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How hard is medicine compared to Year 12 VCE

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polky:
The concepts aren't hard, and it is sufficient to understand the concepts to pass, but knowing the details to get a high score is tough - memorising countless drug names, anatomical terms, self-care facts, developmental theories etc on the off-chance that it'll be on the exam.

The hardest aspect of the course, IMO, is memorising or understanding things in a manner that will serve you well in the future.  The whole point of our course is to be good doctors, and there's no real point memorising all this stuff in first year that is unimportant or you will eventually forget when you actually start practicing.  So learning the information with the long term view of retaining it for the future rather than just to pass the upcoming exam is the most difficult.  (I tend to cram facts then forget them after the exam, like for VCE History.  It depends on your learning style.) Which is why there is a heavy emphasis on clinical applications in the course, I guess.  You tend to get bogged down by all the minuscule details that it's easy to lose sight of the big picture. (especially for anatomy)

As for your other questions regarding contact hours, 25ish is my approximation, but things like crazy illogical 5-hour breaks, extra reading/study and hanging around the anatomy museum would probably up that figure.

doingvce:
thanks for the replies everyone
so i guess the main thing is selecting how much you want to learn (i tend to go overboard with my subjects atm and it takes ages trying to cover every detail thoroughly)
in terms of "decent" grade i just want to know how much you have to put in to maintain a "distinction weighted average mark (70 per cent)" because my careers teacher encouraged me to apply for scholarships through vtac and this is one of ones i'm interested in
so overall, with your own personal experiences would say you found ur yr 12 "harder" or ur 1st year of med (or how would you compare the 2)
thanks

shinny:
1st year of med is definitely easier. In terms of keeping a 70%, it shouldn't be that difficult considering that you can get in in the first place. You can do that simply by getting a rough overview of everything as stated above, rather than straight memorisation. Keep in mind that I haven't been in 2nd year yet, and 1st year med is notorious for being easy, and 2nd year is notorious for being the hardest year of med.

anconeous:
Med is very cruisey at monash for the first year, second semester a little more challenging

Self directed learning is the biggest challenge about medicine and often one that people fail given that they still expect tutorials on all examinable content, and are still on VCE spoon-feed mode. Contact hours are not as greulling as they once were and alot of "softer" content such as sociology and complimentary medicine make up a large part of most of a given weeks timetable

it gets, like any course, progressively more difficult, but at hospital placements the amount of time you put in is totally dependent on you. Getting 70% or above on exams is not majorly difficult and will depend on your work ethic, like any other cours.

oh, 4th year is the hardest year of the course, by far

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