Pitman, thanks for leaping to my defense.
I'm surprised somebody reads my posts so thoroughly and makes such lofty conclusions. I can address your concerns by simply filling in some facts.
I didn't offer to do my intern year for free. I said at a public forum in 2009 that I'd rather do an internship for free than to do no internship at all, since I'd rather be a doctor with slightly less money than not be a doctor. That was a purely hypothetical situation, and I never would have considered working for free if there were an alternative. That alternative was going to the US - so rather than actually offering to work for free, I started studying for the USMLE as a backup plan.
Then, over the course of the next couple of years, I gradually changed my mind about staying in Australia. This was due to a variety of reasons, as you'll see if you look at my historical posts - I was always pretty public about the fact that I was undecided. In retrospect, I think a major reason why I wanted to stay in Australia was because I was afraid of the USMLE and the hard work associated with studying for it. But once that task was done, the idea of coming back home became a lot more attractive.
There's a difference between "flip-flopping" and changing your opinion based on new information. I also wanted to be a pathologist, and then changed my mind and decided on psychiatry because I liked my psych rotation. Call that a "flip-flop" if you want.
Regarding the newspaper article - I remember that. It was a single newspaper article. Quoted directly from the article, Shan
said forgoing his first year's salary was a worthwhile sacrifice if the alternative was being left with no means to repay his expected $300,000 debt. "I had assumed that if I came here and worked hard and did well, I would get a place -- whereas the truth is it doesn't matter how hard I work, I may not get a place because of my residency status."
I think that qldking was referring to this thing:
http://student.bmj.com/student/view-article.html?id=sbmj.b5003
It says that I "offered to work for free." Today is the first time I've ever seen or become aware of this article. It looks like it's just a summary of the article from the other newspaper. Nobody ever contacted me about this, and I had no idea that it existed until just now. Clearly qldking spent a lot of time researching me if he/she was able to find a random out-of-context quote that I wasn't even aware of. There was one article, and maybe there were several more that quoted the first one - but I'm not sure what would possess somebody to do such thorough research on a random stranger to find articles about me that I'm not even aware of. But I never offered to work for free. Even if I had, I don't see how that would be relevant.
Anyway, I'm clearly feeding a troll here, and pitman has done a good enough job of pointing out the ridiculousness of the other person's arguments.
Regarding casual mentions of my MCAT score in the past - I'm sorry if it came off as an attempt to portray myself as a "genius slacker"... as I said earlier, I'm pretty public about most things, including my MCAT score, my undergrad GPA, and my USMLE scores (which are pretty average). As you said, my MCAT score is "slightly decent," so that would be a pretty silly way to portray oneself as a genius... I only repeatedly mention that data because so many students ask about what sorts of scores are required to get in, so I usually offer my data as another data point. I'm not sure what I said to make it seem like I don't try in school, but I'd say I was a pretty average student. This is mostly just an attempt for me to be open about myself - I'm so open about things that I have a link to my blog which led qldking to dig up my name, google it, and find some obscure articles from 2009. I'm not sure why any doctor would want to portray himself as a slacker when it's so easy to find his real name... I certainly wouldn't want my patients to look me up and develop that impression.
Clearly, qldking has gone to a great deal of effort to distract from my original argument by making a nonsensical ad hominem argument against me directly. I usually try hard to avoid feeding trolls, but logical fallacies are a pet peeve of mine.