This is so true. Third year is a twisted maze of ass kissing and jumping through hoops. Also, so much of it comes down to getting lucky with which attending and/or residents you end up with for a given rotation.
Eddiewassnubbed: in terms of commiting to med school, its a long painful road. Going to a community college won't hurt your chances at a lot of med schools. Apply if you like. I think you can continue with x-ray tech school and apply to medicine as long as you take the pre-reqs. English, org chem, etc. Just ask yourself if you love it so much that you don't mind spending the majority of your young-adult life studying or working in the hospital, and for the most part, broke/ in debt.
what medical school are you guys at? It must be different at each medical school. I'm also trying to decide which ones to apply to... So far i know i'll apply to LSUHSC-S and New Orleans and also Tulane. I need some out of state schools. Oh and do you guys think the Navy scholarship is a good idea? I've been looking into that... and also applying to the Uniformed Services school in MD.
no one has given me an answer on that 2-3 hours for rockets games yet though... its really that hard?
You have time for rockets games, IMO. At least I had time. Its hard to say though cuz you will have a lot of tests, have to be on call in the hospital, etc. For time management's sake, just dvr the games so that you are behind 45 minutes or so, so you can skip over the commercials. If I was really tight on time, I used to also try to do some biceps curls or other workout while watching games so I could save time at the gym.
That's the thing. I KNOW that I want to further pursue my career after I graduate x-ray school. I'll have my associate's when I graduate, and I'll definitely want my bachelor's. I definitely want to be in the medical field. From there is where it gets tricky. The med. school route sounds tempting, but so does the Radiologist Assistant. If I were to go med. school, I'd be in more debt, and "wasting" away more of my 20's. If I go for the Radiologist Assistant, I'd get a Master's degree, I wouldn't make as much (it's a new position...early salary figures say anywhere from 80 to 140 a year), but I'd still be comfortable, definitely. With the RA position, it's new, so the waters are somewhat untested, and that's exciting but scary at the same time. Another worry of mine is that some of the capabilities of the RA could be phased out in the future (fluoroscopy). I still think that right now, I'm leaning towards going for the RA schooling, but med. school will definitely remain in the back of my mind.
hahaha, well i don't post very much anyways. But even if i wanted to i wouldn't be able to watch, i'm in san antonio, they only show spurs except for the few nationally televised ones. So everytime I get to watch it's a real treat. Pretty much, it all comes down to self discipline and time management. If you get work done early, then you have time to do anything else you want, be it watching tv or playing basketball or whatever. And yes there really is THAT much studying. Weekdays i don't study that much because i have class and labs so kinda drained after that. maybe an hour or two every other day. Weekends i use to catch up on stuff so 3-4 hours a day. Test weeks are different, I'm pretty much studying everday and spending the majority of my time in the library continuously trying to cram every last smidgen of information I can in to be measly little brain. Pretty much you're under constant stress for the good part of two weeks. It's very different from college and for those matriculating this year or in the future, keep that in mind and don't stress out too much. Once you catch on to how things work it really isn't that bad because you don't realize how much your life sucks because everyone around you is suffering just as much if not more. Eddie, if you want to make a good living which seems like your concern, i would advise not to go into the medical field. It's long and physican salaries are currently on the downside. Orthopedic surgeons making 2-3 mil a year a decade ago are making barely 500,000. I'm not saying in anyway that half a mil is a meager living because i think any of us would take that in a heartbeat. But also keep in mind these are established surgeons in private practice who have had 25+ years post residency. Given the average college student who starts med school at 22, graduates at 26, goes into a internal medicine residency for 4 years, plus 2 more for a fellowship in a subspecialty, you're looking at a 32 year old with 100k to 200k of debt if not more depending on where you went to school, and he's starting out at probably 170k a year. Take out taxes and also consider there's no cap on how much an attending can work a week and the life doesn't seem so great. But where there's a will there's a way and if you really want to be a doctor, more power to you and godspeed. hey Nick, I'm actually pretty interested in Urology. You know how competitive it is right now for residency and how long the programs last? I've heard some programs are reducing training years from 6 to 5 which is the complete opposite of the general trend in most other specialties that are requiring a year or two of research added. Also, personally how do you like it and what kinds of interesting cases do you get to see? thanks p.s. I'm in hell considering i'm a rockets fan cuz the majority of my class either don't care about basketball or are spurs or mavs fans (jumping on the bandwagon i'm assuming). Add to that the fact that I'm surrounded by spurs nation and have to stare at time warner billboards of ginobili and cars driving around with spurs logos on their bumpers. Nonetheless, I'm keeping strong to my roots. Can't wait till yao gets back in a week or so. Go Rox
