Living the dream became a nightmare

When I wanted to get into medical school, all I wanted was to get into medical school. It was the end goal, everything I was working towards. It was all I could see and all that mattered. And no one could have told me anything to think otherwise. A lot of soon to be medical students out there are thinking the same thing. And people look at those in medical school and think "wow, they are living the dream." Wrong.
Apparently the dream is actually a nightmare, a waking nightmare that you have to get through in order to live the real dream, which is being a doctor. And all the while you have to hope that that dream doesn't also turn into a nightmare. Medical school is hard, and we all know that going in, but we don't really know just how hard it is to be a medical student because we were working too hard just to get into medical school. And at the time we didn't think anything could possibly be more difficult. Once we got into medical school it would be cake, right? Sure, medical school is hard, but who would have known it would be this hard?
We are all overacheivers. It is what we do and how we got here. We are used to juggling 20 credit semesters of advanced science classes, plus shadowing at the local hospital, volunteering at any health organization we can, being president of at least three extra curricular groups (one of which had to do with science or health care), being in the honor societies, tutoring, working, TA-ing, getting straight As, studying for the MCAT, and making sure we were popular enough with our professors to get a good letter of recommendation, all while maintaining some semblance of a social life. And the entire purpose of all of it was to get into medical school. There wasn't anything we did in college that we didn't do so we could put it on our resumes, or talk about it in an interview. We figured once we got into medical school we could finally relax and get to being a doctor.
And that is the sad reality that we lived in until getting into medical school. Even during orientation and the first weeks of school we still had that glitter in our eye. Knowing that we had finally gotten into medical school, and now things were supposed to be good. Because sure, the material is harder than anything we've ever known, but now all we have to do is study. We've already gotten into medical school, we don't need to do all the extra, outside of studying stuff we had to do when we got into medical school. So we can just focus on the learning. And we see other medical students, sitting and studying in coffee shops, wearing their white coats around the hospitals, telling us how great medical school is, and we believe it.
No one ever tells you just how hard it is. And even if they had, we wouldn't have believed it. That's where I come in, and why this blog is being written, because someone needs to tell you what it is really like in here, in this crazy world of medical school. Not so that we deter people from going into medicine, but so you can understand that really, truly and honestly, this is something you have never experienced before. And it isn't a dream. and please, please, favorite cousin of mine out there, stop telling me I'm living the dream. Because this dream sucks and I'd like to wake up now.
The reality is, that the work is harder, and there is more to learn, but you still have to balance learning and studying with doing things to build up a resume, because residency is just four short years away, and you start to realize that your grades aren't going to matter, and maybe your Step 1 score isn't going to be as great as you thought, so maybe you should join that interest group or start that NPO or work with that professor, and now how are you supposed to fit all that in with the added work of just making it through classes and trying to honor (or just pass) and now with the understanding that EVERYTHING is important in a way it wasn't before. Because while you can tell yourself that all you need to do is pass all your classes (which is true, you just need to pass), you also have to know all of this somehow for something. And all of this gets hammered into your head from the first second you get into medical school, and all the people you were competing against to get into medical school are now in medical school with you competing for residencies! The stress keeps piling on and on and on until you feel like you are going to explode. And once again, the only people who can really understand what you are going through-the other medical students-are the ones pretending it's all okay, the ones you can't talk to, and the ones adding to your stress in the first place.
So no, I'm not living the dream. Please stop telling me I am, it doesn't make me feel better...