Denial: Lol no I’m not behind, I totally have time to catch up before deadline

Anger: The fuck, prof?? This is impossible, nobody can do this much work in this amount of time, lower your expectations, damn

Bargaining: If I skip meals and sleep for a week I can def get this done, and if not this book has a chapter on pacts with the devil but that’s for sure like a last resort

Depression: What have I done. Who let me sign up for five more years of this. Oh God I’ve made a huge mistake somebody drown me

You can’t get much happier than a pig in muck, or so we are told.

But when this little piggy arrived in the farmyard she showed a marked reluctance to get her trotters dirty. While her six brothers and sisters messed around in the mire, she stayed on the edge shaking. It is thought she might have mysophobia - a fear of dirt.

North Cascades National Park, Washington

Milky Way

As a medical student, I knew that there is a chance (high probability) of being mentally and verbally abused while on rotation. Hospitals are high stress and as a medical student, I may be doing little but getting in the way. 

But I have been extremely lucky that that has not been the case. Have I received a harsh comment for mistakes I have made-yes. But that is fair and while it stings, I know the purpose behind it is to make sure I don’t make the same mistakes again. 

The source of my abuse this year has actually been the very people who warned me that it would happen on rotation. It has been from my school. When they told me to have thick skin against more rough preceptors, I thickened it. But I shouldn’t have to do that for the institution that is supposed try to ease my way through this difficult time. I thought the point of a school was to try to make their students as successful as possible. But I’m finding now that I am wrong.

So beware pre-meds, when you pick your school-that you know what the administration is like there. Our faculty is great and most of them care about teaching and the success of students and are extremely supportive. And you can bet that like every other medical student, I am always trying to do my goddamn best.  But unfortunately that is only 2 out of the 3 prongs to success. Success also lies in how well you can push papers on time, how well you can hop your way through the hoops of bureaucracy. 

And if the department that is supposed to handle that for you not only fails to do that, but sends you rude email after rude email saying that “you should already know this” “we already told you in the info session 3 months ago” “since you clearly don’t remember” when you do the extensive leg work to schedule a rotation that would give you the much needed time you need to study for an exam that you’re already having severe anxiety over 6 months in advance-it is  extremely disheartening. 

When you get hospitalized while on rotation and have to change your remaining rotation schedule within the next week because of health restrictions now placed on you, but the administration wont even respond to the “urgent-24 hour flag” you put on the message you are sending to them from your hospital bed asking for confirmation for the rotation that you set up and you reach out to the assistant dean for help and their reply to you is-”its finalized but don’t go running to the assistant dean next time”- it is extremely disheartening.

But those are still requests for big things. But when they send you an email calling you a liar because you misunderstood their response to a request you sent to please switch your time for a single ungraded module that is happening 3 weeks from now with another student who is willing to trade and thus reached out to another department for help to do so-you don’t have much of a heart left to be disheartened really. 

We have a huge class and I understand that there are rules in place because everyone’s individual needs cannot be met or else there would be chaos. But I do not know every rule in the handbook (that’s literally their job) and I do not know what I can and cannot have until I ask. But I’m afraid to ask now because not only do I receive a “No” in reply, I receive a scathing sarcastic “as you clearly know” (do I look like I want to be wasting their time and mine?) I’m not asking for special treatment-I’m just asking to be treated with a minuscule of respect especially since my requests are nothing but polite and only made after I’ve already checked and double checked the resources that ARE available to me. The only thing that makes me feel better is that at least all of us are being equally mistreated. My story is one of the many many that I have heard against this department and when we try to tell other departments about it, they come back to the fact that our class has been labeled “the entitled millennial whiners” and we should suck it up because real doctors don’t and SHOULDN’T have feelings.

This is not abuse for the sake of learning. This is abuse for abuse sake.