Debunking Medical School Myths.

Applying to Medical school can be stressful and even more so when myths about medical students and medical school are floating around.

Everyone you speak to seems to have a different preception on medical school and its students. Almost all of them could say they have stereotyped medical students to be ‘robotic’ or ‘geniuses’ at some point, but I can tell you this is not entirely true, and this is what this blog post is about, debunking the myths of medical school and medical students.

Myth 1) Medical students only have time for studies and have no social life.

This is not true, I know being in class all day and getting buried under hours of workload can sound stressful and intimidating but it is all about balancing and managing your time. It is so easy to get caught up with the copious number of things you have to study and get through, but this is not the case when you have your schedule planned out. Weekends are an amazing opportunity to go out and do something fun rather than spending it in the library away from the sun (even though there doesn’t seem to be much of it here in Ireland). Reading week is also a great time to travel to different places around Ireland, the UK and Europe.

Myth 2) Medical students are only academically orientated.

Being a medical student does not mean we only talk about diseases or get excited over the anatomy of the body. There are so many talented medical students who love to sing and play the guitar or any other instrument and are amazing at what they do. At the Royal College of Surgeons there are a variety of societies you can get involved with. Being a medical student, how smart you are does not define you as a person, it’s all about your passion and attitude towards it, not just in studies but with what you do, be it being good at a certain sport or a musical instrument or just spending your extra time cooking.

Myth 3) Is medical school the same as Grey’s Anatomy?

Trust me, I want to be Meredith Grey just as much as everyone else who has watched Grey’s Anatomy but sadly, because it glamorises the idea of what medical school is and how it’s like working in the hospital, it gives people the wrong idea of the reality of what it is actually like. It is a hectic course to undertake, everyday you must have the drive and determination to work harder towards achieving your goal. It takes more than just being textbook smart, working in a stressful situation with team doctors takes more than just knowing what antibiotic to prescribe. Ethics is just as important as knowing which vein to insert a cannula into.

These are just a few of the main myths I thought would be interesting to uncover but I’ll leave the rest up to you to discover yourself, what fun would it be going into medical school knowing everything. But here’s another important point I want to leave with the medical school goers, it is okay to not know what to expect, going into a university is scary enough but remember to have a good wok/social life balance and know that everything will turn out okay, the degree will be worth it at the end.

DIFC Ambassador Dawn Areen Kaur