Screw School (say that ten times fast)

You are Spider-Man


You are intelligent, witty,
a bit geeky and have great
power and responsibility.

Spider-Man 60% Hulk 60% Robin 52% Batman 50% Superman 50% Supergirl 42% Catwoman 40% The Flash 35% Wonder Woman 32% Green Lantern 30% Iron Man 10%

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Test

Was MSNing with CH and musing, maybe I'm really Spiderman.

So, quick story. With great powers come great responsibility. The truth is, although medical students do not actually have much power in the real sense - we don't make treatment decisions, we don't have any authority to change anothing - there are some powers that we cannot choose not to have. And there's this bunch of misconceptions and expectations that society expects out of us, and sometimes these are plain unreasonable and absurd.

Why medical students are like Spiderman:
1. When crime strikes, when Mary Jane is in trouble, Spiderman can't choose not to take action can he?
We do know our stuff. We might not be able to do stuff, but we definitely have that power to give information. We know more than most of the general public, and if what we know might help someone else, I guess it's a moral responsibility to provide that information. Can't say no, can't run away.

2. Spiderman has an image to keep up.
We can't just do anything we like, because we are role models. If I pick up a cigarette and smoke, it's only natural for others to think 'gee, even a doc-to-be does it, it can't be all that harmful right?'. Fair enough.

But what I, for whatever reason, choose to smoke in full knowledge of the risks? It'd be a logical decision to me, but I wouldn't want to bring others down along with me when I smoke.

We have to be conscious of this role-modelling thing all the time and it drives me nuts. Just because I'm a doc-to-be doesn't mean that what I do is OK, yeah? Nobody's perfect.

3. Spiderman doesn't owe you anything.
Neither do we. You don't pay us, you don't even respect us, you act like it's your right to make us explain everything and anything to you, to drop whatever we're doing just to reassure you that your acne marks will fade or that the running nose you're having will subside in a couple of days.

If we don't know you, we don't know you. Stop trying to pretend that you're our friends when you barely know us, because that trick won't work. We don't know you and don't owe you. Unless of course we feel that we need to step in.

4. You don't tell Spiderman how to shoot a web.
If you don't know even a tenth as much as we do about the field, don't even pretend to do so. You'll just look silly and immature in our eyes. We spend years mastering this skill and art, and you didn't, so don't think you know more or that you can do better than us.

5. Sometimes Spiderman fails too. And he'd appreciate a little help.
If you had watched the movie Spiderman 2 you'd know. Even superheroes get overwhelmed and burn out. Even superheroes lose their powers sometimes, and superheroes need help sometimes.

We don't know everything in the field. You wouldn't expect an electronics engineer to know every single detail about how your television set works. You wouldn't expect an astrophysicist to explain things that even the best scientists don't know. So don't ask us why males have nipples or why you took longer than usual to recover from a particular bout of flu. We simply don't know. And don't use that stupid 'if you don't know how can you save lives next time?' line, because you and I both know that we don't need to know everything to be proficient.

We get sick too. It's not our fault when we fall ill. Just because we chose this field doesn't mean we don't have a right to.

We have our setbacks too. All too often I hear "he's a medical student, he'll overcome this", or "if he made it into medical school, this shouldn't be a problem, no?" or "I'm sure he can help himself." That's bullshit, you know. We're human just like you too. We can't always be the ones helping without being help. When we need help, who else can we turn to but you?

6. Peter Parker doesn't like to be disturbed.
Look, we're all sick of being superheroes for so many hours of the day. If you're our friends, stop bugging us with your 'you're the doc, you ought to know how to answer this' and stop reminding us of the drudgery we go through during the rest of our pathetic lives. We really don't want to think about the kind of crap we experience when we don our white coats.

Whenever we don't have a white coat and stethoscope on, don't bug us. We have our real lives too. No matter what, we are people (just like you) first, then medical students.

==

If you want to know, after that mindrape last week, I'm still sufferring a major burnout, too afraid to get back on track to go on with that project thing for school.

Having a viral infection and feeling groggy and with a pain in the sides of the throat don't help too.

I'm not sad or anything, but I've been extremely tempermental lately.

If you're the person who made a wrong number phone call to me and received the lecture about how I obviously am not from a transport company;

Or if you're the person who insisted that you have the right to bug my brother to do some survey thing late at night just because you're my friend;

Or if you're the person who added me to a mass MSN conversation and hanged my MSN for a couple of minutes while I was in the middle of conversations with 2 friends;

Or if you're my schoolmates in my project group who I ignored phone calls and messages from because I was too burnt-out and afraid of even more work and afraid of breaking that news that I really can't cope and had to push the work to them;

Or if you're my friends and have noticed me being unusually short-tempered and nasty lately;

Or if you're my mom and dad and I was being unreasonably cranky;

I wish I could muster up the will to apologise.

I'm quite afraid of becoming numb and cynical and jaded and bitter from all these shit. It's so totally not reassuring when most of my seniors are already cynical and jaded and bitter from the years in medical school.

==

On a lighter note, I've decided to stay away from the bicycle lest I go berserk from my crankiness and end up squished between vehicles. I'm safe. Went for runs instead.


Red sky at night, sailor's delight? Luckily it didn't rain.



Lower Pierce Boardwalk.