People who ask questions after lectures

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yeah people who ask questions a lot bug me too. They are just trying to look good. That is all. I promise. I never did it during lecture the first two years. HOWEVER, you need to ask good questions when you are on rotations (and at the right time) otherwise your superiors will think you aren't paying attention or do not care.

I beg you however to NOT ASK QUESTIONS YOU KNOW THE ANSWERS TO. That bugs the crap out of me. Also please only ask questions that are on topic.
 
It does make you a gunner to think that "working hard = you're good at what you do." Is there a big correlation? Sure. But there's also a point when you get minuscule marginal returns at the cost of douchebaggery and alienating everyone around you. It doesn't mean your peers are worse doctors than you when they say no thanks to Q2.

+1

Here's a post about neurosurgery that had a similar point:

Only people interested in Neurosurgery would start a thread like this. Everyday the people I meet in this field demonstrate to me that they are born with this type of ego they don’t gain it during training. I guess I have my own problems or I would have never become associated with a field like this. Truth is people in this field are far more likely to discuss how “long they stayed post-call” i.e. “I am such a bad ass, I can take anything”. When this really boils down to some poor bastard with greasy hair ****in falling asleep while he fills out discharge paper work. Take this you badasses I have been so sleepy I fell asleep on the toilet one time. Wow I am great I am so tough. I am sure all of us are massively improving patient care when we have been awake for 36 hours continuously. Give me a break.

A Nurse practioner from Boston and a social worker could probably do 10x more for society with eight hours of sleep than the sorry bunch of louts we are. Jesus how did I get myself involved with this field. Neurosurgeons particularly the young trainees are real quick to talk about how they are tough. I tell you what we don’t talk about. We don’t talk about how ****ty neurosurgery outcomes are. How are your patients doing? No body talks about that. Because it makes them to damn sad and deflates that badass Neurosurg Ego. It is only an elite patient on my service that can even speak a complete ****ing phrase. But If you listen to the sonofabitches around here you would think that we are the best doctors in the world. Bull ****. We are fighting a losing battle in most cases, and while that isn’t really the fault of neurosurgeons, we need to at least have some humility. If people just want to show how tough they are they should become marines or go into radiology and run triathalons.

I am warning anyone who will listen, which unfortunately wasn’t me, this field is about trying to fix things that can’t be fixed. It is about helping people that are in the worst situations imaginable. What if no one could understand you and you couldn’t understand anyone else and you also couldn’t move the right side of your body, have you even thought about what it is like to be in that situation? The last thing a person in such misery needs is someone who thinks only about himself all the time. Just walk away from this field unless you are ready to go down with the ship again and again. This field isn’t beautiful or dramatic it is work work tragedy tragedy repeat. It isn’t about how long you stay in the hospital. Because no one gives a **** when their loved one is still paralyzed after an accident or still dies of a brain tumor or stroke three months later in a nursing home. No one really remembers that you were working real hard. What they remember is that unkempt bastard was real mean and he snapped at us when we asked what we could expect for mom/dad/brother. Real mean real unprofessional, Real tired. I tell you who cares how much you are at the hospital and how tired you are, your family. And they are pissed they are alienated because they think you don’t really care about them, and they might be right. Oh well lets go get em, we’re a tough bunch. I am not on call tonight but maybe I will stay up anyway how do like that?
 
FYI that neurosurg quote is stolen almost word-for-word from a book written by a neurosurg who now has Parkinsons ("When the air hits your brain"). Wonder when he penned that.

Keep on asking, question-askers. I would be hard-pressed to say that the prof's aren't in on your scheme... though they probably just have the same neurotic drive for acceptance as the question-askers do themselves. This is probably why office hours become such a circle jerk sometimes.

This is mostly based on my assumption/findings that people who ask questions every single lecture do it on purpose. And that purpose isn't a quest for comprehensive knowledge, it's a quest to test the merits of the nose as an anoscope.
 
I'm surprised by the amount of people who don't know the definition of gunner. A gunner is a person that guns people down to get ahead e.g. saying wrong info on purpose or interrupting people before they answer. A person who works hard and avoids social contact is not a gunner, just a dude with a work ethic.

Why must one avoid social contact to have work ethic?
 
Why must one avoid social contact to have work ethic?

I think he's referring to the fact that every medical school class has people who basically come to class, go home, study at home, go to sleep, wake up again, repeat, come to school, take exams, and go home without much in the way of social contact with the other members of his class.

I don't think there's anything actually wrong with that at all. Sometimes people just don't get along with others in their class, so why force your presence on them or vice versa
 
Why must one avoid social contact to have work ethic?

When did I say that correlation? I said some people choose to avoid social contact doesn't mean they are gunners.

@ArcGurren: Thank you. It's not that people don't get along with others, they just don't have time to socialize.
 
When did I say that correlation? I said some people choose to avoid social contact doesn't mean they are gunners.

@ArcGurren: Thank you. It's not that people don't get along with others, they just don't have time to socialize.

I call BS on this. I always think that's the biggest misconception about med school. It's time consuming but not to that extent. There's definitely time to socialize

"A person who works hard and avoids social contact is not a gunner, just a dude with a work ethic." - This implies that if one takes time to socialize that they have less of a work ethic. My description of that person would be an unnecessarily asocial person who also happens to work hard.
 
Never fails...after every lecture, the same 5-10 people make a beeline for the podium to ask questions.

How can they have questions about material they haven't gotten to study yet? 😕

Didn't read the responses.

The people who ask DURING lecture are definitely more annoying. I WISH people would wait till after class to ask their stupid questions.

Also, WHY do people asking questions after class bother you so much. Seriously, who cares? It doesn't concern you or your ability to learn. Talk about anxiety issues...
 
I call BS on this. I always think that's the biggest misconception about med school. It's time consuming but not to that extent. There's definitely time to socialize

"A person who works hard and avoids social contact is not a gunner, just a dude with a work ethic." - This implies that if one takes time to socialize that they have less of a work ethic. My description of that person would be an unnecessarily asocial person who also happens to work hard.

I agree that the dichotomy is false and misleading - one does not necessarily imply the other.

What I meant is that some people voluntarily withdraw from socializing (for whatever reason... they could have families after all). That does not make them gunners.
 
In truth I think the frustration comes from this feeling that these people are exploiting stupid questions/the appearance of curiosity as a means to get face time with the professor or familiarity with the professor which could net them advantages down the line.
 
In truth I think the frustration comes from this feeling that these people are exploiting stupid questions/the appearance of curiosity as a means to get face time with the professor or familiarity with the professor which could net them advantages down the line.
That's a pretty big assumption to make though. It seems like many of the people in this thread who are annoyed by those who ask questions after lecture don't actually know what kind of questions are being asked. A lot of these assumptions (ex. the people asking questions after lecture are gunners, brown-nosers, etc) are just that: assumptions.

I'm the kind of person who generally doesn't go to class and learns things on his own, so I have no skin in this game. But I don't understand how people get annoyed when someone waits until after lecture is over before asking the professor questions.
 
I agree that the dichotomy is false and misleading - one does not necessarily imply the other.

What I meant is that some people voluntarily withdraw from socializing (for whatever reason... they could have families after all). That does not make them gunners.

That I can agree with, I hope I don't end up with any of those asocial people in residency. I feel like I've been very lucky with my class
 
that's a pretty big assumption to make though. It seems like many of the people in this thread who are annoyed by those who ask questions after lecture don't actually know what kind of questions are being asked. A lot of these assumptions (ex. The people asking questions after lecture are gunners, brown-nosers, etc) are just that: Assumptions.

I'm the kind of person who generally doesn't go to class and learns things on his own, so i have no skin in this game. But i don't understand how people get annoyed when someone waits until after lecture is over before asking the professor questions.

+1
 
That's a pretty big assumption to make though. It seems like many of the people in this thread who are annoyed by those who ask questions after lecture don't actually know what kind of questions are being asked. A lot of these assumptions (ex. the people asking questions after lecture are gunners, brown-nosers, etc) are just that: assumptions.

I'm the kind of person who generally doesn't go to class and learns things on his own, so I have no skin in this game. But I don't understand how people get annoyed when someone waits until after lecture is over before asking the professor questions.
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I sometimes ask questions after class and many times I'm sitting close enough to overhear the questions. There is plenty of brown-nosing going on
 
That's a pretty big assumption to make though. It seems like many of the people in this thread who are annoyed by those who ask questions after lecture don't actually know what kind of questions are being asked. A lot of these assumptions (ex. the people asking questions after lecture are gunners, brown-nosers, etc) are just that: assumptions.

I'm the kind of person who generally doesn't go to class and learns things on his own, so I have no skin in this game. But I don't understand how people get annoyed when someone waits until after lecture is over before asking the professor questions.

It's usually pretty obvious who's a brown-noser and who's actually asking questions (you'll figure it out once you enter med school and class starts pretty quick).
 
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