So I just wanna add my two korunas to this board. I will attest to everything that golden wombat and neil c have said...these topics have been of much discussion in both their bat caves.

People come here and assume that it's going to be like harvard med just in prague, the city of spires. Alot of people come here and have no clue what they are in for and I think that nine times out of ten disenchantment from this place is a direct result of shock. Our first year class (of which I am a part of) has dwindled in number from something like eighty to fifty and most of them left within the first few weeks and more are expected to leave or rather not make it to the next year. There are no guarantees of success here and many people don't expect that upon coming here. There is lots of boredom and uselesness associated with classes and lecutres but on a positive note I will say that no matter how bad a lecture or a lecturer has been they have always been very nice and helpful to me one on one. Many times I have found that even the most evil looking professor has taken delight in the fact that I am interested in their subject or interested enough to put in the work to not fail their subject. Foreign students here to an extent have a bad rap because many of them come here thinking they are overqualified and they will merely go through the motions of attending school here in order to kill time between now and when they get their MD in a couple of years. As Neil C said there is lots of pain involved in school here in the first few years...it's nothing but boring memorization and maybe a right of passage to allow you a ticket to the big game....whether or not that's right or wrong is a topic for another discussion. I have problems with the way things are done here quite often and I am encountering what I believe to be a lot more friction and frustration than I expected. But as of lately I am remembering why I came here in the first place: I want to be a doctor, want the minimum amount of B.S. involved in getting into med school and want someplace nice to be while I spend the best years of my life toiling away in front of a book. Having said that I guess I have no right to complain because Prague is a great city and unlike anyting I've ever seen and I will not grow as tired of it as quickly as my native NY. I guess the moral of the story is to check your ego at the door and come here expecting the worst. If you expect the worst you'll be pleasantly surprised often but if you come here thinking that everything will be just dandy and you need to put in your order for monogrammed lab coats soon than you will be horribly disappointed. Take my advice as you wish but I think I'm pretty impartial. I have lots of problems with this place but it all comes down to the individual and how willing they are to perservere and deal and in the end I think those are two qualities very befitting of future doctors. Many years spent as a paramedic have shown me nothing is ever as it seems, and two minutes before you punch out to go home you're gonna have to do a three hour transport to boston.


dan

hey, it's my man dan! good to see you posting! how goes chem and histo???

don't worry, my brother. you are almost done! summer is right around the corner

Dan,

Appreciate you taking the time to chip in your 2 korunas worth.

But why should I got an Eastern European med school if I know I am should expect the worst? I mean yeah some of us cant get into US med schools, so we maybe we should realistic about cultural differences and professors teaching style and stuff. But if one follows your logic, thats like saying we should really buy a crappy furniture just because we couldnt find a good one and keep low hopes and say if the furniture doesnt break down in 3 months as opposed to 4, that mean we got ourselves a good deal!

No offense there fellow valuemd member, while I see where you are coming from, I think your logic/reasoning is really flawed. No point going a an eastern european med school if it cant provide quality education and if the profs are have a poor view of foreign grads. If thats the case, then they should stop taking foreign grads altogether, if at all they are concerned about the schools reputation

i think the reasoning is do not expect US standards. and, that can safely be said for most of the foriegn schools. the education is great, profs are great, it is just a different system, that takes gettin used to. that is my take on dan's post, and my personal experience there.

basically, when you go abroad, no matter where you go, you need to be ready to adapt to the country/school you are now studying in. it sounds simple, but the fact is most people overlook that. then, they are very surprised when it is different, and think somehow that different=bad. that is not the best attitude to have, especially with EE schools.

Hey,

I think if you view going abroad for med school as something you do for lack of getting into an american med school I think your plan is flawed from the beginning. I came to Charles WITHOUT having applied to american med schools. I came here not just for the medical education, but for the all encompassing experience of education and education abroad. If you come here to substitute american education you're going to be nothing but let down and pissed off. All day and all night I listen to my friends complain about school and I do a lot of complaining as well to my friends. My complaining revolves around how the world is against me (which it is) and how everyone's looking at me and talking about me(cause they are) and my friends complain about how school just isn't like it is in the states or in england.....I guess that's what happens at Czech med school, it bears no resemblance to non czech med schools, hah go figure!!!! The bottom line is no matter how much it pains me to say it, med school is about self teaching. I spent five years studying math in the states and my work revolved around UNDERSTANDING things....there's no understanding in medicine, just memorization and UNDERSTANDING when to use stuff. For that very reason the professors here can't really TEACH you anything. Furthermore if they try and teach you anything you'd be so bored you wouldn't want to learn it from them. In the grand scheme of things education is all about what you put into it and as much as I'm bitter and pissed off cause i'm not doing phenomenally here at med school I know that when I'm done in six years the most important thing I could have learned here was HOW TO LEARN. Medicine will always change and as doctors you're always going to have to keep on top of new developments and I doubt you'll be able to run to your med school professors for the rest of your life to learn stuff. For this reason I feel like even though all my biochem and anatomy I'm LEARNING now might never be used or might never seem important it stands as a testament to my ability to embody information. I get pissed with the way things get done here in Prague but I just keep remembering my mantra: "the tougher someting is, the more it needs to be done."

Sincerely,

dan kameny

"undistinguished med student"[/b]

My dears,

What you all say, without a doubt is very healthy for us to hear. I went to my home country for 6 months(Romania), attended medical school and dropped out for different reasons( husband could not find a job, Romanian schools not being on the loan lists), and so on. I had a hard time, but in the end loved it. I made a point of going to meeting all the teachers after class,telling them I have 3 year old twins at home and I ned extra help. They ALL were extremely nice putting in a few extra hours at the cadaver, etc.
In the end after having a ** in Neuroscience from the US, as you all are saying, I had a tremendous amount of babysitting for classes and from teachers. What I found when I went there is there is no teacher holding your hand, unless you want to study. And you guys are right, true doctors sort themselves out. When I had to leave, it will be a year this May, I had true withdrawls, I realized I was meant to be a doctor and this is why I have been trying to get into Semmelweis. It is not black or white, you either love it or you hate it. Even the ones that hate it end up loving it in some weird sort of way. I miss it terribly.Keep posting, there are some people that feed theiri dreams off of you.