Stages of Grief (2 of 2)

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Preface:
Ok, so I re-read the first half, and I have to say I didn’t do the best job of writing…I was tired and didn’t mean to leave it hanging in quite that way. I know it was just the first half, but still, it wasn’t as clear as I wanted. Rather than re-do it, I’ll just finish here.

Part 2:
We got our grades back for our first anatomy exam and our embryology exam this week. In both cases, I did far worse than I would have thought. I passed, of course (I didn’t think I hadn’t in each case), but I’m not the type to celebrate mediocrity. In anatomy, the disparity was between what was emphasized in lecture vs. what was asked about on the exam. Most reasonable people would make a 1:1 connection between the two; however it clearly seems that if a topic is covered at all, it is fair game at any level of specificity for an exam. Ok, sucks to be me, but now I know better. I can look back and see where I could have studied certain areas more, given more emphasis to this or that, etc. I’ll take my lumps and move on.

With embryo, however, the questions themselves were ambiguous, and I’m convinced certain topics weren’t covered at all or not in the text. In one specific case, I was working on review questions to which the answer did not appear in the book, so I looked it up online. More than one source indicated that amnioblasts derive from the epiblast. The test said they were from cytotrophoblast (which would presumably be extraembryonic). At that level of development, there are only really 3-4 cell varieties, so it’s really splitting hairs any way you look at it, but that’s not what I’m talking about. He disagreed when I said it was epiblast, and when I offered to show him evidence to the contrary, he didn’t offer to accept it. At this point I’m not even trying to change my grade, and I told him so…I just wanted to know whether or not I’m right, am I being properly prepared for the future, etc. I have this prof for anatomy lab too, and half the time you get a different answer if you ask the same question. I know it’s not because he doesn’t know what he’s talking about, it’s a language barrier, but nothing is ever done about it.

But the most frustrating thing is that on the back of the exam is a page where you can list what you think might be wrong with the exam, such as ambiguous questions, no right answer, etc. I filled in the entire table plus, not just w/complaints, but an honest “secondary answer” where I said, “If you’re asking blah, it’s A; but if you mean blah blah, it’s C” I asked if he had looked at that back page and he said, “Yes.” His dismissal of my “alternate” point on 2-3 questions proved to me he never read it (or didn’t understand it), but more importantly, didn’t care what it said.

However, in looking at the exam, I see that I was responsible for the bulk of my mistakes. If I were to add up all the above-type questions where I felt the question was bullshit or had 2 right answers, etc., I might haven been able to come up with 8 questions out of 70. I got just over 20 wrong, so simple math tells me I screwed more than the test did. Unfortunately, most of the wrong answers were questions to which I already knew the answer. I just got frustrated with dealing with the exam itself, more concerned about making sure I specified which questions were not valid, etc. than just answering the rest as best as I could. I let the shitty nature of the test (and it was, trust me) distract me from doing my job and began to doubt myself. It was still my fault, but I felt so out of control.

During orientation, our associate dean said to pass anatomy, we’d need to study 4-5 hours a night on just that subject. Ummm, we get home at 4-5pm most days, so we study anatomy until 9pm, then how much biochem? Cell Bio or embryo? How much for those when we have to get up at 6:30am to make early-ass classes at 8? (some have 7am classes!) In a show of goodwill and support, he came to field questions, concerns, etc. one day (which we later would find out was only an exercise to make us feel he was listening). While fielding questions, he recounted his days at Harvard (he got his MD here in Mexico but his PhD in neuroscience from there) and marveled at how US students were “study machines.” He’d say, “They had an hour for lunch, but they’d eat in 15 minutes and then use the other 45 minutes for a nap” (as if that would put them back to “Energizer bunny” state). He’d follow that up with “They wouldn’t study all weekend, of course not! They took Friday night off, went on a date, had fun and slept in on Saturday morning,” as if that was some kind of luxury that made all the other days of sleeping <4 hours worth it. This is our “gold standard” by which our academic director feels exemplifies the ideal life-pattern of a medical student. So you see, any attempt to go over any given professor’s head with an academic grievance has to pass the above standard for this guy to feel any injustice has been done. Whatever.

I have come full circle with all these feelings to that last stage of grief, acceptance. I accept this is where I am, this is the school I have to deal with, and that this is a tiny, miniscule speck of nothing compared to the difficulty I’ll probably have to face with real people in this environment during clinical years when grading is even more subjective. I will be a stronger person for having to change myself a fuerza to become more adaptable and “go with the flow,” as much as it kills me. The fact I got a C/D/whatever in any given exam means nothing about what kind of medical student I am, much less how good of a doctor I’ll be, and least of all, my value and intellect as a person. This is not the whiny “grades don’t matter” excuse of a student who failed and didn’t take responsibility; this is the honest admission of a conscientious student who realizes that grades/exams/any given faculty member’s opinion/etc. are a means to an end, not the end itself. I’ll play by the rules and dance like a little monkey when the organ grinder starts playing, but I’m not going to redefine who I am and what’s most important to me in the process.