so flowers all over the hospital today. they were selling roses in the lobby for staff and visitors alike to give to their beloveds. and while i have the best sweetie on the planet and have no beef with love, i have never really gotten into this holiday. i think mostly it's because in high school they did a carnation fund raiser thing where you could buy flowers (to your credit or anonymously) for $1 each and have them delivered to your recipients during class at the end of the day by a cheerleader (i'm seriously not making this up). so, naturally, all the popular girls would end up with, like, 27 flowers each and be all shiny and chatty about secret admirers and stuff...and i would leave for home at the end of the day with one dying flower that i got "anonymously" from my best friend signed something like "From Your Loving Tom Cruise (you know Nicole has nothin' on your hot bunz)."
and thinking about high school got me thinking about how much my life as a PA student is so frighteningly similar to how my life was as a high school freshman. this morning i was on time (for the first time in...ever) for a grand rounds presentation. so i stopped and got coffee and a bagel, went to the bathroom, went to my locker and meandered down to the room where we were allegedly meeting. to my horror, all the lights were off and no one was milling around. a friendly janitor told me, "oh, no, dear, that meeting (read: geometry class) is always held in the other building (read: by the old gym, all the way across school)." so i'm flying through the hospital with my waaay too heavy lab coat (ie: backpack) stuffed to the brim with medical text books and cheat sheets, my stethescope, penlight and writing utensils and a few crumpled dollar bills (plus a huge wad of toilet paper to sop up my still draining nose) while precariously balancing my coffee and bagel and searching for my badge in one of my many pockets.
i get to the actual meeting many minutes late and have to take a seat by (OH GOD!) the residents, since all the med student spots are filled. all the residents are beautiful, obviously successful, collected, and casually chatting and laughing with the attendings. i want to date a senior varsity athlete, too!! i want to be hip and hip-ly laugh with the upper classmen/residents!!! only i can't. because i'm only a freshman. i mean a PA-student. and they get weirded out when i stand too close and laugh out loud inappropriately during their conversations. so the speaker speaks and what do you know? i sort of got it. i knew what language he was speaking. i can hang with the big kids. i'm hip. i'm cool...but then at the noon lecture...the one on the 'various types of DNA transcriptors found-in acute myeloid leukemia and the use of arsenic derivatives as treatment in china'-- where i appeared to be the ONLY person in the room not able to differentiate the little purple cell abnormality from the small violet cell abnormality on the slides, i felt less smart and more like a the eager but naive freshman.
even how i'm addressed is as demeaning as it was then. we were called "frosh" at age 14, now i am very often merely referred to as "student" and not by my real name (Dame Paddy).
the hierarchy of medicine is truly something to behold. this is a teaching hospital, so there are med students and residents and attendings all doing this little respect and power jig. the attendings pimp the residents, the residents pimp the med students (and i sit praying silently in the corner that they'll just let me eat my bagel in peace). the residents fear the attendings, the med students fear everybody...there's even unspoken rules about where people can sit during meetings and lectures, based on rank.
and medicine is known for its ruthless teaching style- "the Socratic method" is what it's diplomatically called. what it means is that you as the student will be put on the spot and made to sweat and will be grilled until you get something wrong and then either mocked for not knowing the answer or told to look it up and give a full report on it tomorrow. usually, both. but the idea is that then you will never forget that concept and will someday, in turn, pass the torch and teach your charges in the same manner. it's how it's done. my preceptors do this to me, too, just not in front of hundreds of people. it's fascinating to watch. especially as a PA student outsider. at these teaching events there are no other PA's or PA students, so i'm kind of an anomaly. but, they offer free food, so i'm a fat and happy anomaly. as long as i keep my head down and don't get noticed (or God forbid-called on!), i should be fine.
the rest of the rotation is going pretty well. i'm pimped by the PA's all day long and criticized for pretty much everything i say and do. but alas, that's life as a fledgling student in internal medicine. and at least tom cruise loves me.
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I don't know if anyone has made the connection between the "Socratic method" and what goes on in a restaurant kitchen, especially the kitchen of a three star restaurant. Cooks take "bollockings" thrice daily as part of the job. The reason being the same, if I swear and throw pots at you, or make you stand in the corner while the other chefs cook ,you'll never make the same mistake twice. Of course in your situation it could be life or death, and in the kitchen mostly just some obsessive compulsive chefs idea of what a plate should look like before it goes out on the passe. You were deifintly Tom Cruise worthy in high school what with your theater girl moody,passionate mystique, would've been a nice compliment with his nutso "serious actor" scientology behaivour.
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