M1

[Curious Brian]

How hard (or challenging) really is M1? It seems that M1's at the U of M are pretty happy about their school compared to most other schools.
Also...I just took a look at the weekly course schedule and found out that we will not touch on gross anatomy until the start of the second semester(but we will have pharmacology etc typical M2 courses)...this is kinda unusual right? I thought gross was THE first med school course??

[sazzafrazz]

Truth be told we really didn't get into gross anatomy until block III which ran Mar, Apr, and May. Toronto from what I understand starts off with Anatomy and finishes up with the touchy feely stuff that we start with. Personally I think I prefer the anatomy later as close to clerkship as possible rather than 2 years before going into the hospitals.

As for hard, you've heard this before, its not hard work(none of it will be over your head), but it is an incredible amount of volume and time. The hard part is accepting that you will never get through all of the material and you will never see 90% again! That's the hard part. There really isn't any extra free time anymore especially if you have any real "life" commitments outside of school, for example, you don't live at home with Mommy and Daddy anymore, etc,etc.
saz