Dr. Cranquis' Mumbled Gripes

Hey there, ARGGH-ganic Chemist (Your Cranquis Pseudonym, aren’t you proud?) — Well I have a whole butt-load of messages to catch up on, but I bumped you to the top of the list to give you a quick “hang in there” message.

It’s funny that you asked this question today — why, just yesterday, I had a patient with newly-diagnosed diabetes in my clinic, and I pulled out my organic chemistry models and was using them to show her exactly what glucose looks like as it meets your liver…. HAHA, no I didn’t! I don’t even know where that old molecular model set is anymore, I think I threw it out as soon as I finished my last O. Chem exam in college!

But yes, you DO need to know that stuff. Why? Not JUST because “it’s gonna be on the MCAT, which you need to pass if you want to become a med student” — but because you need to be preparing your brain for the brutal irrational load of HUTBU* info and experiences you will encounter in med school!

I used to rage against O. Chem and Physics just as you are now. “When will I ever need to know how to calculate the gravitational influence of Saturn, in order to help a patient with a medical problem? Boy, I can’t wait to get to med school, where I can start learning the stuff that really matters!” Well, guess what? Med school has tons (TONS) of stuff that you will be expected to learn, do, and experience which will be HIGHLY unlikely to be useful in the eventual careers of MOST of the students enduring those things:

• If you become a psychiatrist, you will NEVER need to interpret an ABG.
• If you become a dermatologist, you will NEVER need to remember how to calculate the axis of an EKG by hand (That one’s for you, White Coat).
• If you don’t become a pathologist, NOBODY is ever going to care that you can’t remember what a liver cell looks like under a microscope.
• If you don’t become a general surgeon, it’s HIGHLY unlikely that you will ever be asked to cut out someone’s appendix.

But guess what? You’ll be expected to do/see/experience ALL those things in med school.

Also: these O. Chem trials prepare you for another (quite likely) med school experience — failing. Remember, most of the people in med school come from the top percentages of their college class, including yourself… but when you start taking tests in med school, the Bell Curve still applies. All you smart people will now be taking the same tests together, and there will be people getting better scores than you. There will be certain tests/quizzes/lab exams that you will struggle with. Why do you think that (at least in MY med school), the minimum pass was still 65% for most classes? After all, it’s MED school — surely the minimum pass should be 95%? But no… failing or under-performing is something that EVERYONE does, and it’s an important lesson for budding doctors to learn: YOU ARE NOT PERFECT. You will never be an expert at everything. So let go of that self-delusion, be proud of your strengths, recognize your weaknesses and do your best to improve them. A doctor who THINKS they are perfect is (1) wrong, (2) annoying, and (3) more likely to attempt handling situations which he/she isn’t qualified to handle, leading to poor patient outcomes.

And then, at the end of the day, remember the old joke that got me through my first year of med school, when I was consistently scoring in the bottom 10% of my class on exams: What do they call someone who graduates at the bottom of his med school class?

DOCTOR.

Good luck, my friend!

*HUTBU: Highly Unlikely To Be Useful (Why yes, I DID just invent that acronym for you. No need to thank me.)