MoosePilot said:
if you don't think doctors change the world everyday, then imagine a world without them
I don't think this is a fair objection. Doctors already have an occupation: they provide healthcare. Doctors doing this job everyday is not changing the world; it is them doing what they are supposed to be doing. The idea that they "change the world everyday" is what I was referring to when I used the phrase, "Delusions of Grandeur." It is naive to think they should have to solve world hunger in addition to being doctors.
Also, imagine the world without electricians, carpenters, teachers, etc. Everyone plays an important role in society. Doctors are not singular in providing a service that is important to us.
MoosePilot said:
People can judge sincerity and honesty in each other.
You're right. If, indeed, someone's volunteer record comes up in an interview, an adcom person will probably be able to detect insincerity. But what happens if it never comes up in person to person conversation, but remains only on paper. It is much harder to judge insincere commitment on paper.
My greater point in bringing up the crystal ball issue is the following: Once upon a time, medical school admissions were based on grades and MCAT's. These measures were shallow in the sense that they are not perfectly correlated with intelligence. But they were fairly accurate, and objective. Then people with low scores started to moan and whine, and these older, more rigorous criteria gave way to more politically correct criteria. Adcoms started to use extracurriculars and volunteer work in their decisions. "Surely," thought the adcoms to themselves, "now we have criteria that are not shallow like grades and MCAT's, but rather give us deep insight into the applicant's personality." Of course, applicants quickly caught on and started building extracurriculars/volunteering into their resume, rendering these criteria just as shallow as the previous ones. But here's the thing. Even if both are shallow, at least scores are objective and somewhat linked to a person's competence, whereas the newer criteria are neither.
Tangent #2: Isn't it interesting how not all extracurriculars are created equal? If I spend time working out at the gym, maybe 6 hours a week, no one cares. But if I spend an hour or so a week with my thumb up my ass at a Student Government meeting, that is considered "character building." On the one hand, I am improving myself as a human being, on the other hand, I am doing nothing at an activity that counts only as an activity because other people recognize it as such. But I digress.
tacrum43 said:
People do volunteering to gain experience and also because it is nice and feels good (in my opinion) to help others out, if only a little bit. If it's in a medically related field, then it's directly related. If not, it could still be very meaningful and broadening to see another part of society, because doctors treat everybody.
And plus, even if some people do only volunteer to pad their resume, at least they still volunteered and helped out, even if they were insincere while they were doing it.
Some people do volunteering because it feels good. If indeed this is the case, then by all means volunteer; it is in your interest to do so. But what kind of experience do you gain? And don't give me the cookie cutter answer, tacrum! Tell me what real life skills you gain. The ability to deal with people? If you think you actually gain something like this from volunteering, it is probably because we have been trained to talk like this, trained to embellish the activities in our lives to sound more marketable on pieces of paper. Before I went to college, I did a fair amount of volunteering, and I didn't see people utilizing any skills that aren't used in daily social interaction.
When you say, "at east they still volunteered and helped out, even if they were insincere while they were doing it," I repeat that it is inefficient for them to spend their time doing it. They should use their time otherwise, and wait until they have specialized skills to apply towards charitable causes.
MoosePilot said:
You're definitely wrong about building leadership abilities. A lot is inborn, I'd agree, or developed throughout childhood. A lot of leadership is developed, though, and early 20s is a very traditional age to start. Most officers commission at that age and learn to lead men in combat and peace. If I hadn't learned anything in 8 years of leadership, I'd be ashamed of myself.
Leadership training can only develop (harness, if you will) talent that is already there. Surely you have come across people who are just terrible leaders. 8 years of leadership would do very little for these people. Yes, they would improve a little, on a scale relative to themselves. But take a natural leader, and give him 8 years of leadership training, and you will be astonished. These are merely my observations. I have met people who are just natural leaders, and they are just in a different class of people. You can tell it when you first meet them, and the difference between them and everyone else is like that between night and day.
You point out that men at our age begin to receive officer training. Surely you will agree with me that when that training is over, you will have great officers and not so great officers. This is due to their natural abilities, and little else. Thus, the fact that we train men at this age does not imply that leadership must be learnable. The fact that there are crappy leaders even after training is proof. Although the crappy ones may have improved a little, they still suck on the whole.
