Mexico Medical Student |

I posted before about not having any “oomph” in my studies, and unfortunately, that still holds true. I need some major intervention here. I have a Histology midterm on Tuesday, and I’m barely halfway done with real studying for it. Sure, I’ve read all the chapters, but at a level of superficial glossing that allows me not to be totally lost in class, not snap-crackle-pop-ready with answers for any given moment. Of course, too often the bar I have for success is perfection; anything less is some degree of failure. That’s already a problem I need to work on, since I will never reach anything close to that. Do I force myself to memorize all 12 kinds of collagen, where they’re found, etc? Of course not, but I do expect to know and be prepared to answer all the basic things that I think are reasonably testable.

Niels has an interesting post on student performance. To share a story at my school, we get our pick of which community clinics we want based on GPA. Fine. I wasn’t sure how it’d be done, but I certainly didn’t expect to be in an auditorium with my entire class being called in order of GPA in front of everyone. That sucked. I’m not speaking from a sour grapes POV because I was easily in the top 10% of my class, but the whole exercise was unnecessary and fostered the very attitude that I detested with premeds before I was serious about coming to med school. I hated premeds with a passion…my being a “slacker” biophysics researcher aiming for a PhD, I looked upon such hypercompetitive students with disdain. I’m actually not a competitive person by nature. I’m content to wish someone well in their success (although perhaps with a tinge of understandable jealousy if it hits close to home) and not try to outdo them. However, when placed in an environment where I know I’m being watched, graded, scrutinized–I become competitive, aware of my place among others, etc. where before I didn’t care. I’m not talking backstabbing, sabotaging fellow collegues/classmates here; it’s just obvious how the shift in energy and awareness happens once “the spotlight is on,” so to speak. I don’t like it.

It’s even more frustrating to have that externally stimulated competitive drive clash with your own slackish-ness. It feels like having your foot on the brake and the gas at the same time. I don’t have to excel with an ‘A’ average to be an excellent doctor, nor do I think that because of that fact, I don’t need to excel. I strive to be more true to what I want and need, less caring of what others expect of me or are wondering about me. As long as I keep moving forward with every passed test, every objective learned, whether things were “mastered” or whether I kicked ass and took names should be irrelevant. Tell that to my school so we can just be.