Yeah, totally with you on that. I knew lots of pre-Med majors in college and I could never wrap my head around how someone could enjoy such a masochistic form of learning. But the common thread of successful pre-Med majors is that they get straight A’s and are very successful memorizing everything.

Medicine is basically all rote memorization, from pre-Med to the MCAT. It makes sense to select for doctors who are good at it, because they need to have a quickly queryable, but wide breadth of knowledge in their head at all times.

Personally I’m happy to know that my doctor is able to memorize and collate so much information. But I do worry that the way he learns may also restrict his creativity and problem solving.

Perhaps as AI moves into medicine, doctors won’t need to rely so much on their own memorization, and can focus their efforts on problem solving.