 Medical school is not difficult. Well, not for the reasons you think. Here's why. Hey friends, in case you're new here, my name is Lakshman, internal medicine physician. And here on this channel, we make content to help people like you succeed on whatever journey you're on for doing it with less stress. Now, one of the first videos that I ever made on the channel was really how hard medical school was and giving us a breakdown while I was a first or second year medical student. That's video has gotten a lot of views. I'll link it down below in case you don't want to see my fun analogy that I used. But today I want to just break down three reasons of why medical school is not as difficult as people make it out to be. So whether you're in the midst of the journey or if you're somebody who's interested in medical school, you can think about these three pillars and ask yourself, okay, which one is currently applying that is making me think that it is hard? And before we dive in, I want to make it very clear. I don't want to make light of anyone's difficulty on their medical journey. I know for sure I struggled and I'm very open about that on the channel and the podcast, on the blogs. So if you're currently on your medical school journey, this is actually the video for you. Ask yourself which of these three segments are currently applying to you. If you completely disagree, let me know in the comments. But let's get to the breakdown. So number one is really what people talk about all the time, which medical school is a marathon not a sprint. Now in that video that I made initially for the YouTube channel, I use the analogy of the pancake analogy. This is much better than drinking out of fire hydrant. And it's essentially the idea that think about medical school as a stack of pancakes you have to eat every single day. The first day when you're really excited and motivated, you're gonna finish it off. Second day, same. But eventually you're going to get tired of pancakes. Even though you love pancakes, having it on your menu every single day is not going to be fun. The problem is, is that whatever you don't finish today, you're gonna have to add to your next stack. And if you're not motivated, if you're falling behind, it becomes harder and harder to keep up and eventually it's much easier to feel that burnout. And so the true difficulty, even using this analogy is not eating one pancake. It's being consistent with making sure that you're getting through your work. That doesn't necessarily mean that the material is all that inherently hard. For example, when I was in college, I took a entire biochem class in an entire semester. That was a difficult class. And I was taught essentially the same material when I was in medical school. Definitely at a much faster pace because they had to move to the next class. But there wasn't anything particularly that I learned because I was suddenly about to become a future doctor that made biochem more difficult. They made sure that I was learning biochem that was applicable to humans and not so much biochem of rats or plants, et cetera. But still it was biochem. When I learned physiology, a lot of it was what I learned in college. Again, faster pace, but more or less the same topics. A little bit more involved, definitely more diseases included to it. But it was overall the same things that I learned in college at a much quicker pace and more quizzes and tests that were where high pressure in the midst of it. So the thing we have to get clear about medical school is that the part that's hard is the amount of information at the pace that it comes and not necessarily the difficulty. And the way you counteract and deal with it is by having a study strategy and a study schedule that is simple to where you can see, okay, lecture one from Monday, I'm gonna cover here for the first time and here the second time. This is what we teach a lot of our students that we work on one with in our coaching programs on exactly how to do. To simplify the process, well, yes, you're going to be setting a lot. At least, you know, when you'll be setting the first time and the second time and everything starts to feel in control. As a personal example, I'm actually training for a marathon in 30 days that I have to run. And so while it is hard to sometimes go out and run when I'm not motivated to, on the days where I have a five mile run, I know I can do it because my training from the past has made me do it. I have a 20 mile run, I know I can do it because again, my training in the past allows me to get there. Are my runs for a marathon initially more difficult versus if I was running a 10K or a half marathon? Not really, I'm just training more consistently for a run that's longer, simply to it. That's simply how it breaks down with consistency and the pace that it comes at. If you have a plan on how to deal with it, it becomes much more manageable. Pillar number two that makes medical school so difficult is that time management is a key and most students suck at it. Now, there's two reasons that I find that students struggle with it. One, students just choose not to commit to it consistently. I used to be one of these students where I was like, eh, a study schedule, calendar. I don't really need this. I'm like on top of things. And usually you can figure things out. You know when you have a quiz, when you have a test and you can go with the flow. The problem is, is when you fall behind, you don't really have a game plan. If you were never used to using a study schedule or a calendar where you know roughly what you're gonna be doing on a daily basis, on a half day basis, what you're doing on the weekends, when you're covering your material, then when you're behind, you have really no idea how to catch up. And this is really where I have a lot of students that come to our coaching programs because they're like, I don't even know where to start. And the first thing we have to tell them is let's create a schedule where you can see yourself covering the material that you presently are giving as well as the material you're behind on. Once they start doing this, they feel in control because now they have a schedule that tells them what appointments to show up for. And the second reason that students struggle with time management is that even if they are actually using a calendar or having a plan, they just tend to overcommit. And so then they lead themselves to either being demotivated or just never feeling like they're on top of their schedule. When I was in medical school, my three priorities were more or less one workout per day just to keep myself fit. And then if I had a quiz or test coming, then doing something for that quiz or test. If I didn't, then I would switch it for an extra quick little project. Maybe your research project or going for shadowing or volunteering. And then finally making sure that I was up to date on the material that I learned for that day. If I was on top of my material for the day, I was making sure that I had least thought about studying for an upcoming quiz or test. And then I made sure my fitness was in check. I was both energized, focused, and on top of my schedule, everything made sense. If I got more things done, beautiful. If I didn't hit those three priorities and I have to ask myself where that setback happened and make those adjustments for future days, but this is the biggest key. Time management makes medical school difficult. So if you don't have one, you need to create a system. And if you do, you need to make sure that the system grows with you as you have successes and failures. Make adjustments on a daily and a weekly basis. And you now become a student who's able to eat their pancakes on a daily basis and understands when they'll be doing it. And then difficult number three is this plateau principle. Most medical students thinks that once they hit a stretch of difficulty, let's say your first year of medical school, you're just not having a good time. Classes, hard grades are not quite there. You just think that that's where you're gonna be. That's your status quo. If you're not making A's and you're making B's or C's, then that's like where you'll be. And people get stuck in that. And unfortunately, you don't realize that usually one or two things happen. You're gonna have easy classes, you're gonna have hard classes. That's just the point of it. But the reality of medical school is two things are gonna happen. One, you're gonna have a flow when you're gonna have a stretch of hard classes and then easy ones. When I was on my psych rotation, it was great. I kind of knew what was going on. I knew how to take care of patients. It wasn't that challenging for me personally, but when I was on a surgery rotation, didn't make sense, didn't really like it. My enjoyment wasn't there. I struggled. When I was learning micro, boy, I was having trouble. When I was learning bio stats, easy peasy came very natural to me. Everyone is going to have a combination of classes and topics that they really gel with. And then on the other end, things that just give them a tough time. That doesn't mean that you're stuck at the status quo of being average. You may be a grade student for one specific class just because of interest or how well it takes you to learn it. In other classes, you're gonna struggle. That is okay. That doesn't mean medical school as a whole is completely difficult and unable to be done by you. This means you're gonna have some difficult stretches. And then number two, for this plateau principle, students think that if it takes me X amount of hours or X amount of effort for this class to get this grade, I'm stuck there. The reality is, is as you go through medical school, you become a better learner. You just kind of know how to piece together medical information. And that just happens with experience. It's like a musician who just able to play something and flow between one melody to the next without really thinking about it. They can't explain it, but that's just how it goes. The experience allows you to solidify your study methods without really being able to explain what you're doing and how you're thinking about things. But that's just because you've had so much experience of how to do it the wrong way. And eventually you'll learn, okay, these are the core ways that I study. This is more or less what the test will look like. This is how I need to think about information. And this is how I'll repeat it over and over again to show up for the quiz or the test. And so again, you're gonna have difficult stretches of tests and quizzes, but that doesn't mean in the whole it's going to be undoable. Now I know initially I said three, but the fourth one is actually something that I consider to be important after finishing medical school that I've realized. And that is that you choose your heart. If somebody was to put me in law school, for example, I would be a horrendous law student. I couldn't fathom coming up with the interest of being able to read all the material that a law student does. That would be excruciating more hard than going through medical school again. But again, for some people, law school is the way to go. You pick your heart. Medical school is hard, law school is hard, dental school is hard. Being a mechanic and going through that training is difficult. Whatever you want to do, there's going to be a level of difficulty and even within that journey, there's going to be hills and valleys of difficulty. You have to deal with it once you choose your heart. If being a physician, if taking care of patients, if going through all of those years of training for the salary that you were ultimately going to get, if all of that delayed gratification is worth it to you, you should do it. Don't let somebody else's description and definition of hard limit what you choose to go ahead and pursue just because you're saying this is going to be tough. Of course it is. But if it's worth having, it's worth going for. So remember these four difficult parts about medical school. The sheer amount of information that you can counteract by having a better and predictable study schedule, having a time management system that you actually stay with and actually flows with you, understanding that even within the difficult journey there are going to be places that you're going to excel at, others that you're not going to, that is okay. And then finally, choose your heart. If it's worth having, it's worth going for. That doesn't mean medical school won't be difficult, but it was doable and it's worth it for you. But that friends is my updated, more adult version of how hard medical school is. Hopefully you guys enjoyed the breakdown. Let me know in the comments section down below if you're watching on YouTube. If you listened to this on a podcast, hit that subscribe or follow in their favorite listening platform as well as leaving an honest review. And again, if you're watching on YouTube, hit that like button, really supports the channel, gets our message out to more people. So if you found it helpful, all I ask is you help me, help somebody else get that same message. And if you're new to our community, there are tons of free resources and some paid ones linked down below in the description. Make sure you check those out to see if a few could help you, especially if you're showing what's studying. There are tons of resources that we have for you down below. And if you enjoyed this episode, then just for last check out that episode on using the pancake analogy for medical school as well as all of the studies strategies that I used to get a 3.9 GPA in med school. Hopefully these will help you out. But as always, my friends, hopefully I was a little helped you guys on your journey. Thanks for always being a part of mine. I'll see you guys in the next one. Peace.