Comment #17: Medical School on Tumblr.
It's always struck me how insufferably sincere and humourless the majority of medical school blogs/tumblrs are, as if everyone is constantly scared of the following:
a) Expressing interests outside of medicine, without having to preface it with a sentence about how 'balance is important'. Why not just post stuff, out of a medical context, as it exists in your life: as relief.
b) Expressing opinions that are contrary to a prescribed curriculum, or that show some kind of critical thinking. As long as you're not being offensive or breaking confidentiality, you're allowed to express your own views.
c) Revealing the secret truth about medical school.... it's actually not the pinnacle of stress/hard work/achievement... it's as hard as you make it, and there are infinitely harder ways to make a living. People seem to perpetuate the myth that in order to do well at medical school you need to live as a caffeine-fuelled zombie, who spends their entire lives in libraries. You don't. As long as you sort your shit out, you can have as much free time as anyone else.
And believe me, the people that lose sight of the latter point are the ones that lose their passion and enjoyment of medicine the quickest.
You can enter medicine with all the good intentions in the world, and have some sob story about how you're inspired to be a doctor so you can cure (x) or help (y), but that won't sustain you. Having a basic understanding that medicine can be fun, interesting, stimulating and entertaining will keep you going longer, and help you learn more. The less time you spend reading, and the more time you can spend talking to patients and health professionals will make you learn infinitely more about medicine and life.
So please, for christ's sake, stop being so earnest, and dull, and sincere, and wholesome. I'm sure you're scaring a lot of genuinely interesting people off when they think medical school is how you portray it.
And if it really is like that in every other university, then jesus, come to the South-West of the UK and have some fun.