Quick follow-up, since I feel I didn't really discuss the factors that can really shape your personality and cause changes during your medical education.
1. The constant pressure to perform. This is different from the "pressure to succeed", since I feel that's more personal and an internal thing. I define pressure to perform as the minimum performance requirement (which feels pretty high all the time!). The pressure is passing all your classes, and getting positive evaluations by other docs and peers even.
2. The constant pressure to succeed. If you want to get that ophthalmology residency, orthopaedic surgery residency, then you'll probably feeling a lot more pressure, but a bigger fraction is going to come from within. This is because it's you who wants that residency, while your medical school just wants you to pass your classes and meet their minimum standards.
3. The pressure to impress those around you. This sounds kind of superficial, but there's constant reviewing and training you have to do, because you don't want to be the guy on the team who thinks you're supposed to give antibiotics to a person with B. cereus food poisoning, or the guy who draws a blank when asked how to treat Pseudomonas. There's a pressure to be valuable to your team and those around you, and it's probably one of the hardest to deal with because of that social component, since you don't want to be seen as dead weight or disinterested.
4. The sheer amount of time it takes to develop even minimum competence. I have about 18 hour days 7 days a week and it's a big challenge. I'm lucky enough though that I realise that's the amount of time per day I require to "get things done" even though as a med student, you never feel like you're done or caught up, hah. I even spent some time the night before and the morning of the exam learning a few lectures I hadn't been able to get to. I'm hoping I become more efficient, but at the same time, the amount of material we're hit with ramps up pretty fast.
Small tips that might make your life a little better in med school and beyond:
1. Take that 5 minutes in the busy morning to have a conversation with a classmate, especially not about medicine or classes!
2. Say hi to colleagues in the hallway, or just acknowledge them. Little things like that will make a difference.
3. When you're walking around campus, put your iPod away so you can be more accessible to friends who run into you or the occasional random person who is obviously lost and needs directions.
4. Shoot for less than 300mg caffeine per day, anything over that in the long-term will be harmful.
5. Listen to your favourite music in the morning and at the end of the day instead of audio lectures, it'll boost your morale more than you know.
6. Try to call the people you care about the most and who are most involved in your life once a week; if you wait longer than that, a month will already have passed.
7. Don't forget that your friends, family and others truly care about you and how you're doing. Sometimes they won't call you because they think you're too busy, but remember that they're thinking about you and wishing you the best.
Hope those tips helped a little, there's such a big psychological component to medical training, and it's one of the most significant parts contributing to resilience and a good mental health. Cheers!
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