Med School Rigors: Hype or Reality?

7:30 AM to 6PM block lectures. Barely 35 minutes of scattered breaks in between. Your only sustenance? Hope and Gala with La Casera. You get home, collapse on your bed, and remember—oh wait, you have to read.  

All hail P! P for Paediatrics.  

But let’s talk about the other deadly Ps. Pathology and Pharmacology. Those two are the Jagabans of medical school. Long hours of lectures within weeks, content as bulky as a Lagos landlord’s rent demand, and to crown it all, exams on the very last week of the posting.  

By the time you get home, you’re so tired you can hear your ancestors whisper, "My child, is it by force?" But you pick up your textbook because you know what’s at stake. You read, sleep off, and dream of Benzodiazepines and Coagulation cascades.

What about the detailed clerking of Internal medicine? The never ending stuff, everyday you go home with new stuff. You might be tempted to think Surgery is chilled, but you would have gotten that wrong as well. I personally detest the long hours of standing in the theater for surgeries, observing procedures like human robots.

Preclinical Students Are Not Smiling Either.

You might be tempted to think preclinicals is easier. Don’t fall for that illusion. Their life is a case study in endurance. Back-to-back incourses, no breathing space. Anatomy alone will have you questioning your existence, like why do I even have a lesser sac? What’s it doing for me?  

Histology? Everything looks like abstract artwork. Some pink and purple blobs and a lecturer asking, "What tissue is this?" You want to answer, "Sir, it’s looking like destiny, but I’m not sure."  

Embryology? That one is just an alien forming in the womb. And Physiology? The subject where everything is “regulated” by some mysterious feedback mechanism. Medical Biochemistry? The real-life definition of problem no dey finish.  

 The Mathematics of Failure  

Now, let’s talk about the unthinkable: failure. Have you ever seen a score of -8 before? Not 8. Not zero. Negative 8. Meaning you owe the examiners some marks. You look at the results board again, wondering if the lecturer subtracted your future children’s scores as well. To make matters worse, results are pasted for everyone to see.

And the worst part? There’s always that one guy who will say, "Ah, that exam was simple na!" Simple? My brother, did we write the same exam?  

 Are We Overhyping This Thing?  

Now, let’s be honest. Is medical school hard? Absolutely. But are we also dramatic about it? Maybe.  

See, nothing comes easy. Engineering students will tell you their own is worse. Law students will argue they read more than us. Computer Science guys will tell you about debugging code at 3 AM. Even Art students will say they have their own struggles.  

At the end of the day, suffering is relative. But one thing is clear, medical school is designed to break you, humble you, and then build you into a resilient, sleep-deprived but competent doctor. 

Written by Peter Abegunde.