Interesting Harvard Path Story....

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Dyslexia and ADHD??? She must be on some kick ass meds if she got into Harvard!
 
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vegasdo said:
Dyslexia and ADHD??? She must be on some kick ass meds if she got into Harvard!
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...... or she has other "special skills".

And women wonder why they sometimes receive inferior treatment and pay.
 
Currier has already received special accommodations under the Americans with Disabilities Act for dyslexia and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, including being granted permission to take the test over two days instead of one.
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WTF..Ummmmm Welcome to Harvard?!:laugh:
 
My wife actually yelled at me when I gently suggested that maybe this woman in the story was working the system and making a mountain out of a mole hill.

So, careful when you're discussing this with some women, particularly if they've ever breast fed.
 
THis lady obviously needs to bulk up on her USMLEWORLD question bank while she is breastfeeding...
 
Actually I had to postpone my licensing exam because of breastfeeding, so this really is a problem. I wouldn't jump to conclusions about this person trying to take advantage of the system. If you don't pump or nurse, you get plugged ducts and your milk supply is reduced, and it's very difficult to increase it.
 
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lusibari said:
Actually I had to postpone my licensing exam because of breastfeeding, so this really is a problem. I wouldn't jump to conclusions about this person trying to take advantage of the system. If you don't pump or nurse, you get plugged ducts and your milk supply is reduced, and it's very difficult to increase it.
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Fair enough, but she's already taking the test over two days instead of one. That's four blocks a day. I'm sorry, but if you're getting your MD/PhD from Harvard and you still can't sit through four USMLE blocks, then you suck and you're an affront to working mothers everywhere. Maybe Mrs. Currier needs to get out of court, off her blog, off my TV, and plant her ass in front of First Aid for Step 2.

Someone at MGH must be kicking him/herself.
 
Gut Shot said:
Fair enough, but she's already taking the test over two days instead of one. That's four blocks a day. I'm sorry, but if you're getting your MD/PhD from Harvard and you still can't sit through four USMLE blocks, then you suck and you're an affront to working mothers everywhere. Maybe Mrs. Currier needs to get out of court, off her blog, off my TV, and plant her ass in front of First Aid for Step 2.

Someone at MGH must be kicking him/herself.
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Yeah, and she's already flunked it once when not breast feeding.
 
Nice publicity for Harvard that some of their med students can't pass boards. A test that 95% of US med students pass on their first try.
 
She's obviously an affirmative action, gender "diversity" quota *****. This is some Harvard/MIT liberal academic's pet project. I'm sure she wrote a nice little sob story for her med school admission essay about how awful it is to live in a male dominated society and be a breastfeeding mother. :rolleyes:
 
Actually now that I think back to my application process, I realize what happened.

The Harvard MD/PHD program director is an affirmative action/gender diversity slut who ****** out her program. She'll let in almost anybody if they meet the proper "diversity" profile.

P.S. That baby of hers is ugly as ****
 
^Wow! The far right chimes in with way out of hand remark. Take that affirmative action rant back to the pre-allo board.

But this story does answer the question "what is the minimum usmle score that you need to get into a top program?" The answer is "you can fail and still get into a top ranked path program". Pathetic. The minimum score you need is 0.

People that know they are committed to basic research shouldn't bother getting an MD. Why waste years in medical school and years in residency being held responsible for tomes of minutia that you will never ever come in contact with again.
 
<deleted>
 
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There she is...would be interesting to pick her brain to she if feels like she really needs 2 flippin days for a test that took me about 4 hours max.

currier150.bmp


14101451_240X180.jpg


Seriously, what the hell is going on. Is Harvard going to hire someone to take her CP call? To review her blood smears? To interpret her marrows??

WHERE THE HELL DOES IT END????
 
MacGyver said:
Actually now that I think back to my application process, I realize what happened.

The Harvard MD/PHD program director is an affirmative action/gender diversity slut who ****** out her program. She'll let in almost anybody if they meet the proper "diversity" profile.

P.S. That baby of hers is ugly as ****
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Dont hold back, tell us how you really feel about:
Stephen C. Blacklow, M.D., Ph.D
Director
(Basic Sciences Track)

sounds like a man's name to me...

Send further comments to: [email protected]

someone create a form letter of protest and we can all copy and paste it to Harvard.
 
LADoc00 said:
Dont hold back, tell us how you really feel about:
Stephen C. Blacklow, M.D., Ph.D
Director
(Basic Sciences Track)

sounds like a man's name to me...

Send further comments to: [email protected]

someone create a form letter of protest and we can all copy and paste it to Harvard.
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He's new. There was a woman in charge when this bitch got accepted. Nancy somethin, I dont remember her last name. I interviewed with her when she was still in charge of the MD/PhD program
 
Ilove how str8 up MacGyver is, we need more of this on the posts haha
 
LADoc00 said:
There she is...would be interesting to pick her brain to she if feels like she really needs 2 flippin days for a test that took me about 4 hours max.

currier150.bmp


14101451_240X180.jpg


Seriously, what the hell is going on. Is Harvard going to hire someone to take her CP call? To review her blood smears? To interpret her marrows??

WHERE THE HELL DOES IT END????
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I still can't believe this story and the more I hear about it, the more pissed I get. I got so bored and had so much extra time during this exam, I went out to my car and took a nap during one break and went for a drive during another break. The people I really feel sorry for are her future co-residents. Something tells me that she won't be adequately pulling her weight.
 
actually in the grand scheme of things, maybe its better to see someone who is at least marginally intelligent, somewhat well educated actually reproduce and succeed. Im not rationalizing this, but thinking there must 250K kids born to poor uneducated Americans for 1 born to a HMS grad.

I see America's future at this point as 1 giant meandering trailer park scattered with Super WalMarts.
 
CameronFrye said:
I still can't believe this story and the more I hear about it, the more pissed I get. I got so bored and had so much extra time during this exam, I went out to my car and took a nap during one break and went for a drive during another break. The people I really feel sorry for are her future co-residents. Something tells me that she won't be adequately pulling her weight.
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I felt the same way and finished several hours early, which essentially means that I would have had more break time had I wanted to stay for the entire time alloted to me. I don't understand why she needs MORE break time. Isn't she already being allowed to take it over two days? or was that just last time?

I'm so glad that I won't be at MGH with her. I can hear the whining already...
 
In my opinion (as a woman and a mother), it's crap like this that holds women back in the workplace. Waah Waah, your breasts will hurt. Waah Waah, mastitis (had it, got over it). For every whiny chick like this, there are hundreds if not thousands who sucked it up and made it through the test in one day. But all the publicity and focus is given to the one who needed 'special' accomodations and 'more' time. Yes, I know she has learning disabilities....but so do many other people who have done Step 2 without MULTIPLE accomodations. The answer to failure is not a lawsuit. It's called studying more. Try it.

This makes me feel like all the sacrifices I have made to ensure that my having a family does not impinge on my residency performance and fellow residents all seem in vain.

Thanks for setting women physicians back, whiny Harvard chick. :rolleyes::mad::rolleyes:
 
pathstudent said:
what happens when she ****ing sleeps? 4 months sleep through the night. does she ****ing set an alarm at 1am to pump her breasts?

MGH is ****ed up for taking her into their program. Anyone who can't pass step 2 is betarded.
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That's what I was wondering. I mean, she must set an alarm q3h just to pump. Kinda reminds me of that Seinfeld episode where Kramer had resolved himself to taking 15 minute naps every couple of hours in order to be more productive, then ultimately overslept for something.
 
I know this topic incites a lot of strong feelings, but please keep inappropriate language and terminology as well as name calling out of the thread please, professional forums are not the place for it.

Personally, there are a couple of weird issues. If they are going to give her an EXTRA DAY to take the test, why not just give her the extra break time anyway? Giving her the extra day seems to be a far more excessive step than extra break time. You get plenty of break time anyway, I finished most of the blocks well ahead of the alloted time and was left with over an hour of extra break time at the end. It seems to me a lot of this has little to do with breast feeding and more to do with her incredible track record of getting other people to accomodate her demands for help.

All of this to me seems wildly inappropriate for someone in a medical field. Since she is CP only, she is going to have to rely on grants, etc, for her career most likely. Is she going to ask for extra time for those too? How about her CP board exam? Is she going to be a resident that ends up dumping tons of work on other residents (who are not so quick to complain or whine)? What about as an attending? And I agree the sense of entitlement coming from her is astounding. She had ample time to schedule and take step II, why is it everyone else's responsibility if she can't handle this?

I have met students and residents over the years who continuously game the system to get want they want. Extra time, special dispensations, etc, often for things that everyone deals with without complaining. Clearly there are many situations for which special dispensations can and should be made, but shouldn't there be a limit?

As far as that Mormon comment, that's a little insane since the governor was a mormon and there is a huge mormon temple just outside of Boston. Any program that keeps asking you about religion is violating rules. Report them, that's what reporting is for. It's not whining.
 
Selectin-Man said:
I interviewed at Harvard's MD/PhD program, and I got absolutely abused by the interviewers because I'm a Mormon.

During the welcome meeting, the person welcoming us asked us what states we were from. When he found out I was from Utah, he said (in front of everyone): "You're probably a Mormon then. I don't know why a Mormon would want to come to Harvard. We don't have a tabernacle here."

I'm not even a very religious person, and I'm more of a Mormon agnostic than anything. I never mentioned religion in my application at all. But when they figured out that I spoke Russian because I had served my 2-year Mormon mission in Russia, the interviewer looked like she wanted to puke and spent the rest of the time asking me questions about Mormonism. I kept saying: "I don't think Mormonism is part of my application. I just happen to have been born into a Mormon family. I don't see what the big deal is anyway... your governor is Mormon, and the dean of the Harvard Business School is Mormon. 1 in 50 people in America is Mormon. Why are we even discussing this? I wouldn't be the first Mormon at Harvard." (It was the typical parochialism where people think 8,000 polygamists from an 1890 offshoot group in the Arizona desert is representative of 13 million Mormons who are members of a centralized Church that would excommunicate anyone who wanted to practice polygamy.)
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I agree with Yaah, you need to formally complain. As an employer, my attorney went absolutely bonkers trying to drill into me what were appropriate questions for potential employees and what wasnt. Here, they clearly crossed over the line.
 
Developments:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/27/e...gin&adxnnlx=1191006651-DB489XsI6qcjjDa7MMsVsQ

(Makes you wonder what's going to happen for her Step 2 CS. And all the people she'll be taking it with.)

"In Reversal, Student Is Given Extra Exam Time to Pump Breast Milk
By ELIZABETH OLSON
A Harvard student must be given extra break time during a medical licensing exam to pump breast milk, a Massachusetts appeals court judge ruled yesterday.

The student, Sophie C. Currier, 33, of Brookline, Mass., had sued the National Board of Medical Examiners after it denied her request for more than the standard 45 minutes of allotted breaks during the nine-hour exam, which she will take over two days.

She said she risked medical complications if she did not nurse her 4-month-old daughter, Lea, or pump breast milk every two or three hours.

In overturning a ruling that denied Ms. Currier the additional 60 minutes of break time she requested, Judge Gary Katzmann said yesterday that she needed the extra time so she could be on "equal footing" with men and nonlactating women taking the test.

The medical examining board said that although it planned to appeal, it would give Ms. Currier the additional time if Judge Katzmann's order is still in effect when she takes the exam, set for next week. She must pass the exam, which tests clinical knowledge, to receive her medical degree. Without it, she cannot start her residency at Massachusetts General Hospital .

In the 26-page ruling, Judge Katzmann said refusing to allow additional time meant that Ms. Currier must choose to either "use her break time to incompletely express breast milk and ignore her bodily functions, or abdicate her decision to express breast milk, resulting in significant pain."

"Under either avenue," he wrote, Ms. Currier "is placed at significant disadvantage in comparison to her peers."

Additional time does not give her an unfair advantage, he found, because answers cannot be changed after the student leaves the exam room.

Ms. Currier said the ruling was a boon "for nursing mothers who are trying to juggle family obligations and further their careers."

The board said in a statement that it would appeal the ruling to a three-judge panel to protect the "integrity of the exam."

Dr. Ruth Hoppe, chairwoman of the board's governing body, said: "We have to maintain rigorous and consistent standards that are fair to everyone taking the test. The stakes for assessing competence of physicians are high."

But she insisted that the board tried to be flexible. "We routinely review surveys of test takers to find out whether the computers work, whether break time is sufficient and other areas, and adjust our policies," Dr. Hoppe said.

About 33,000 people took the exam during the last academic year.

Ms. Currier has already received some accommodation from the board for dyslexia and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. She can take the test over two days instead of one, for example."
 
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