate your transparency! I'm happy for you that you've found your passion and did the right thing for you :)
Hi, Thank you for sharing your experiences
I could really relate when you said that you do not want to just prescribe drug to a patient for something instead you want to go to the root cause
And the same is true for me but i was never able to put it into words like you did
I am a very curious person always reading something new / facts / information which was random spanning across all fields of study , but medicine has started to kill that inside me.
When i entered med school things were great learning about the human body physiology , pathology but slowly over the clinical years and internship i realised i hated hospitals and due to constant exams and toxic culture there is no space left to do something else and it feels more of a sin to do something else which you could have used for studying.
From the outside it seems medicine is for someone who is very curious and analytical in nature but practicing medicine and studying medicine academically are totally different
I do not mean that medicine is not for people who are analytical and curious and others are not curious / analytical enough but specifically i mean that Its a lot different to practice than study and you do not become aware of that aspect until you are in the system.
Great video. I would definitely be interested in seeing the journey of becoming a dietitian and I'm still interested in seeing the journey of becoming a doctor.
some specialties afford you to have a lot of your own life as well. derm, pm&r, optho, psychiatry, nuclear med but you do need to work hard to get a spot in one of those
do you think you would have stayed if you didn’t fail step 1?
I love that you made the conscious decision to do what is BEST FOR YOU and makes you happy. We all have 1 life to live and do what you want as long as your not hurting anyone. WITH that being said its upsetting/frustrating to someone get into medical school and go ALL the way to STEP-1 and decide to back out, there are sooo many students that apply, reapply and get rejected and for you to now say this isn't for me is a slap in the face to thousands of pre-med students. But with that said BEST of luck with your future goals
Hi Jacob! Thank you for your comment and I appreciate your take. Believe me when I say I completely understand your thoughts. One of my apprehensions for leaving was that I felt guilty for taking up a spot in med school when someone else could have used it and gone all the way. However, I sacrificed A LOT when it came to preparing for and coming to med school. I would not have sacrificed that much if it was not what I thought I truly wanted to do. It took actually being in med school for me to realize that this profession is not for me (and not at all what I thought it was).
My hope for those who did not get accepted is not dwell on what could have been and trust that they are on the best path for themselves. This is a mantra I try to tell myself daily. It may not seem that way right now but I hope that down the road they will see that not going to med school may have been the best thing that could have happened to them. I hope this helps and we appreciate your support of our channel (:
thanks for your insight! that is weird that ur school released the schedule a week before. what was the passing grade for your exams? and what happened if you failed an exam?
thanks for your comment! Passing grade was a 70%. If you failed an exam it didn't matter, you just had to pass the semester (like in undergrad)
you know you can also be a PNS or A Physician Nutrition Specialist
I have a question. Would you go to med school after being a dietitican for a while
Great question, Amanda! I could go back but at this time that isn't something that I want to pursue. I entered med school with the intention of counseling patients on nutrition. A physician's role is more managerial and that's not what I'm looking for in my career
@@MaddiexChase I see! I wish you the best of luck!
I have celiac disease to! I haven't heard of anyone else with it XD.
ahh gluten free crew
Really? So many people have it!? They were working on a vaccine but I think it got canned.
I have it too
👏
Failing Step 1 XD. This is not for you.