This is a long winded response to OP but also contains what I think are generic/useful information for most struggling students.
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In these situations, most times there are legitimate concerns. Many times the remediation techniques are lacking as much or more than the student is, but in the real world, we are all accountable for ourselves. Once you're labeled as a bad apple, it's hard to get that reputation off and there will be those looking for mistakes as opposed to see improvement so the best strategy being a learner is prevention (just like in medicine) and making sure there is no microscope on you in the first place. It's always good to have a healthy level of "type-A" or proactive personality as an intern reflexively trying to find and improve your mistakes because many will exist. It can be a difficult balance between that and putting yourself down too much so it's a careful balance. Many times, students/residents are not notified something is happening until it it's late in the process. Part of the problem is that students don't see the subtle signs or make excuses for themselves. Students are so used to thinking they're competent and justifiably so because they worked hard to get where they are and when they get called out, they try to find another reason (i.e. this attending's style is different). I feel we need to go back to normalizing real constructive critical feedback but do it in a professional way Most medical students I work with in my field are not exposed to what they need to be. I'm not saying they're incompetent because when it comes time for residency, many students quickly learn, however, some learners are slower than others or just didn't learn simple things and when the whole class is one place and they are functioning at new M3 level and it goes undiagnosed for several months, that's where problems arise. I also think medical education (like many other fieds) favors fast adapters/learners as opposed to genuinely interested learners, but that's a separate discussion. Overall, OP I would count myself lucky you got this wake up call in medical school itself. Chances are this would have shown up in residency if it didn't show up here and while it may hurt your residency application, you can bounce back and this may change how you practice your entire medical career. Now to the issues you've cited:
1.) Tardiness: I characterize tardiness in two ways.
A. Home-Hospital tardiness is unacceptable at this stage in life. Fix that. If you make it to the hospital, there's no reason you couldn't have been there 10-15 minutes earlier. Completely deprioritize whatever it is that is making you late. Most of the time it's sleep which I get can be tricky especially for tough wakers because you need sleep. One helpful tip I once got was that if you have a tough time waking up or sometimes wake up earlier than you should, don't drift back to sleep if you wake up and there's less than 90 minutes until you have to be up. Just get up. Similarly, if you wake up and there's 120 minutes till wake up, set an alarm to wake up in 100 minutes to give yourself 10 minutes to go to sleep and 90 for a cycle. To avoid complexity, try to keep your sleep-wake cycle as consistent as possible. See a sleep counselor if you need to. This is important! You will reap exponentially more benefits if you fix this now than later. If you are waking up on time, your morning commute or routine are likely the issue which are more fixable.
B. Hospital-Rounds tardiness is unprofessional, but the reasons can often be in good faith. Many times, learners are inefficient in collecting information they need prior to rounds. This needs to be intervened on very early (i.e. the first month). Similarly, some are late because they have a counterproductive perfectionist tendency (i.e. lack of prioritization) and want everything wrapped in a bow before rounds. Often, people have some mix of perfectionism-inefficiency. The management for this is to have a senior or someone who does things reasonably well model standard/good practices and it's up to the learner to absorb that feedback, take it to heart, and apply it. Usually it requires taking a step back and not overthinking things and having a system and being organized.
If you liked this blurb, give us some examples of where you struggled with questions on cases. First of all, was this small group break out sessions between medical students? On rounds pimping? OR pimping? Most of the time, it doesn't take a lot of effort to fix this. Most people who are labeled with a knowledge gap in their clinical years are judged to have one because they do or say things an attending will deem "very stupid". That very stupid though is relative to their peers. For example, if a freshly minted M3 tells me Creatinine went from 0.8 to 1.0 in an already sick patient, we'll talk about it. If a freshly minted intern tells me that, then alarm bells go off in my head and I start questioning what they were doing on their medicine month/subI or what else this person may not know and make sure I do pre-intern and pre-senior rounds on their patients. Regardless, the solution is to understand the common things everyone knows. You usually don't get this from a textbook. You won't find a textbook that tells you Hb drop from 9->8 in a septic ICU patient with ESRD is likely relevant. You get that by hearing things and picking up social cues on rounds. Medicine requires you to be a social learner. Work with someone dedicated to teaching you patiently without judgement (i.e) a hospitalist or resident for a week and pick their brain even about stupid stuff. When they tell you your reasoning is wrong, take it at face value and rely on their impression until you can make it on your own. In surgery, the answer's to their questions are not from reading the books at least in medical school. Surgeons are habitual/experienced learners and they usually like to ask the same sets of questions about their pet topics. Find out from someone above you who know what the surgeons are asking. They'll test anatomical landmarks in the OR and ask what what the indications for the procedure are. If you don't know, they'll wonder why you're in the OR wasting your time watching this? My first day of clinicals, my friend told me he was on surgery and he scrubbed for a case and the surgeon was waiting outside the OR and asked the M3 what the potassium was. The student didn't know. He told the student to GTFO out of the OR. Good message, wrong execution. As a resident though, there is a completely seperate set of expectations like procedural incompetence and that's a whole different topic.
