Here's how resistant to change some of these people are.
Lymphoma/Leukemia is STILL it's own section on the oral boards.
1 section of 8 total. 12% of the test! A disease site we hardly ever see/treat outside of the random stage 1 FL. A site MAYO CLINIC residents can go a whole 4 years of residency without seeing a single patient.
Our physician ancestors loved performance art, but these sorts of "humanities" were frowned upon by
The Establishment.
The solution for a cathartic/creative outlet was the
Oral Boards, an event where every person
must be tested in every section, even if it's not something they actually practice, even if it's a disease that is objectively rare. A written test cannot suffice, no! For how else will
The Elders get to hear the nervous, half-choked swallow of a supplicant stammering to recite their memorized lines about 3D CSI?
Once a year,
The Establishment looks forward to
The Auditions, whereby hundreds of young adults - who have spent their adult lives in Talmudic study of obscure texts - present their nubile souls for the required hazing in order to be granted membership into
The Club. It is a cruel facsimile of what
The Elders believe auditions at Julliard are like.
The Establishment feasts upon the memorization of increasingly complex AJCC staging and mostly-invented dose constraints. Hopeful initiates dutifully recite facts about medulloblastoma, Stage IV Hodgkin's, and LDR brachytherapy.
The Establishment gleefully proclaims the test one of "safety" while relying on the most un-safe mechanism: human memory. The inherent irony brings them tremendous joy.
Like Dorian Gray, the
The Elders reclaim some of their youth after each administration of
Oral Boards.
If only
The Elders had been allowed to major in
Theater and
French as undergraduates, like they always wanted. Alas, their parents forbade it, forcing
Biology and
Chemistry majors instead.
Subsequent generations will pay the price for these Freudian "daddy issues" until the cycle is broken in 2074 when Paul Wallner finally retires.
