 Today's video is brought to you by Picmonic. Med school can be both an exciting but also overwhelming and stressful journey. One of the most common reasons is not knowing what to expect and as soon as you become comfortable with a certain schedule on the flow, things unfortunately change. So today I want to break down each of the four years of medical school so that way you know exactly what to expect. Let's get to it. So let's start with year one. Now the first two years of medical school are pretty much going to be a classroom or lab setting. You're essentially learning everything you need to know to be a doctor before you actually practice it on patients. So you probably won't be using your stethoscope very much during these times. Now the next thing to note is that each school has their own unique approach of how they organize their classes. Some schools may take an organ system approach. This is where you may be doing cardiovascular on one month and then doing the kidneys on another month. And during this time you'll be learning both how that organ normally functions but also diseases that are correlated when things go wrong. So for example, if you're in your kidney block you may start off talking about how the kidney normally works but then later on the block you may be talking about diseases when the kidney doesn't. Things like patients who need dialysis, patients who have really bad diabetes etc. Now the second approach which is a little bit older is still used in some institutions is essentially going from normal function to bad function. So for example, you may take physiology during your first year and essentially learn how the body is supposed to work normally in all of the organ systems. Cardiovascular, renal, neurology, you name it. But then your second year you may come back to physiology and you may talk about well what happens in the brain when physiology isn't working right? What happens in the kidney? So again, good to bad compared to the organ system where you're learning about the organ and doing both good to bad together. And then finally the third approach is teaching to the board. Some institutions are just really focused on making sure that you do well on your board exams which I'll talk about later in today's episode. Other institutions think that their content even though it's not really necessarily all high yield may still help you for the ultimate board exams you have to take. Again, there's really no right and wrong way of doing this. Sometimes you get too superficial and sometimes you get too far into the weeds. Every school probably has a little bit of all of this but now that you understand the most common approaches let's get into the first semester. This is typically your most basic sciences of all of your medical school semesters and probably the least exciting because it doesn't seem like doctor material. Maybe spending a few weeks on topics like biochem, cell biology, you know, microbiology, pharmacology, anatomy, histology. Some of them may be interesting, others may be like why am I doing this again? And the length of these courses can vary anywhere from two weeks when I was in medical school. I took biochem for two weeks when I actually took a whole semester of it back in college all the way up to eight weeks to the entire semester for things like anatomy. It's also very likely that you're going to have more than one class at a time. So for example, when I was in medical school, I was taking anatomy throughout the year and then I was having maybe one or two courses during the same time. So I may have had biochem, histology and also my anatomy class and then when biochem was done I added another course like cell bio, histology and then throwing path in there with anatomy. It was a cluster and if that wasn't stressful enough, you likely have some kind of sessions or activities throughout the week or the year that are basically going to be working on your clinical skills things on how to be a doctor, how to use the stethoscope, how to look at somebody's ears, how to evaluate somebody's vitals, et cetera. So as you can see during this semester, it is very, very easy to get overwhelmed. One, because you just have so much to kind of keep track of and then two, the information is a lot and it's dense and it comes at you very fast. Now, if you're listening to that and feeling that anxiety build up, I understand I've been there for that reason. Don't worry. There are tons of free resources linked down below in the description. Things on how to study correctly as well as tons of other tips on how to do well as both a brand, new as well as a senior medical student, all those things will be linked down below. And then finally to close out your first semester, let's just talk about hours. These can vary basically depending on how many classes you may have, as well as if you're required to go to class. Some institutions are starting to go more virtual or attendance may not be required. You just have to make sure that you do the work, especially if lectures end up showing on your quizzes and tests. Others may actually have a mandatory lecture, but as a typical reference, a lot of the schools that I've seen usually will have lecture anywhere from eight to 12 o'clock. And then some days they may have some lectures in the afternoon, plus or minus some labs instead. So you can expect your day to go anywhere from eight to 12 and then possibly with a lunch break and then 12 to four. On some afternoons I had absolutely nothing, just more time to study. And on other afternoons I had those activities like clinical skills, as well as things like anatomy and histology a lot. So by far, probably one of your busiest and most overwhelming semesters in medical school, but wait, it gets crazier later on, but let's get into your second semester first. And depending on your institution and what curriculum approach they took based off what we talked about earlier, this can be a much easier semester or more or less some much of the same. So for example, for me, my school really front loaded a lot of those classes my first semester, my second semester, we just started getting into organ systems. That was the only thing we're taking. So I had one class, maybe three to four lectures a day, compared to three lectures plus a lab plus clinical skills, it was a lot more manageable. So this will likely vary depending on your institution. And at the same time, you likely also have those clinical skills and some of your labs depending on the class you're taking. Now that we've finished talking about your first semester, let's go ahead and first talk about the summer semester because this is likely going to be your last summer break ever, like literally ever. And during this time, most students will do anything from doing research, especially if they know that they want to go into a competitive field, all the way up to things like shadowing, if they don't really know what kind of doctor they want to be, or if they want to explore specific field more to just absolutely doing nothing. And my personal experience I chose to use this time to improve my clinical skills because I knew rotations, which I'll talk about later is coming just around the corner. And so I actually worked in a type one diabetic camp as a on staff medical kind of provider for an entire month, month and a half, which was an amazing experience wouldn't have traded it, wouldn't have done research or shadowing. But this summer has a lot of flexibility, but it's meant to help you kind of stepstone into your rotations and your future career towards your CV, as well as get some relaxation and before second year starts. Now that we're into second year, the first thing I have to mention again, institution by institution, you can have an entire full second year or some schools have started to phase away from the traditional two years in the classroom, two years in the hospital on our rotations. So for example, in my own experience in medical school and my institution, I was kind of the guinea pig year, where we had a year and a half of kind of classroom work and then two and a half years within the rotations and in the hospital. So just keep in mind that depending on your institution, things may shift around and so this semester's may be a little bit more busier than others, depending on how things are prioritized. But for the rest of the episode, we're going to use the traditional two years in the classroom, two years in the rotation as our example. Now during your second year, you're either going to be finishing the rest of your classes that your institution gave you, or if you're going to be going from normal to bad, second year is going to be the bad. So first year, you learned about everything correct for the heart. Now you're going to be learning maybe a month of all of the pathology that happened in the heart and depends on institution to institution, but it's overall the flow. During this time, ideally in fingers crossed, you find that your schedule is a little bit more open. You have less labs because you've just done all of them during your first year, but while that free time is there, one thing that you already started to stress about is something called step one. Now, if you're not familiar, step one is the first of three licensed exams that you take to be a physician here in the United States. If you are a DO, you also take complex one and two during medical school that most students will take these board exams at the end of their second year. So usually the start of your second year is a great time to get stressed about what there is left to do. But just like before, if you're feeling that anxiety, make sure you check out all of the episodes here on the MD journey on the podcast, on the YouTube channel, because there are tons of resources on step one and preparing for your board exams effectively without extra stress. And then finally to round up your second year in addition to finishing up the classes before you're getting into rotations and studying for your boards, the last thing you're probably doing is really getting more serious about what career path you want to go into. Maybe you've looked at some interest your first two years, found things that really did point and stick out, others that probably didn't. And now you're going to be using this time to either do things like research or shadow more because once you get in rotations, that time, the free time is going to be limited. So you're going to have to kind of have some kind of direction of what kind of physician you want to be. This is a great time to start exploring that. Now before we get into your third year, let's go into your second semester. Now before we talked about that, you may not actually have a second semester and you probably won't. Often this is the time that most students will take their step one and their comics exam, their first board exams. And this can range anywhere from studying for six weeks to eight weeks. Sometimes I have students that I personally work with, I'll study for 12, even 16 weeks. This will depend on your institution and how much free time they give you. But during this time, expect yourself to be studying anywhere from 10 to 12 hours. It's very normal for somebody who's studying for step one to wake up around eight or nine and then finish studying around six or eight PM on a daily basis. Now before we get back into today's episode, let's take a quick second to talk about today's sponsor, which is Picmonic. Now if you're unfamiliar with Picmonic and you're on your medical journey, they have hundreds and hundreds of videos for literally any class or material that you may need. And what makes Picmonic so unique is that in addition to having so many videos on literally any topic you need. So for example, here where in microbiology, you can click on any video. So here's Staph Aureus and their videos themselves are very short. So this video is about one minute 54 seconds, but essentially we'll break down the most high yield components that you have to know in this setting about Staph Aureus and this very nice story format using images. So here's a very nice Oreo cookie that essentially will link an image to your brain on an important concept about that. And the future videos, you may find that the same memorable images included in another related video. So then you can link together concepts. For example, here, this Benham jar with green represents food poisoning. So any bacteria that may cause food poisoning may have this image in their overall picture and video. So you can say, okay, I know all different bacterias that have food poisoning. And then whenever you feel comfortable with their relatively short story, you can easily go into the review and quiz phase and actually quiz yourself on the various different high-yield components. Now in addition to having a very unique and easy way to remember information for your quizzes and tests, you can also add all of the videos you're watching into a relative playlist. So if you're studying for a microbiology class, you can go ahead and essentially click all the videos that you add and add it to those playlists. And then whenever it's time, you can come back to your individual playlist and either watch those individual videos again or ask for specific quiz questions related to the videos that you've now said that you've mastered or at least learned the first time. And that's just scratching the surface in terms of features that Pickmonic has to help you on your medical journey. Other cool things include having a weakness guide so you can see which topics you're the weakest in as well as their study scheduler. So you can actually say these are the topics I need to know. And here's my test day. And then it will essentially will give you a study schedule based off of that. So if you're looking for an all-in-one resource, you're on your medical journey and you haven't quite found it, definitely recommend checking out Pickmonic. If you're interested, there'll be a link down below. And our friends at Pickmonic have also been nice enough to include an extra 20% discount if you use the code the MD journey at checkout. And so if you're interested in learning more about Pickmonic, that link will be down below. And as always, thanks to Pickmonic for being today's sponsor. Now if you made it this far into the episode, amazing because now we're finally going to be talking about the most exciting part about medical school, at least in my humble opinion, which is actually you doing your rotations. But before we move on to the fun part, if you're watching this on YouTube, just go ahead and hit that like button. If you are enjoying the content, consider subscribing. Let's move into your third year rotations. Now if you're not familiar, think of rotations is essentially kind of like a mini job audition where you don't get paid and you essentially get graded on your performance on a field that you don't know. You can see how that gets stressful. So for example, you may be doing an OB-GYN rotation to have no idea how to take care of pregnant females or just females with their normal OB-GYN complaints, or you may be doing internal medicine and you might want to be a surgeon. Over the next year, it's going to be typical to do a rotation over the span of four to eight weeks. And this can range anywhere from the fields of internal medicine, which is what I do for a living, pediatrics, family medicine, psychiatry, surgery, neurology, and sometimes other rotations depending on your institution's preferences and requirements. And your hours and free time will also fluctuate just depending on what rotation you're on. So for example, family medicine is a very clinic-heavy kind of field. So it's likely to show up at eight o'clock in the morning and leave at five and then have your weekends off. Surgery on the other end, not so much. It's always open. People always need surgeries of some kind. So for me, when I was on that rotation, it was common to show up in the hospital at four or five thirty, not leave until five or six. Now throughout the channel, we've made tons of episodes on different parts about rotations and individual rotations. You know what to expect. Just essentially think of yourself as going to be a team player or team provider and getting assigned maybe one to three to four patients, depending on the service you're on. And then you'll have actual physicians, interns, residents. You actually you're attending a supervisor who are going to be helping you take care of that patient. So in addition to finally having some hands-on experience and taking care of all those diseases that you spend like two years learning, the other nice thing about rotation semi-kind of it is that there's going to be less exams. So previously, where it was normal to take a quiz on a weekly basis, usually on rotations, you just have one exam at the very end of the rotation. These are called shelf exams. These are standardized exams that are already made. And basically your hope is that through the experience on the rotation, as well as some textbooks and high yield resources and videos, you can kind of go through the rotation, get the main gist and sit for that exam and do well. Now, because it's just one exam, obviously increases the importance and stress. And in addition, most rotations also come with evaluations. These are things that are going to be used when it's time for you to apply for residency. So you'll find that students, including yourself likely, are going to be on edge and always wondering what can I do to get good grades as well as good evaluations and tons of content about that on a clinical rotations playlist and videos that were linked down below for you on YouTube. I promise you this is probably going to be one of your most enjoyable parts of medical school because you're finally learning how to be a doctor that you ultimately signed up to be and wrote that personal statement, you know, all those three years ago. The last thing that you'll probably be using during your third year is really just finalizing and honing in on what kind of doctor you want to be. So for example, when I was a third year, I was thinking of fields like internal medicine, but also fields like emergency medicine and things like radiation oncology. Now, the reason that I bring this up is at the end of your third year, before you kind of start your fourth year, you're going to essentially be planning on your residency application. Think of it as just applying to medical school all over again, but now specifically for the field of training, you want to do the rest of your life because now we're going to go ahead and talk about your fourth year. Now I'm going to break down the fourth year into two phases. One is going to be summer to winter. Another one's going to be essentially spring to graduation. The latter part, beautiful. First part can be very stressful, depending on again, your institution. So usually during your summer is kind of think about it again as applying to medical school. You've picked your field. Let's say you're going to go into internal medicine like me because you've watched this episode right here on the masons that you should go into internal medicine. There's tons of them. I love it. Go ahead and check it out if you guys are interested. But let's say you decided ultimately you want to go into internal medicine. Now you have to get other things ready like your personal statement, letters, recommendation from faculties, and just getting your overall application and CV ready and ready to submit, usually by August to September. Now, in addition to doing all of this, obviously you're not just kind of sitting still. There's two main things that are happening. One, you're still going on rotations. Your institution probably has additional electives and different kind of courses that you have to take before graduations. You have to have time for those. And then two, you're studying for your second port exam. This is step two CK. At the moment, this is probably going to be the most important exam in medical school. You'll also be taking Comlex two again if you're a DO student. And obviously these scores are going to be important because residency programs, whether we like it or not, are going to use these scores to compare you from other applicants that they're considering. Now, similar to step one, most students may take about four to six weeks to study for step two CK. And this may be while you're doing a light rotation or taking kind of a vacation block again, depending on what your institutional house. But this obviously adds up to a very busy summer. Now, once you kind of get into your fall semester, it's not over because now you're going to likely be doing two important things. One is going to be called sub-I's. These are sub-printer internships. Think of them as your practice audition before you start residency. When you're a residency, you're a full-fledged doctor. You're expected to kind of be able to do and take care of patients basically. At the moment right now, you're still a brand new medical student in terms of alleys doing clinical skills. So sub-I is a little bit of that. You're essentially behaving like one step below an actual full-fledged physician where you're going to get responsibilities like more patients and expected to kind of have a full management understanding of those patients from the get go. Now, the nice thing about sub-I's is you'll likely be doing it in the field that you're interested in. So if you're an internal medicine, you'll likely be doing a sub-I in an internal medicine rotation. If you're interested in surgery, for example, you may be doing a month as a sub-I on a surgery rotation, which you may actually very much enjoy. And then finally, the second thing that you'll be doing around the fall semester includes things like a way rotation. So not everyone does this, but if you're going into a competitive field, sometimes it's nice to essentially do one of those sub-I auditions, but at another institution that you're interested in going to. So let's say, for example, I wanted to go into a competitive field like plastic surgery, and I'm here. I'm from Central Texas. Maybe I want to move into the Bay area to the West Coast. It may make sense to try to get in a way rotation at somewhere in that area, and then essentially do a month rotation in their plastic surgery or in their surgery program. That way, one, I have a place that kind of knows me already. So in its time to interview, ideally, they like me better than some of the applicants that they don't know about, but two, it's a great opportunity to one, get experience, but also get things like about her as a reputation. Now, without getting too far on the weeds of a way rotation, just remember that not every field requires it. Things like family medicine, pediatrics, maternal medicine, it's not very common to do in a way rotation, but things like plastic surgery, dermatology, you know, certain surgery programs, it is a little bit more so depending again on how competitive it is. Now finally to close off the winter of your fourth year, likely around the January time, you're going to be submitting your rank list. Essentially, now you've gone through your interviews after doing the applications, you have a preference of which program you like the best, and then maybe the program you like the least. So when you go ahead and create this list, programs that you interviewed at are also going to have their own list of applicants that they really enjoyed and applicants, probably not so much a little bit further down the line. And essentially, a computer algorithm is going to match you to just one of them. So unlike getting into medical school where you may have gotten multiple acceptances and then you decided, oh, I'm going to go here, residency, you pretty much get one name put on a paper with your name on it, that's where you're going. And if you want to check out a full breakdown of how the match process works and how you can use it to your advantage, go ahead and check out this episode right here. But now that we're done with the stressful part about fourth year, let's get into the very nice part about fourth year, which is the final spring to graduation. This time, you're pretty much done. And you know, you're basically have submitted your rank list. There's very few electives and rotations left to do, and you're just ready to graduate. The one important thing that is left in your way is essentially what we call match day. So when we look at that list that you've made and the list of the programs that rank to you and other applicants, essentially you will get your name on a piece of paper on the same day as everybody around the country at the same time. I think it's at 11 o'clock central or, you know, Eastern doesn't matter, but it's really cool experience. Oftentimes medical schools will go out and make it a big event or do a next countdown. You have an envelope with your name on it, and then you find out where you're going with the support of all your families and loved ones. And if you guys want to see a little bit more behind the scenes of my match day, here's a blog that I've recorded. Hopefully you guys enjoy it. But after match day, which typically happens around March, the last part of medical school is again, just finishing those last bit of requirements, getting ready for residency. Sometimes your institution may have bootcams or something just for you to prep for whatever field you're going into. Maybe you're moving to a different city, you're a different state, or more or less staying the same place. But once graduation is over, you are done with those four years of medical school, and that is a full breakdown of all those four years. Hopefully it helped you out. Now, during the process, you probably have felt some level of stress and anxiety, depending on what I talked about. And like I mentioned, there are tons of resources out linked down below on helping you with each individual phase, because here at the MD journey, myself and my team are very focused on making sure that you understand that you can enjoy medical school and still not be stressed out of your mind as long as you understand the strategies that have worked for top students. So if you want to minimize that stress as much as possible, check out some of the most popular freebies down below, including the Med School Success Handbook, as well as the eight step program on exactly how I studied medical school. And if you're interested in getting some personal help from myself and my team on how to do better in medical school, particularly with your grades, also check out some of our programs down below. But if you enjoyed this episode, you'll definitely enjoy this episode right here on how I got a 3.9 GPA in medical school and the studies strategies I used to get it, as well as this strategy right here that pretty much just changed the game for me in medical school. Check these out. Hopefully you guys enjoy it. As always, thanks for being a part of my journey. Hopefully it was a little help to you guys on yours. I'll see you guys later. Peace.