Ah, Grey’s Anatomy. It’s an experience. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll reevaluate all of your life choices and try drinking enough tequila to forget about how cruel the world is, while forever mourning the death of Derek Shepherd. And if you’re a true Grey’s fan, you’ll love every minute of it.
Due to the dramatic nature of the show itself (ten blade, please), Grey’s is a go-to show for a wide audience, but can be particularly relevant for pre-med students. Therefore, a topic of popular debate related to this multi-award winning show is its believability and how accurately (or inaccurately) it describes the journey from med student to resident, and the life a surgeon in general.
It may sound silly to assume that some people take what happens on Grey’s Anatomy as a depiction of real life, to whatever degree it may be, but if you’ve watched Grey’s Anatomy in its entirety you can begin to see how this can happen. From Shonda Rhimes’s incredible writing, to the spot-on production and Patrick Dempsey’s ever so dreamy eyes, sometimes you can’t help but insert yourself into Grey-Sloan Memorial as the newest intern.
However, I’m here to vouch for the rest of us. Yes, I’m a pre-med and yes, I’ve rewatched every season of Grey’s Anatomy at least 5 times. But I also feel I have successfully refrained from believing that my future is going to look anything like the journey of Meredith Grey, Derek Shepherd or Cristina Yang.
It’s clear that the cast and crew of Grey’s Anatomy spend a lot of their energy trying to use correct medical terminology and making every surgery seem as real as possible, but at the end of the day, we have to remember that Grey’s Anatomy is nothing more than a drama TV series.
As much as we may hate to admit it, I don’t think any of us would want Ellen Pompeo to be the only one present when we show up to the ER after a car accident. And for that same reason, we can’t expect medical school or residency to be anything like it is at Grey-Sloan Memorial.
Will people hook up with people they shouldn’t, and will you sometimes go home after an 18-hour day and not know what to do with yourself besides sit on the floor sipping a bottle of tequila? Probably. But will you marry the attending neurosurgeon that you accidentally slept with as an intern? And will half of your intern class die tragically in front of your eyes before finishing their residency? Probably not.
Grey’s Anatomy is frankly one of the best medical TV dramas (if not THE best) you’ll find out there, so of course, a lot of us pre-meds watch it and become more invested in it than we are willing to admit. However, before you accuse us of only wanting to become doctors because we want to be the next Meredith Grey, let this be a friendly reminder that it’s going to take a lot more than Derek Shepherd’s dreamy eyes to get us through med school. And we are fully aware of that.
In reality, med school will probably be a little less tragic and a little more exhausting than it was for Meredith Grey, and that’s okay. All that we can really hope for is that someday we find ourselves walking into work thinking “it’s a beautiful day to save lives.”
