Medical School Column [Graduate Life]

It has been said that entering medical school is like returning to high school. This is based on a number of similarities between the two. First, you have a relatively small medical school class and everyone takes the same classes. Second, classes start at the painful times of either 8:00 or 8:30 a.m. Last, you actually get the impression that your professors and course directors want you to succeed just like in high school, which is very different from the general sense of indifference of college professors to whether you pass or fail. Therefore, because of the differences between college and medical school, the first few weeks were meant to ease the transition. For our class, Harvard Medical School (HMS) did this through two different methods: 1) academic societies and 2) a two-week long introductory/orientation course.