Med School just a dream?

Organic Chemistry in my day was the great barrier to med school. What aspect of the physics course trips you up?

@stanleybmanly

I would do the practice book problems and the professors suggested problems and get them all right. In fact the other day in class I was teaching everyone around me how to do problems. But then when I take the tests every week, I ended up getting Ds and Cs. So I’m not even sure what I could be doing wrong. Stress maybe? I don’t know

You can ask for an alternative class for physics. Talk to your guidance counselor.

If you do the work fine but just bomb the tests, I would blame stress. Personally, I never stressed over tests because I saw them as no different than homework; same material, both are graded, and both are so the teacher can tell whether you understand the material.

@RedDeerGuy1 I doubt it. Physics is fundamental to MANY advanced skills, including medicine. For instance, anyone who doesn’t know how radiation works cannot really work around many sorts of medical equipment. The only way to get out of Physics classes is the way I went; do other schooling (like trade school or military training) that gives college credits in Physics.. though you’ll only get that if you learn Physics well enough to complete that training anyways. All of the really cool (and/or lucrative) stuff requires advanced math and science.

Talk to your instructor. When I was in engineering school c’s were good grades on tests in physics. You would end up with an A or B after the curve.
When an instructor is pushing you like this, thank them. You are actually learning it and that’s the bottom line. If you can find out how you are doing relative to everyone else that’ll tell you where you are at. Physics are generally weed out courses. Don’t let a few bad grades derail your plans.

If you were actually flunking then dropping was the right thing to do. Don’t think twice about it. You can take the course again and probably with a different instructor. Once you “get” physics it stays with you and it enables yo to move on to other “real” courses. If you are spending 4 or more hours for each in class hour then you are doing it right. Physics often hits people hard because they have not had real courses that require actual study yet. You’ll get used to it.

I found this article on chewing gum and taking tests interesting

What about infectious disease epidemiology? Are you interested in population-level health (instead of individual-level)? Look into public health.

I had one of those impossibly hard physics professors. I failed every test and got a B. I was the only non-engineer in the class (pre-med at the time) and felt like the world’s biggest idiot. I feel you.

I urge you to not live so far in the future. College is so fun! Don’t miss out on this very special time in your life by living in an unknown, future time. Do you have a bit of anxiety? Some mindfulness meditation may help.

You just need to find an accessible class. It’s usually not the subject but the teachers and how well you get them or not. Some people do great in Physics and Chem with some teachers but not with others. I’d check with my advisor to see all the allowed ways to fill that requirement, including lower-level classes, check student reviews for which of those classes seem to be most accessible, or transfer credits from some other school, even a community college.

@jerv Sorry, you’re wrong here. Physics is nice, but it’s pretty useless when it comes to medical school. Honestly I don’t have a clue why it’s still required.

@travelbabe24 My advice is to try a different physics class with a different teacher.

@Rarebear I partially disagree. Physics can be a kind of brain bootcamp and teaches you a particular way of thinking that I would hope is incredibly useful as a doc.

@ARE_you_kidding_me You probably do not know that I am a doc and I am involved in medical education. I know what I’m talking about. There is some very base level of high school physics that MIGHT be considered useful. But to use that as a weed-out for potential physicians is not.

@travelbabe24, can you afford a tutor? Given what @Rarebear has said about how irrelevant Physics is to your future work as a doctor, it would be a great pity to give up on your dream because you struggle with this aspect of your study. You only need to pass the course. See if your lecturer can connect you with a former student who has excelled in this class, and ask them to tutor you. You may need to pay them, but that would be worth it if it gets you over this hurdle. I’ve put people in touch with potential mentors/tutors when they’ve struggled with specific courses.

Don’t give up on your dream. If this is the only thing that you’re really struggling with, find away to get through it. Whether or not you ever use it again isn’t really the point. The point is it’s part of this degree so you have to pass this course.

Yes, exactly.

Don’t get me wrong, I love physics. It was my favorite subject. My hobby is astrophysics and Astrophotography. I can explain General Relativity to a 6th grader and I can derive the Lorentz contraction.

But medicine involves only very basic physics.

@Rarebear I do know you are a doc. I also realize that not all medical doctors are scientists. I’m just saying that the mental challenge that you get with physics trains your mind to solve problems in a very particular way. You don’t have to remember F=ma but your mind remembers the process. It’s a process that carries over into your professional life. It did with me anyway. I’m sure you are using that training even if it is indirectly. Docs don’t need to know about entropy or infinite square wells but they must be able to solve problems and use critical thinking. You can take every philosophy class in logic or take all of the biology regurgitation you can stomach but it will all fail in comparison to solving applied math and physics when it comes to training your mind to solve problems.

@ARE_you_kidding_me Not sure why I’m even still discussing this with you, but here I go. So, are you saying because @travelbabe24 can’t seem to do well in college physics she (I assume “she” from the avatar name) should be disallowed from going to medical school?

I’m going to answer for you: Of course not. Of the basic sciences, physics is the least relevant. And even the most relevant, biochemistry, is not that relevant—and I write this as someone who nearly graduated valedictorian with high honors in biochemistry. There are many, many many skills that are necessary to be a physician. Learning F=ma is not one of them.

No, not at all. I think you are misunderstanding what I am doing a poor job of explaining. She could never take another physics course and be a great doc. I agree with you about that. I’m saying that the process of learning something outside of your element will make you better at solving problems in general.

On this final point we agree. :-)

I think we always did, I over-explain things