Medical School Horror stories are a cathartic and humourous way to share our struggles and triumphs  so we can have a laugh, a cry and make it easier for the next overwhelmed med student! Send us your stories here!

Emma is a 3rd medical student at Deakin

Have you ever studied so hard you reached a point where you sort of break? Almost like everything you just spent too long trying to absorb gets all mixed up and mushy and you begin to panic? I hadn’t, until the end of my first year of medical school. I’d heard people talk about burnout before. I’d thought that burnout wasn’t that bad, that we could get on with it, that our passion for our field of study would somehow minimise our vulnerabilities. 

We were in study week for our last set of major exams in the first year. I had spent up to 14 hours a day studying my butt off leading up to our last exam of the year and I was exhausted; my brain was fried, and I’d hit a point where although I wanted to study more, I physically couldn’t do it, nothing else would go in, and what was already in my brain was beginning to become jumbled.

I walked into the exam reminding myself I knew everything I needed to know - remain calm, submit, and exit. I felt like I was going surprisingly well. In the moments between answering questions I quietly reassured myself that my burnout in the lead up to this was probably disproportionately felt, because here I was able to complete this exam, and with ease.

I finished really early. Most people were still vigorously writing, so I checked over my work three times, satisfied, and asked if I could leave. When I got outside, I realised that I had finished 45 minutes early. Another 15 minutes passed before others started coming out and I wondered what everybody was writing to possibly take so long to finish? My friends came out worried they needed more time on the last few questions. I was confused by how quickly I’d finished. 

It wasn’t until we had gotten home and were cooking a celebratory dinner that my housemates started the “what did you answer for this question… and that question,” conversation and I was getting so confused about what they were talking about? Wondering if we were somehow given different questions? We pieced together that I had missed the last three pages of the exam. My heart sank. After everything I had worked so hard for. I could have just failed my first year because of my oversight.

I immediately emailed the unit chairs to tell them what I happened and to find out what I could do. The response seemed fair - that if the pages were missing from my book they would let me redo them. But the exam booklet was intact, the pages left blank. In my mind’s eye, I clearly remembered checking every single page right up until the back of the booklet. I remembered the movement of my hands turning over pages, my eyes scanning the text, checking thoroughly that I was done. And yet the pages were there, against my worn out memory. I must have looked directly at them while my brain was convinced I was finished.

That was the level of burnout that I reached that year. Luckily, I did not fail the exam. But it was a huge wake up call to change up my study habits and make sure I did not reach that level of burnout again.

Ask yourself, “If I have not taken care of myself, how will I possibly have it in me to learn to care for someone else as effectively as I can?” How can anyone? Burnout can be an unavoidable part of medical school and professional life, but making a habit of balancing study and self-care early in your medical school journey can help set you up for your hectic career to come.