OP, I was disappointed in how immature some of my trad classmates were when I was a preclinical student, too. But instead of feeling contempt for my younger classmates, I saw myself as a role model for them, and that became a self-fulfilling prophecy. .......
[....]]
No, you don't have to parent your classmates, and they would resent any such effort on your part anyway. But all of us can use an older brother/sister to show us the ropes when the primary goal of some of our "elders" seems to be to pound us into the ground. You're hopefully going to develop into that person in a few short years anyway. Why not start now?
Touche. I appreciate your comment.
I like what St. Francis of Assisi is reportedly to have said: "preach often, use words seldom", or something like that. I was never fond of religious evangelicals pursuing people with their sacred texts and hitting them over the head like using a 2 X 4.
Behavior goes a long way in preaching a great message, words less so.
As I wrote earlier, I keep quiet in my school. I slip in to class, then slip out. I do not party on weekends, do not drink to excess, do not go to the bars (I miss my family a great deal), and don't even go to restaurants. My goal is to earn my MD and get the heck out of here.
During class group exercises, I speak when spoken to. When the group gets stuck, then I jump in and lead. We recently had to do the Glucose Tolerance Test lab. One poor girl volunteered to be the guinea pig after fasting the previous night. She weighs less than 100 lbs. The professor asked me to show the group how to do a glucose screening, but I said, "no, I want them to learn with each other. I will watch"
And I did
After watching two students stick the poor petite subject three times with a lancet, and watching her wince, with no water coming out of her finger, I stepped in. I spoke, grabbed her hand and the lancet, showed them quickly, and soon the next finger stick produced enough blood for a glucose monitoring. I told the kids as they were sticking the poor finger of the subject, "remember, milk the cow". they got it. It worked.
Same goes for our first semester doing History and Physicals with a patient. Again, I was part of a small group, and I decided to go last. I wanted the kids to experience an H&P without my meddling, and let them figure it out with our physician/professor monitoring.
I felt badly for the kids, and not so badly for the patient. They knew ( the patients) they had medical students on their hands so they had been warned. The MD students, though, were a wreck. They were nervous, one's hand shook as she shook the patient's hand. Another poor kid trembled in his lip as he attempted to speak to the patient. Poor thing. On another occasion, when it came for auscultation and palpitation, again, the kids were a wreck. Each time I went last. When I was up to bat for the H&P, I grabbed the patient's hand, greeted her warmly, smiled, looked in her eyes, told her how beautiful she was, and soon we were laughing. I hadn't even started the History portion yet. I love people. I am a people person. But I am learning I am not friendly towards entitlement attitude kids. What do they go by these days, anyways, this generation? I lost track of the Alphabet. X Gen? Y? Let me guess: "Double Zero"? just kidding.
When I was 23, I was working two jobs, and busting my back like my life depended on it b/c it did. Things are so different today. I respected adults, I kept quiet, and did my job to the best of my ability b/c I wanted to get ahead.
Today, the kids just complain, like today during a group project. I ended up doing the work just to shut them up and get them out of the library where we gathered.
I wish I had time to read all of the posts. I told my friends back at home that I had to stop reading the news online b/c it wasn't helping me earn my MD. I have no TV. And my computer is for studying. As it is, I suspect SDN will take up more time than I should give it, like with this very post. I may pull the plug on this forum for my account for now.
As many of the first and second year MD/DO/DMD/DDS/PharmD/DVM, etc students know, the basic medical sciences tenure of our programs are unforgiving. It cares not whether you can keep up b/c in the end, it wins and you lose. Pretty humbling.
If you are a non-trad older student, and you think you have it made b/c of your maturity or professional background in and out of medicine, think again. It will be humbling. It will be frustrating. It will knock you over relentlessly and not in a good way.
As a newcomer to online forums, I am flattered at all of the attention. I read only the responses by MD students (and MD graduates) and at that I just skimmed 3 or 4.
Today I put to practice what one person told me via PM: "look for the rock stars" or something like that. I found some. It made me laugh when I looked at it that way. There are quite a few older/non-trad students in MD schools, and our feelings are pretty universal. We understand why medical schools don't want us - the transition is incredibly difficult. It is painful. Very.
The studies are tough, but that really isn't the reason for our aches and pains. As someone pointed out to me, it's the incompetency, the immaturity, the lack of professionalism, the entitlement and, yes, the several students who get in who shouldn't. This is not the way we lived our adult lives, nor in the careers we had. Professionalism was rewarded, and chaff was sloffed off.
One such kid today as usual walked in 1+ hours late into our 2 hour class, uses the front door and distracts everyone and makes the professor stop, prances (waddles, really, he's morbidly obese) in front of the entire class, walking right between the professor and the auditorium seats, to sit his fat ass in a seat in the front row. and then played on his iPad near me. This kid is oblivious to hard work or sacrifice, respect or appreciation of others time and investment. Mommy and Daddy are both doctors, make a 7 figure income, he drives to school in a new sports car practically every other month, and he is failing classes . I sure hope the educational system has a "checks and balances" weigh station for people like him . He's the kind of doctor who will get arrested for Medicare Fraud, bilking his patients or being an otherwise physician scumbag that we see and read about in the news.
You do know there are unscrupulous doctors out there, right?
If you think they become "bad" and "diabolical" once they graduate after MD school, you are wrong. They came into medical school that way - no fiber, moral cripples, lack any integrity whatsoever. I've seen a few doctors in my life arrested by the US Marshalls for Medicare Fraud (a physician friend is also an expert witness attorney for the Feds), and it is disheartening to see what doctors do all in the name of medicine. Like the scumbag OB/GYN at John Hopkins who was video tapping his patients private parts in a pen-camera. Thankfully when he was discovered he offed himself. Now patients are suing in masses John Hopkins b/c of that doctor. Such a damn shame.
But it starts before medical school. And I am seeing some of them now. We had a coordinator during orientation who said it best, and I shall paraphrase: "coming late to class, playing on Facebook on your computer during lectures, cheating for exams, all reflect a great deal about a person's character. These behaviors say alot about who you are"
Amen.
I just thought that once we got into medical school, it would truly be a level playing field. I thought, silly me, that the students all for the most part would be stellar, upright people who hustled for the first seat in class 15 minutes before lecture, dressed their best, were hogging the reference books at the library b/c they are so competitive academically, and itching to raise their hands in class to answer questions.
I have seen many, too many, kids show up high, hungover or smelling like ETOH to Anatomy Lab in front of our cadaver, sit on their arse and do nothing, while joking who they banged over the weekend. Adderall in medical school? ha! More plentiful than M & M Chocolate Candies, and most of it black market. Yes, people cheat in medical school as well. I asked one of these kids, just to be polite, "how is your girlfriend?" His response was telling, and our last conversation till this very day: "which one, I bang so many of them". He thought he was being funny. He was being rude to me, disrespectful and the women see him in class as a player. Also filthy rich, he is another future Medicare Fraud physician lawbreaker.
I reported him to the professor for cheating on one of the exams. The professor told me he already knew. Sheesh.
This is not what I expected in medical school. Sure, there are bad apples where ever you go, in churches, temples, US Congress, etc. But I just thought, for some stupid reason, that medical school would be a sampling of the creme de la creme, the best of the best, not just the brightest (no one is stupid intellectually in my class), but I definitely thought these would be the people that everyone would stop and practically genuflect or curtsy, b/c when they walked in the hallways, everyone knew these people were exemplary members of society...be they poor economically or rich. Money means nothing as to a person's character.
Behavior is everything.
And yes, I am now looking for the rock stars in my class.
