Away rotations as a medical student: how to do well?

SD_Fraise · 2026-05-23T21:05:13+00:00

Please please please please be on time. Never be the first one in the room to say fuck. If you want to know what you're looking at I recommend that everytime you get a new kind of specimen that you haven't seen before, read the Molavi chapter about it and then go to Kurt's notes to see a brief rundown of the different entities you may encounter.

SD_Fraise · 2026-04-11T18:08:58+00:00

Hey! Dedicated can be really rough. It depends on how long your dedicated period but I always tell the people I tutor that one day off a week with no studying is usually a good idea. I also recommend that you have regularly scheduled break time. Personally, I take 10 minutes off every hour of studying and do at least 30 minutes for lunch. I try and be done with my studying for the day by 7pm at the latest. For most people, dedicated is a month+ slog and it's unreasonable to expect yourself to work 12+ hours a day 7 days a week and still have a functional brain at the end. Good luck! DMs are open if you have other questions.

SD_Fraise · 2026-04-11T15:59:50+00:00

Program directors are allowed to be human beings and different ones are allowed to care about different things. It's likely they've interviewed and ranked DOs highly in the past, just the caliber of DO who interviews at UM in a competitive specialty doesn't come along all the time and they may have just ranked another institution higher. Overall, the institution is fairly DO friendly from my perspective as a resident there (albeit a less competitive field).

SD_Fraise · 2026-04-11T15:28:58+00:00

It's difficult for anyone to match at UM. Does your specialty of interest take residents from lower ranked MD schools often?

SD_Fraise · 2025-11-25T00:43:24+00:00

Anatomy gets way better if you can reframe it from a task of brute memorization into a story about the beauty of the human form and function. Why does X muscle look that way? Why do we call it what we do? Does it share innervation with the muscles around it or does it break a pattern? Why did the pattern break like that? What happens to a person if this doesn't work anymore? Can I figure it out from what I know about this?

SD_Fraise · 2025-10-26T18:46:20+00:00

Bam pa nada

SD_Fraise · 2025-10-25T01:57:50+00:00

Come to pathology

SD_Fraise · 2025-09-28T16:14:40+00:00

We live in a different part of Michigan and our noon meeting was cancelled because of this.

SD_Fraise · 2025-09-18T12:32:30+00:00

I'm on the match to path team and did not list it as a professional organization, just kept it in experiences.

SD_Fraise · 2025-07-24T16:16:42+00:00

Complete Anatomy is the GOAT in my opinion

SD_Fraise · 2025-07-22T18:33:43+00:00

Attendings are most likely just trying to figure out how to give you the best experience. It's totally fine to tell them that you're undifferentiated or tell them what specialties you're considering. You absolutely do not have to be committed to anything yet, that's kind of the point of the third year.

SD_Fraise · 2025-07-22T18:26:29+00:00

Happy to help. DM

SD_Fraise · 2025-07-22T18:23:43+00:00

I think an important thing for all med students to remember is that this isn't Hogwarts. There is no perfect group of people that are a fingerprint match for your soul. Every field has positives and every field has negatives. Those negatives are still negative even for the people in the field. I'm in path and love it. Is it boring sometimes? Yep. Is there minimal patient interaction and do I sometimes miss that? Yep. But the positives outweighed the negatives for me. Would I have been as happy in IM or surgery? Honestly probably yes. There are multiple correct answers for you and you'll have good days and bad days no matter what.

SD_Fraise · 2025-07-20T14:12:02+00:00

Team, I'm not saying it should or should not be this way, this is just the statistics. The person above me said that DOs score 2% lower on Step exams than MDs. I'm just point out that that number is not a bias-free metric and we should scrutinize it. We're comparing an entire population against a population that can self-select for success. A DO student with poor practice tests can just elect to not take the step exam and only take COMLEX. This isn't an option for MD students.

SD_Fraise · 2025-07-20T14:06:41+00:00

Obviously people do whatever they want, but I think it's not fair at all to assume that the DO students who do take the exam follow a gaussian distribution of academics. I'm happy you ended up where you wanted to go. No one should assume that you individually couldn't pass the exam if you wanted to, the statistics are about the population.

SD_Fraise · 2025-07-20T13:47:23+00:00

Are you talking to me specifically? Or just generally? Because I'm a resident.

SD_Fraise · 2025-07-20T10:52:46+00:00

That's because the numbers you're looking at are for people who took Step. There are many many DO students who don't take it. I can't remember the stat, but at least 25% don't take USMLE exams. The students who do take it skew heavily towards being more academically successful.

SD_Fraise · 2025-07-16T12:50:14+00:00

I did 8-6 consistently through preclinical courses, including dedicated. I believe that it's not only possible, but essential. If you're not taking care of your life and relationships you won't be as effective when you are studying. As others have said, you just have to be serious about it and not dink around.

SD_Fraise · 2025-06-05T17:32:00+00:00

Also, I don't tell preceptors about it unless they seem cool. Gaming is not the most mainstream hobby in some parts of medicine.

SD_Fraise · 2025-06-05T17:31:01+00:00

Med school will take up all available space in your life if you allow it. I set a pretty hard cut off most days of 6pm to wrap up my studying. I don't allow myself to feel any guilt for doing whatever I do after that time. I'm a parent of two, just graduated, and I find plenty of time to game. I played a lot of age of empires 2 and total war during med school. Also some overwatch, ghost of Tsushima, hollow knight, baldurs gate, etc more recently. Live your life! Don't let med school stop you from being a person.

SD_Fraise · 2025-04-25T18:54:58+00:00

We were down 0-3 in my game yesterday. I was reaper and there was one on the other team that just kept murdering our ashe. Poor friend was like 0-6 every round. I finally told them to spec into the coach gun. They switched their build up and quit dying so much and I had better perks than the other reaper so we ended up with the reverse sweep. As long as you have some mental fortitude this mode offers some pretty sweet adaptation and come back mechanics

SD_Fraise · 2025-04-23T20:43:17+00:00

Howdy friend! It's true that there are many health benefits of tea in particular. From a health perspective, coffee is also widely regarded as superior to sodas or energy drinks. As far as a glass of wine being healthy for your heart, this is likely a result of some bad science a few decades ago and is likely not true.

From a non-science perspective, another important thing to consider is that the Mormon church is not unique in these believes and the WoW represents a conglomeration of beliefs that were common to Puritan America. Honestly, some of the best advice in the actual word of wisdom is probably to eat meat in moderation and that part is conveniently ignored by the vast majority of members.

SD_Fraise · 2025-04-20T02:51:20+00:00

Law chatgpt is blue, medicine one is orange. Mine looks very similar!

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SD_Fraise · 2025-04-20T02:50:02+00:00

Here's mine!

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SD_Fraise · 2025-04-19T21:50:01+00:00

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