Schadenfreude

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Cranial Gavage

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I'd be interested in hearing med students' opinions concerning the presence or absence of schadenfreude in medical education. (The German word translates as "damage pleasure," or taking pleasure in the misfortune of others.)

Are the hardships of medical school (cramming minutiae for anatomy, lack of sleep, long hours etc) just inherent to the system, or is there a mean-spirited element on the part of the professors?
 
Cranial Gavage said:
I'd be interested in hearing med students' opinions concerning the presence or absence of schadenfreude in medical education. (The German word translates as "damage pleasure," or the joy of inflicting discomfort on others.)

Are the hardships of medical school (cramming minutiae for anatomy, lack of sleep, long hours etc) just inherent to the system, or is there a mean-spirited element on the part of the professors?

(Posted in Pre-Allo since it's a what-is-med-school-like type of question.)
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Schadenfreude actually means taking pleasure in the misfortunes of others. The joy of inflicting discomfort/pain is sadism.
 
Cranial Gavage said:
I'd be interested in hearing med students' opinions concerning the presence or absence of schadenfreude in medical education. (The German word translates as "damage pleasure," or the joy of inflicting discomfort on others.)

Are the hardships of medical school (cramming minutiae for anatomy, lack of sleep, long hours etc) just inherent to the system, or is there a mean-spirited element on the part of the professors?

(Posted in Pre-Allo since it's a what-is-med-school-like type of question.)
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I chalk a lot of it up to the way the medical institution was set up and the fact that it is very slow to change. Panda Bear has some great insight on this if you care to search through his blog.
 
Repost of OncoCaP's response from a different forum:

OncoCaP said:
In the early basic sciences I find hardship totally absent (other than watching some classmates suffer, which I wish they didn't have to). Some of my friends say it gets better because they find the later material (and clinics) much more interesting and others hate being in the hospital all the time. Whether it gets better or worse ... I'm not worried about it. I'll look for ways to enjoy the experience and learn as much as possible. Most students are doing ok and you have this distribution on the joy curve. Hardships are not inherent in the system. Many of the people who seem to suffer the most hardship worry about things like grades, ranking, or impressing people like their friends or professors. Other don't get help when they face a crisis and suffer mostly alone unnecessarily.

If you have no fear of being wrong sometimes (or even often), enjoy learning stuff that might help you diagnose and treat a patient someday, you find a happy life to be had (depends on the school to some extent probably). Yes, the hours are long, so don't even think about medicine if you're looking for a 9-5 thing unless you never had to study in your life and made straight A's. If you don't worry and just do your best (and look for things you enjoy), spend time with people you like, realize that the worst thing they can do to you is kick you out so you can find something else that's a lot of fun (extremely rare to get kicked out unless you don't study or don't take care of life's problems early enough), you can really enjoy it. Of course, that's really the hard part ... letting go of the mania that too many of us have been raised with so we can actually enjoy life.
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taponthecloud said:
Schadenfreude actually means taking pleasure in the misfortunes of others. The joy of inflicting discomfort/pain is sadism.
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Don't worry -- there's plenty of both in medicine. :laugh:
You won't see faculty getting pleasure in making you miserable -- that occurred more in college than med school. The quantity of material to know and the long hours involved to learn it and to train are inherent in the system -- there is simply more to know, see and do than can comfortably be squeezed into a mere four years, so they squeeze it in uncomfortably. It's not really about you. During clinical years you will be asked to do scut and pimped on what you know, but it's more a process than a punishment.

But you might see some of what that term encompasses in patient care:
You won't get pleasure in the misfortune of your patients per se, but you might catch yourself thinking a condition a patient has is really fascinating, maybe even cool to have finally seen. In medicine you learn by seeing and doing, and so often the bad news for a patient that they have XYZ condition is a boon to you and your education. Eg. Sucks for the patient but you get to do a neurological exam on someone with ALS.
 
Ah one of the great repercussions of "envy," one of the seven deadly sins. We talked about this and schadenfreude in my Chaucer class and in my Brit Lit class.
 
Law2Doc said:
Don't worry -- there's plenty of both in medicine. :laugh:
You won't see faculty getting pleasure in making you miserable -- that occurred more in college than med school. The quantity of material to know and the long hours involved to learn it and to train are inherent in the system -- there is simply more to know, see and do than can comfortably be squeezed into a mere four years, so they squeeze it in uncomfortably. It's not really about you. During clinical years you will be asked to do scut and pimped on what you know, but it's more a process than a punishment.
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Anything that involves squeezing something in uncomfortably usually involves some degree of schadenfreude. 😉 Now shut up and take it.
 
MossPoh said:
Anything that involves squeezing something in uncomfortably usually involves some degree of schadenfreude. 😉 Now shut up and take it.
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Again, since it's not really about you, no one is taking pleasure. The employee working at Starbucks doesn't take pleasure in grinding coffee, yet each individual bean gets ground. You are the bean.
 
Wow there's a name for it? I just considered it a hobby.
 
i think its the main reason accepted students still visit this forum.😎
 
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