Realising you chose the wrong medical school

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Yes it is a reason, but things can go up as well as down. At exactly the same point during my second year, I ended up falling out with my friendship group. I had no-one. As in I sat in lectures alone, ate lunch alone, didn't go out because I didn't know anyone well enough to be invited.

That changed and things got better. But it took time, and I had to build up the strength to be happy being alone which was hard. If you genuinely aren't happy doing medicine then that is different I guess, that is what kept me going.

Talk to someone about what your options are.

Reply 21

Lantana

Original post by Oxidative Phosphorylation

Things have reached breaking point now. I want to go home. I cannot transfer to my other University or any University near me so this leaves either drop out or ask if I can leave and come back to re-do year 1 in September or just stick it out.

I no longer have friends here; my friendship group & I drifted apart from January and now we don't really speak. I wouldn't say I have "no friends" and if I were to say that to anyone in my year I'm sure they would strongly disagree too, I know a lot of people but I'm no longer in a group. Having people you go out with and say hey to around is very different from having a group of friends. I have no one to live with next year, for example, now I no longer talk to these people.

I'm in quite a bad state, head-wise.

Irony is that I've been in the top 5% for every coursework and exam so far.
Although in the last 2 weeks I've lost all motivation and have done no work (including PBL).

I wouldn't know how to go about telling the medical school I want to leave or how to go about justifying it -- is just being very very unhappy a reason?

Yes. I would guess your tutor would be the best bet, unless there is another lecturer you prefer to talk to. A break might be useful, but I guess they'll want to go over all your options with you.

Reply 22

Mushi_master

I had similar issues in first year with regards to friendship groups and not having anyone to move in with. I ended up finding somewhere on the London student housing website, and it's worked out excellently; living with a good group of people in a nice place and have seemed to become part of a much better group of mates. Things aren't perfect, but these things take time and they're on the up.

So even if you end up in a situation where you don't know who you're going to live with, it may turn out very nicely for you, and I'm sure things can only get better so give it the time it deserves.

Reply 23

LatinMachine

Original post by Oxidative Phosphorylation

Things have reached breaking point now. I want to go home.

You mentioned that you've had depression before - do you feel it's coming back? And is there someone like your GP you can talk to, or someone who helped you the first time? Universities tend to be quite understanding about these things, is there a lecturer/tutor you can talk to about how unhappy you are?

Reply 24

Oxidative Phosphorylation

Original post by Sarky

Original post by Lantana

Yes. I would guess your tutor would be the best bet, unless there is another lecturer you prefer to talk to. A break might be useful, but I guess they'll want to go over all your options with you.

Original post by Mushi_master

Original post by LatinMachine

I just wanted to come back and say thank you for all your advice. I have stuck it out, I mentioned something briefly to my tutor - I've only met him once, he just emailed to check everything was okay - I said things have been a bit rocky recently, he said let me know if there is anything I can do. It got to a point where I was planning on seeing my GP (I really don't want to do this) and in that case would have emailed him to let him know, but I decided against it.

Things have improved. I do not feel so ****. I am -coping- with the revision (just about, there have been some flutters of panic), and I think I have a decent chance of passing. I am not that lonely.

I think in the long run it will be good that I left that circle of friends; they really aren't very nice people and I do have other friends and since leaving have slowly but surely built up a new collection. Different flatmates for next year which (shock horror) aren't medics which is also refreshing. I also met a few months ago and now started to fall for someone who also is not a medic. It's nice to be able to get away from the cliquey-ness. I've met more medics as well by being more open and friendly and it's shown me how shut off that group of friends were. (Although I still have a lot of residual anger and hurt from how they treated me, grrr).

So hopefully I'll pass and come back next year.

(edited 12 years ago)

Reply 25

Spaceface

Hey thought I'd add some of my thoughts. Sorry to hear you've been having such a rough time of it.

I'm at a PBL based med school too (2nd year), and like you, wasn't at all impressed with PBL to begin with. I also thought it was a crazy DIY way of learning medicine and was frankly scared of trying to teach myself so much. It look me the first term to really figure out how to actually do PBL-based learning. Having got the hang of it though I do genuinely think it's a good way of learning medicine and at the end of the day it produces good doctors. Hopefully now you're a bit more used to it all (obv you started this a while ago) and find that you can learn this way.

One thing I'd suggest if you're still finding it hard to structure your time would be to work with other people - if you're working to another persons timetable you should find it a lot easier to motivate yourself to get out of bed so you don't keep them waiting. I'm not a massive fan of group study sessions but if I'm having a bad week as far as getting out of bed is concerned I'll arrange with my housemate that we'll make sure we're both up and studying by a certain time - I find this particularly helpful in exam or coursework time when there's much less timetabled.

I hope some of this is vaguely helpful :smile:

sorry if people have already said it - I didn't read all the posts :P I want to ask what uni you're at but not sure if that'd be bad in case there's people on here who've been mean to you...