I found out a few days ago that I had passed my final pre-clerkship exams. I can't say enough how excited I am about being officially done with my pre-clerkship education and to be moving onto the clinical portion of my schooling.
Unlike most medical students, I did two undergraduate degrees before applying to become a physician. My first was very theoretical in nature and at best tangentially related to medicine. It was never meant to lead to medical school - my goal coming out of high school was to go onto do a PhD in that field and to work as a researcher. I was capable in this field - better than many, but hardly near the top of my undergrad class. I was also rather unmotivated to push forward. Academia is supposed to be about a greater purpose - expanding humankind's understanding of the universe - but the major impact of doing a good job is personal career advancement (see this comic, courtesy of PHD Comics, which you should definitely be reading if you're considering graduate work either outside of a medical career or in one). For whatever reason, I never found enough of an intrinsic passion for my work in that field and could never push past that apathy to do work that was largely for my own benefit.
Anyway, later on in my first undergrad, I started doing some volunteer work, mostly with kids. I honestly forget why - I hadn't done much volunteer work in high school and it wasn't in any way related to field. But, I enjoyed it, enough so that it became the highlight of my week.
That led me towards healthcare. After doing a quick volunteer stint at the local hospital, I ended up doing a second degree which led to certification as an Allied Health Professional (I won't say which one to preserve a small shred of anonymity). I loved it. Virtually everything was directly applicable to an actual job - even the academic work had practical relevance in the short-term. I found it much easier to work on projects, knowing they might have some tangible benefit to others, and studying wasn't nearly as difficult. The clinical component, as hard as it was, was incredibly rewarding - working with patients made learning the rest easier, in part because I had a lot of internal motivation to do things right for those patients.
Going to med school has felt like a short repeat of those two programs. My pre-clerkship years have felt a lot like my first undergrad. While the material is ostensibly practical in medical school, there is no expectation of mastery of material in pre-clerkship like there was in my second undergrad and the direct relevance to practice is frequently unclear (this was particularly true for a few specific subjects). As a few physicians opined, doing well in pre-clerkship is pretty meaningless to a student's likelihood to do well in practice.
Because of this, I've struggled a bit through my pre-clerkship days. Don't get me wrong, I've passed everything without too much difficulty (though maybe a bit of finger-crossing) and have managed to put together a set of extra-curriculars (including research) that I hope will reflect well on my ability to be productive, but it has not been easy to push myself to perform. I certainly could have done better in my classes than I did.
My hope is that clerkship will be a bit more like my second undergrad - more applied, more meaningful human interactions.
Long story short, I'm looking forward to the next year.
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