Families, Health care workers, Patients, PLEASE...
Stop fucking wearing isolation gowns all over the hospital. So much for universal precautions. These gowns were designed to protect your clothes from patient pathogens, and the patient from your pathogens. If agents get on these gowns and you leave the room with them on and masquerade around the hospital like dumb-asses, then you're theoretically stirring diseases around in the general public.
I fucking hate seeing this shit.
Showing posts with label Medicine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Medicine. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Saturday, September 15, 2007
Mental Mas---- what?
I don't really let things get to me. As far as school's concerned, anyway.
Im about to jump head-first into my first battery (block) of exams this semester, and I'm ready to go. I've studied more for anatomy than probably 1/2 of all my undergraduate education put together; and I'd say it's not so bad. The material can be dry, but as long as you try to organize everything sensibly in your head, it comes together.
But back to my point. I think the reason that medical school/medical education doesn't really attack and stun me the way it does to a lot of my peers is because I'm a ...well, a reductionist.
I'm not special or different or above anyone else in my class in terms of who I am, I just take things for what they are and don't expect anything more. Not that I'm a pessimist or fatalist, no, not at all. But what I see a lot of kids doing is, again what dear Uncle Panda calls "Mental Masturbation."
So much of what we do and what we expect is lofty, heaped-on happy stuff. And yeah, we need it; we as a society and culture need all of this showy stuff like student-council, activities, study groups, class president. But on the fringes of my class, I just take what comes. I go to class, come home, learn the material, then go take the tests. If I expected to have some sort of huge, life-changing experience, than I'd either construct one out of nothing and live a lie, or be sorely disappointed.
You see, a great deal of group-think is involved whenever you have a tight group of people in one place at one time. Psychologists and sociologists would have a ball with medical school classes. Everyone is understandably under a ton of stress. We all share the same locker-room, facilities, anatomy lab, lecture halls, etc. We are all funneled into the same classes, tests, finals and we're all under the same administration. It's so easy to get lost and caught up in this new reality that I see kids losing themselves already and it's only been a month.
It's just school - I don't intend on being at the top of my class. Or even in the top 15%. The amount of work it takes to do that is extreme and is reserved for the inevitable 15% that actually want to live this stuff. As I've heard a lot, someone who is all study completely lacks breadth. What does 100s on anatomy exams and a class rank of 1 mean? To them it might mean a lot...but I can't imagine that lasting forever. They might get a coveted dermatology residency position and practice in a cush suburban town earning 400k/yr doing botox injections.
But it is what you make of it...what you expect. The tendency here at this point is to put life off and say "it will get better later." Sure, to a degree, it will. Second year is supposed to be a bit more interesting and the clinical years are supposed to be pretty enjoyable (overall...the key is overall). But you can't put everything on hold. Life is going by right now - you're in your early-mid 20s and at your prime. Live now. I will keep going out (not as often as before) and playing video games and doing all my geeky things because that is who I am. You don't have to put in 100 hours a week to master this stuff.
I can't speak from experience yet...but I know that you can log your 4-5 hours a day on the material and veg-out for the rest of the day. This should leave at the least an hour or two every single day to chill, on top of getting a good 7-8 hours of sleep! If you have the discipline, log 9a-5p on Saturday and perhaps another 8-hour "shift" on Sunday, and you can go out Friday and Saturday nights without a hitch! Even before a Monday exam I know people who survived and kept up a semblance of a normal life.
I can't wait until I actually have the credibility to talk about study-habits, but I can say that studying for hours and hours every day hasn't been all that awful. Yeah, it's a marathon. One semester feels like hell and forever and there are 4 vicious pre-clinical semesters to endure. After that lies 3rd year, surgery rotation, intern year, etc etc etc.
I think that ... there's just too much hardship to get scared about. Yeah, it sucks and its hard. Everyone who applies (should) know this. It's a path to choose and to walk. But I believe it's all in attitude and what you make of it. You can go into this and just rip yourself to shreds to get into a neuro-surgery residency at Harvard. That same person would probably be #1 at whatever they chose to do in life because they're a hard-worker, period.
But happiness is relative. What is happiness to you? To me? I can't imagine someone needing so much academic achievement to be happy. Is their appetite that big that they need to immerse themselves in uninterrupted study 24/7 to become a respected doctor? I guess so. But for me, happiness is a balance of a fulfilling career and lots of friends and family. That's what everyone tells you...but don't create realities for yourself in here, you just can't afford more stress than what's already going to come.
I think my bottom line is that person A and person B can take radically different approaches, experience radically different amounts of stress, yet still achieve the exact same thing. It's all in personal preference and approach. I can commit the brachial plexus to memory while sitting at home in my PJs and listening to Tool. You can do the same thing at the medical library at 11pm in your cubicle in dead silence. That's great. Come test day we'll both have the same thing in our head. I'm happy doing my work at home and you want to stay at school to do yours; that's fine.
Just do what's best for you, I think. And, while not being a pessimist, don't expect anything more than what you see. There doesn't have to be sugar-coating on everything. People get sick, people die, kids get cancer, good people have bad things happen to them. Lots of things in this world just suck and I think all one can do is look for the glimmer of light and live according to their own principles. I'm happy - I love medicine but I will not let it enslave me. There are so many other things that I love to the point of fanaticism (rock bands/music, Japanese animation, video games, computers, my closest friends, my girl-friend). These things, for me, make the world great despite all the bull-shit, and make things worth living through.
This post has no real point. I just dumped a bunch of mental masturbation on here myself, I think. But if you haven't caught it before, mental masturbation is simply when a group of people stand around and talk BS/blow hot-air about nothing. Happens a ton in medical school...especially by first-years who want to sound cool.
By the way; remember that essay (...personal statement) you had to write to get into medical school? That's pretty much mental masturbation in purified form. I can't believe how imperfect the admissions process is, but it is the only way of screening the masses of eager pre-meds out. It's unfortunate, because once you're in, your essay is just a pile of too-good-to-be-true words written for a perfect world that won't exist. But so it goes....I can tell you now that over 75% of those happy essays mention how they want to altruistically journey abroad and work for the betterment of humanity. Lump 8 years of debt and academic/personal/emotional abuse on them and that 75% turns to the true 5% or less.
I'm out - good night.
Im about to jump head-first into my first battery (block) of exams this semester, and I'm ready to go. I've studied more for anatomy than probably 1/2 of all my undergraduate education put together; and I'd say it's not so bad. The material can be dry, but as long as you try to organize everything sensibly in your head, it comes together.
But back to my point. I think the reason that medical school/medical education doesn't really attack and stun me the way it does to a lot of my peers is because I'm a ...well, a reductionist.
I'm not special or different or above anyone else in my class in terms of who I am, I just take things for what they are and don't expect anything more. Not that I'm a pessimist or fatalist, no, not at all. But what I see a lot of kids doing is, again what dear Uncle Panda calls "Mental Masturbation."
So much of what we do and what we expect is lofty, heaped-on happy stuff. And yeah, we need it; we as a society and culture need all of this showy stuff like student-council, activities, study groups, class president. But on the fringes of my class, I just take what comes. I go to class, come home, learn the material, then go take the tests. If I expected to have some sort of huge, life-changing experience, than I'd either construct one out of nothing and live a lie, or be sorely disappointed.
You see, a great deal of group-think is involved whenever you have a tight group of people in one place at one time. Psychologists and sociologists would have a ball with medical school classes. Everyone is understandably under a ton of stress. We all share the same locker-room, facilities, anatomy lab, lecture halls, etc. We are all funneled into the same classes, tests, finals and we're all under the same administration. It's so easy to get lost and caught up in this new reality that I see kids losing themselves already and it's only been a month.
It's just school - I don't intend on being at the top of my class. Or even in the top 15%. The amount of work it takes to do that is extreme and is reserved for the inevitable 15% that actually want to live this stuff. As I've heard a lot, someone who is all study completely lacks breadth. What does 100s on anatomy exams and a class rank of 1 mean? To them it might mean a lot...but I can't imagine that lasting forever. They might get a coveted dermatology residency position and practice in a cush suburban town earning 400k/yr doing botox injections.
But it is what you make of it...what you expect. The tendency here at this point is to put life off and say "it will get better later." Sure, to a degree, it will. Second year is supposed to be a bit more interesting and the clinical years are supposed to be pretty enjoyable (overall...the key is overall). But you can't put everything on hold. Life is going by right now - you're in your early-mid 20s and at your prime. Live now. I will keep going out (not as often as before) and playing video games and doing all my geeky things because that is who I am. You don't have to put in 100 hours a week to master this stuff.
I can't speak from experience yet...but I know that you can log your 4-5 hours a day on the material and veg-out for the rest of the day. This should leave at the least an hour or two every single day to chill, on top of getting a good 7-8 hours of sleep! If you have the discipline, log 9a-5p on Saturday and perhaps another 8-hour "shift" on Sunday, and you can go out Friday and Saturday nights without a hitch! Even before a Monday exam I know people who survived and kept up a semblance of a normal life.
I can't wait until I actually have the credibility to talk about study-habits, but I can say that studying for hours and hours every day hasn't been all that awful. Yeah, it's a marathon. One semester feels like hell and forever and there are 4 vicious pre-clinical semesters to endure. After that lies 3rd year, surgery rotation, intern year, etc etc etc.
I think that ... there's just too much hardship to get scared about. Yeah, it sucks and its hard. Everyone who applies (should) know this. It's a path to choose and to walk. But I believe it's all in attitude and what you make of it. You can go into this and just rip yourself to shreds to get into a neuro-surgery residency at Harvard. That same person would probably be #1 at whatever they chose to do in life because they're a hard-worker, period.
But happiness is relative. What is happiness to you? To me? I can't imagine someone needing so much academic achievement to be happy. Is their appetite that big that they need to immerse themselves in uninterrupted study 24/7 to become a respected doctor? I guess so. But for me, happiness is a balance of a fulfilling career and lots of friends and family. That's what everyone tells you...but don't create realities for yourself in here, you just can't afford more stress than what's already going to come.
I think my bottom line is that person A and person B can take radically different approaches, experience radically different amounts of stress, yet still achieve the exact same thing. It's all in personal preference and approach. I can commit the brachial plexus to memory while sitting at home in my PJs and listening to Tool. You can do the same thing at the medical library at 11pm in your cubicle in dead silence. That's great. Come test day we'll both have the same thing in our head. I'm happy doing my work at home and you want to stay at school to do yours; that's fine.
Just do what's best for you, I think. And, while not being a pessimist, don't expect anything more than what you see. There doesn't have to be sugar-coating on everything. People get sick, people die, kids get cancer, good people have bad things happen to them. Lots of things in this world just suck and I think all one can do is look for the glimmer of light and live according to their own principles. I'm happy - I love medicine but I will not let it enslave me. There are so many other things that I love to the point of fanaticism (rock bands/music, Japanese animation, video games, computers, my closest friends, my girl-friend). These things, for me, make the world great despite all the bull-shit, and make things worth living through.
This post has no real point. I just dumped a bunch of mental masturbation on here myself, I think. But if you haven't caught it before, mental masturbation is simply when a group of people stand around and talk BS/blow hot-air about nothing. Happens a ton in medical school...especially by first-years who want to sound cool.
By the way; remember that essay (...personal statement) you had to write to get into medical school? That's pretty much mental masturbation in purified form. I can't believe how imperfect the admissions process is, but it is the only way of screening the masses of eager pre-meds out. It's unfortunate, because once you're in, your essay is just a pile of too-good-to-be-true words written for a perfect world that won't exist. But so it goes....I can tell you now that over 75% of those happy essays mention how they want to altruistically journey abroad and work for the betterment of humanity. Lump 8 years of debt and academic/personal/emotional abuse on them and that 75% turns to the true 5% or less.
I'm out - good night.
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
To Take or Not to Take?
The $50,000 question: Prep-Courses for Medical School?
"The guy smokes!" I thought to myself as I watched my physical sciences section teacher sitting in his car, puffing away during a break. I would not have been surprised if the guy had been blowing trees; he was a sharp fellow, well-versed in his subjects, a (presumably successful) biochemistry major at a prestigious private school, and had done well enough on the MCAT to teach at this center.
Yet,
he was a total bad-ass. The guy taught us with a confident yet smug attitude, but he laid it down thick and heavy. The first time I saw him he was in a dingy white T-shirt, baseball cap covering his eyes and a goatee on his chin as he raised his muscular arm to the board to write out physics equations. But I respect him; an educated individual with a diverse lifestyle (though I certainly disapprove of smoking) is something I have not had enough of in the Mennonite culture I was brought up in.
That's great, but should I take courses or not?
You're (most likely) 19-21 years old and medicine is where it is at for you. You rocked grades at your undergraduate institution, volunteered, worked at your Aunt's clinic, and became president of the student body. Super. Excellent. Great! But medical school admissions needs to have a standardized measuring stick for you as well - one that is constant across the nation! You face the hurdle in its most ugly form: the MCAT (Medical College Admissions Test). The format has been changed from pencil-and-paper to electronic-only for 2007, but the core remains the same: Biological and Physical Sciences, General and Organic Chemistry, Verbal Reasoning, and a Writing Sample.
Run out to the nearest bookstore and get an MCAT guide if you want the scoop. I'm going to tell you what did and did not work for me.
Thinking...
My forehead hit the table and my head jerked up. Another Saturday afternoon wasted in the test center, taking (full-length, 5.5 hours + breaks mind you) practice test #4 out of 5. How far would you go to get the high-score? I admit; I am not Mr. Standardized test. Anyone can take basic science courses and spit concepts and facts back at their professor, but this thing makes your gears turn.
I took my first MCAT in April of 2006 and got a decent but not stellar score. I decided to take a prep-course over the summer to see if I could smash the test that August. That August was also the very last administration of paper-and-pencil MCAT, so I figured I'd be a part of history. Cute. Not.
You never know until you try, and things are always different in retrospect. I have no regrets about taking the course, but in the end it made no appreciable difference in my overall application process. In short, a waste of $1,000, lots of gas (45-minute commute each way), lots of evenings, and lots of Saturdays I could have spent playing video games and hanging out with friends.
Again, I could not have possibly known during the course that my performance after all that work would not jump into the realm of super pre-med. My personal experience may be discouraging to one considering prep-courses, but take it with a grain of salt, please!
Course Anatomy
The course was simple. You get a pile of books to compliment lectures (twice a week, 3 hours each). The lectures went on (6 hours a week) for about 10 weeks (most of the summer). In the second-half of the summer, you had to come in every Saturday to take full-length practice exams (this gets you in the mode for the real thing, apparently). You have extensive homework assignments and practice test booklets to work on, plus a huge "question-bank". All in all, you could easily spend 8 hours a day all summer with the material they gave you.
The best course, the perfect tutor, the most expensive study aids: they are all useless unless you yourself put your head to it.
If I can take away anything from this whole charade, it is that studying for tests like this comes from within, not from the outside. I made progress when I worked through my own books and did my own practice. By getting caught up in the rigors of the classroom setting, I found myself sliding into a false sense of security that I think a lot of kids in there got:
"I'm going to classes, so I must be improving my mad skills!"
Verdict...
Taking these multiple-choice, standardized tests is an art and a science. Anyone can bust their butt preparing for them (MCAT, USMLE, etc). For me, the trick is knowing the core material cold, then doing practice questions like there's no tomorrow. Time put in correlates positively with performance (up to a reasonable point). Put in a lot of time and still did not do well? Most likely, "a lot of time" wasn't really a lot of time. For MCAT? Some people are inherently better than others at test-taking - welcome to life.
Ultimately, the MCAT is a surmountable hurdle for anyone serious enough about medicine to pursue it. As for prep-courses, they're potentially useful, but it greatly depends on your style of learning. Prep-courses could also feed your ego if you want to be surrounded by pre-med gunners and bigots. I would recommend saving the money and spending perhaps a fifth of it to get some good study materials. You'll likely spend your time more efficiently, get more bang for your buck, and not have to deal with other stinky pre-meds.
I salute you who have yet to jump over the MCAT. Good luck and see you on the other side!
"The guy smokes!" I thought to myself as I watched my physical sciences section teacher sitting in his car, puffing away during a break. I would not have been surprised if the guy had been blowing trees; he was a sharp fellow, well-versed in his subjects, a (presumably successful) biochemistry major at a prestigious private school, and had done well enough on the MCAT to teach at this center.
Yet,
he was a total bad-ass. The guy taught us with a confident yet smug attitude, but he laid it down thick and heavy. The first time I saw him he was in a dingy white T-shirt, baseball cap covering his eyes and a goatee on his chin as he raised his muscular arm to the board to write out physics equations. But I respect him; an educated individual with a diverse lifestyle (though I certainly disapprove of smoking) is something I have not had enough of in the Mennonite culture I was brought up in.
That's great, but should I take courses or not?
You're (most likely) 19-21 years old and medicine is where it is at for you. You rocked grades at your undergraduate institution, volunteered, worked at your Aunt's clinic, and became president of the student body. Super. Excellent. Great! But medical school admissions needs to have a standardized measuring stick for you as well - one that is constant across the nation! You face the hurdle in its most ugly form: the MCAT (Medical College Admissions Test). The format has been changed from pencil-and-paper to electronic-only for 2007, but the core remains the same: Biological and Physical Sciences, General and Organic Chemistry, Verbal Reasoning, and a Writing Sample.
Run out to the nearest bookstore and get an MCAT guide if you want the scoop. I'm going to tell you what did and did not work for me.
Thinking...
My forehead hit the table and my head jerked up. Another Saturday afternoon wasted in the test center, taking (full-length, 5.5 hours + breaks mind you) practice test #4 out of 5. How far would you go to get the high-score? I admit; I am not Mr. Standardized test. Anyone can take basic science courses and spit concepts and facts back at their professor, but this thing makes your gears turn.
I took my first MCAT in April of 2006 and got a decent but not stellar score. I decided to take a prep-course over the summer to see if I could smash the test that August. That August was also the very last administration of paper-and-pencil MCAT, so I figured I'd be a part of history. Cute. Not.
You never know until you try, and things are always different in retrospect. I have no regrets about taking the course, but in the end it made no appreciable difference in my overall application process. In short, a waste of $1,000, lots of gas (45-minute commute each way), lots of evenings, and lots of Saturdays I could have spent playing video games and hanging out with friends.
Again, I could not have possibly known during the course that my performance after all that work would not jump into the realm of super pre-med. My personal experience may be discouraging to one considering prep-courses, but take it with a grain of salt, please!
Course Anatomy
The course was simple. You get a pile of books to compliment lectures (twice a week, 3 hours each). The lectures went on (6 hours a week) for about 10 weeks (most of the summer). In the second-half of the summer, you had to come in every Saturday to take full-length practice exams (this gets you in the mode for the real thing, apparently). You have extensive homework assignments and practice test booklets to work on, plus a huge "question-bank". All in all, you could easily spend 8 hours a day all summer with the material they gave you.
The best course, the perfect tutor, the most expensive study aids: they are all useless unless you yourself put your head to it.
If I can take away anything from this whole charade, it is that studying for tests like this comes from within, not from the outside. I made progress when I worked through my own books and did my own practice. By getting caught up in the rigors of the classroom setting, I found myself sliding into a false sense of security that I think a lot of kids in there got:
"I'm going to classes, so I must be improving my mad skills!"
Verdict...
Taking these multiple-choice, standardized tests is an art and a science. Anyone can bust their butt preparing for them (MCAT, USMLE, etc). For me, the trick is knowing the core material cold, then doing practice questions like there's no tomorrow. Time put in correlates positively with performance (up to a reasonable point). Put in a lot of time and still did not do well? Most likely, "a lot of time" wasn't really a lot of time. For MCAT? Some people are inherently better than others at test-taking - welcome to life.
Ultimately, the MCAT is a surmountable hurdle for anyone serious enough about medicine to pursue it. As for prep-courses, they're potentially useful, but it greatly depends on your style of learning. Prep-courses could also feed your ego if you want to be surrounded by pre-med gunners and bigots. I would recommend saving the money and spending perhaps a fifth of it to get some good study materials. You'll likely spend your time more efficiently, get more bang for your buck, and not have to deal with other stinky pre-meds.
I salute you who have yet to jump over the MCAT. Good luck and see you on the other side!
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