I seriously want to hear from others who have been through similiar experiences.
I am in my 30s female and desparate to get into medical school.
Whenever I visit a careers they tell me that medical schools are filled with incrowds and people from certain walks of life.
My fears are? How do you cope with incrowds, Especially at my age when you know you wont fit in.
I was also told that at medical school teachers are more close to the students they like and support incrowds.
If you dont fit in you have no chance of survival or passing.
How can I over come this fear.
Is there anyone out there prefably who is at medical school in England who I can chat to who has the answers?
It sounds like you are concerned about finding others with similar experiences who will support and encourage you. As an older premed I was encouraged by the website BestPreMed.com that said that older non-traditional Medical Students had become the “rule rather than the exception” http://www.bestpremed.com/nt.htm. I think you do have a good chance of making friends. We all need support from others and a good support network is critical to success. Even in the unlikely situation that the whole social situation is thrown against you, your family, faith community, or others may provide support.
Franklin Roosevelt said, “the only thing we have to fear is fears itself” and fear is at the root of many negative outcomes. A person can be in the center of many loving supportive people and feel lonely and isolated because fear cripples them. From what I can discern from your post your fear of not “fitting in” seems to be your biggest enemy.
I have had similar fears myself. During my college years. Isolation and lonliness led to periods of depression. I will admit that I have had much counseling over the years and it has helped. I am also a Christian and the spirtual disciplines of prayer and meditaion has helped quite a bit as well. Daily exercise also helps and in studies has been found to be as effective in helping mental outlook as anti-depressant drugs.
What are “incrowds”?
You won’t find the word in a dictionary but you can find quite a few examples if you do a search on “incrowd” on the net. Sometimes the “in crowd” is a group of alpha males and females who exhibit a great deal of social power. For instance, many high schools are “ruled” by a group of football players and cheerleaders. They are the popular ones, the bright ones, and the beautiful ones. Many people deny their existence or power, but they do exist in most groups of people. Sometimes the incrowd refers to everyone except the ostracized, and those that don’t fit in because of having a different age or different group of experiences from the norm. All societies have a pecking order and it can be very difficult to find oneself at the wrong end of the chain. Studies on animals have determined that loss of status in a group can have an adverse effect on brain chemistry.
My experience this year in med school has been that yes, there are in-crowds, clicks (sp?) of people who hang around together. However, at 32, I’ve made my own groups of friends and acquaintances (to me there is a big difference between the two). Actually, I have two really good friends, another female who is my age and a guy who is 23 (fresh out of undergrad).
The most difficult things for me have been the “manners” of a lot of my classmates-- things like continuing to talk when the lecturer has gone to the podium and is beginning to speak or laying across the rows of seats like they were at home in bed (but I think that’s more my military background influencing me there 
But I’ve learned to get over it since I can’t do anything about it.
Go in with and open mind and an appreciateion for the vast array of experiences that everyone has had and you’ll become comfortable with this “new” group of people. Don’t worry about any in-crowds. At least at our school, ever since anatomy finished in October, we spend all of our time outside of lecture in small groups that are randomly assigned, so you are forced to be around the clicks. Socially, I spend all of my time with my husband and family (they are local) and so whether or not I fit in with any of the groups has become a non-issue for me.
Just my 2 cents…
manners…
on my current rotation, morning rounds are held in a conference room. Students sit at one end of the table, residents at the other. Often an attending will arrive late, after all the chairs are full… coming in at the ‘student’ end of the room. And more often than not, the closest student stays seated, oblivious. It makes me nuts.
cliques or “incrowds”…
while there are groups of people who hang together at my school, I don’t see any of them as being significantly more influential. There are some individual students who, during our pre-clinical years, tended to be the ones to ALWAYS be in line to ask questions of a lecturer after a class, sometimes out of genuine curiosity about a point but other times trying to make a strong impression.
Hayley, I don’t know if you’re describing a phenomenon that is stronger in British schools, though. Most of us are in US schools and so our impressions may not help you much.