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crystal_clear) wrote2010-10-08 06:29 pm
crystal_clear) wrote2010-10-08 06:29 pm
Entry tags:
Overshadowed
Perhaps with a hindsight, the me in the future would only shake her head in disapproval if she ever returns here to read what will shortly follow, dismissing her past as a shameful secret that she could never bear to share with any single soul out there.
But the current me is dying to say it out loud, because she cannot - possibly, she never could - keep her emotions bottled up nicely. Somehow she feels like an open book, where the slightest clue of her innermost feelings gets the spotlight and people around her don't need to be half as smart as Sherlock Holmes to deduce what goes on in her head and her heart.
It annoys her that people seem to know her more than she knows herself.
...
For God's sake, I'll stop taking in third person pronoun right now.
The Prophet once said that the religion is beautiful, and yet its beauty is hidden underneath the ugliness of the followers.
I'm inclined to relate the situation to medicine.
I may not know much, only being in the clinical side slightly over two years and a quarter, and yet somehow a small(?) part of me - perhaps the paranoid side, but really, who the heck knows!? - detests the human element in the profession.
It makes me feel guilty when I recall a conversation I had with a surgeon:
"Why did you choose medicine?"
"I'd like to work on people."
Note the phrase "work on people", which carries a significantly different meaning from "work with people". I like having things in my own pace, and having more people involved is like having more uncontrolled variables in the equation - impossible if not tedious to solve, and a great source of stress. But yeah, medicine is a team game; It's rarely a one-man-show. One cannot expect to know everything.
They say medicine is both science and art. Science when we have objective results and explanations behind the things that we do, and art when it comes to dealing with people - forming rapport, working as a team, and such.
Dear God.
Lately I found myself entertaining the notion of "what would have happened if I had not ended up here?".
Additionally, just last week a friend asked me what I'd like to do aside from medicine. To which I answered, "I'd like to open a library, write a book, or maybe travel."
Why does it seem like I hate being in this course?
It's not the course per se - it's more like the clinical aspect. I dislike the unpredictability of things. Study as much as you like, but there will always be something - usually the nitty-gritty things that you couldn't, for the life of you, remember - that will always be overlooked and will be the one that will be attacked on, being your weak point. It's never enough. You're always stupid. No matter how much you read the stuff, your brain refuses to store it for more than 1 day.
Which could be my fault. I mean, it's difficult juggling things that you cannot predict. One thing comes after another, and before you knew it, your brain rejects it all outright.
I hate dealing with people. I don't know if it's just my paranoia or apprehension, but it feels like everyone is looking for your faults. Everything is bloody wrong. Your saying anything will be deemed as useless. Your mere presence is a nuisance. Your clerking patients will shoot his or her blood pressure up into outer space.
I exaggerate, perhaps. Blame it on my theatrical tendencies, if you will.
The problem with art is that it's subjective. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. What I like about one thing might be the one that another finds distasteful. As such, the standard is a bit too ambiguous, too vague to follow much less to adhere to.
And the world stresses more on solid evidence.
Art is subjective, so what floats my boat might sink yours in a matter of seconds.
Presenting a case is said to be an art.
We have headings on what to ask during history taking. Now what matters is the arrangement of it all.
Some want it chronologically. Some want it in terms of priority. Another want just the elaboration of complaints while shoving the rest of your differentials into the systemic review.
Argh.
It's getting ridiculous.
Changing one's tune to suit others is acceptable. It's how to deal with friends of different temperaments. You discuss philosophical stuff with those who'd be willing to lend an ear and offer more insightful viewpoints and interesting arguments. You shop with people whom you think have more or less the same taste as yours (because the last thing you'd like to have is having your companion condemn something that you find irresistible). You don't joke with people who have no sense of humour. You don't gossip with those who have no interest in how other people lead their lives. And you definitely will not be sharing private stories with people you know only superficially.
But changing your presentation just to suit the listener - what's up with that!?
This is when we're dealing with objective stuff. One specialist wants you to "sell your diagnosis", another wants you "not to be biased".
What on Earth am I supposed to do?
I feel like shrinking myself in one faraway corner and sob.
Or, singing a line of Adam Lambert's popular song: What do you want from me?
I can't take this anymore.
Why on earth must people make things more difficult than they should be?
Another thing that irks me is how what we're doing right now - taking an oh-so-detailed history - is not exactly practised in real life situations at the hospital.
You ask a lot of personal stuff; in social history, how many cigarettes the patient's father smokes per day? Does the house come equipped with water and electrical facilities? Duration of previous admissions (every. single. one...in the worst case scenario), the follow ups and whatnots.
Were all these and more asked when the patients were clerked? Only God Knows.
Third issue: Housemen have no say over things. There are protocols to adhere to and superiors to obey. This hierarchy hammers into me a sense of timidness.
I'm a nobody, so excuse me while I cower before your greatness and say yes to whatever you say because I'm always, always wrong.
And do as you like to me. I'm your target practice. Yell at me because my eardrums can take whatever your voice box dishes out in whatever decibel.
And because you think that I'm always wrong, it naturally follows that I'm always stupid.
Cough.
Words will never hurt me. They'll only make me compelled to lock myself up in some secluded corner in the world and despair at the evil that exists within people, and my own indomitable weakness. Pfft, yeah right...
Here I'm guilty of only highlighting the ugly things. With all due respect, there are those that I respect...but me being me, my pessimistic side tends to see everything as half-empty.
Pardon me if I find that being pessimistic is a slight extreme of "having no high expectations from self and other people", which is only too easy to adopt.
But the current me is dying to say it out loud, because she cannot - possibly, she never could - keep her emotions bottled up nicely. Somehow she feels like an open book, where the slightest clue of her innermost feelings gets the spotlight and people around her don't need to be half as smart as Sherlock Holmes to deduce what goes on in her head and her heart.
It annoys her that people seem to know her more than she knows herself.
...
For God's sake, I'll stop taking in third person pronoun right now.
The Prophet once said that the religion is beautiful, and yet its beauty is hidden underneath the ugliness of the followers.
I'm inclined to relate the situation to medicine.
I may not know much, only being in the clinical side slightly over two years and a quarter, and yet somehow a small(?) part of me - perhaps the paranoid side, but really, who the heck knows!? - detests the human element in the profession.
It makes me feel guilty when I recall a conversation I had with a surgeon:
"Why did you choose medicine?"
"I'd like to work on people."
Note the phrase "work on people", which carries a significantly different meaning from "work with people". I like having things in my own pace, and having more people involved is like having more uncontrolled variables in the equation - impossible if not tedious to solve, and a great source of stress. But yeah, medicine is a team game; It's rarely a one-man-show. One cannot expect to know everything.
They say medicine is both science and art. Science when we have objective results and explanations behind the things that we do, and art when it comes to dealing with people - forming rapport, working as a team, and such.
Dear God.
Lately I found myself entertaining the notion of "what would have happened if I had not ended up here?".
Additionally, just last week a friend asked me what I'd like to do aside from medicine. To which I answered, "I'd like to open a library, write a book, or maybe travel."
Why does it seem like I hate being in this course?
It's not the course per se - it's more like the clinical aspect. I dislike the unpredictability of things. Study as much as you like, but there will always be something - usually the nitty-gritty things that you couldn't, for the life of you, remember - that will always be overlooked and will be the one that will be attacked on, being your weak point. It's never enough. You're always stupid. No matter how much you read the stuff, your brain refuses to store it for more than 1 day.
Which could be my fault. I mean, it's difficult juggling things that you cannot predict. One thing comes after another, and before you knew it, your brain rejects it all outright.
I hate dealing with people. I don't know if it's just my paranoia or apprehension, but it feels like everyone is looking for your faults. Everything is bloody wrong. Your saying anything will be deemed as useless. Your mere presence is a nuisance. Your clerking patients will shoot his or her blood pressure up into outer space.
I exaggerate, perhaps. Blame it on my theatrical tendencies, if you will.
The problem with art is that it's subjective. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. What I like about one thing might be the one that another finds distasteful. As such, the standard is a bit too ambiguous, too vague to follow much less to adhere to.
And the world stresses more on solid evidence.
Art is subjective, so what floats my boat might sink yours in a matter of seconds.
Presenting a case is said to be an art.
We have headings on what to ask during history taking. Now what matters is the arrangement of it all.
Some want it chronologically. Some want it in terms of priority. Another want just the elaboration of complaints while shoving the rest of your differentials into the systemic review.
Argh.
It's getting ridiculous.
Changing one's tune to suit others is acceptable. It's how to deal with friends of different temperaments. You discuss philosophical stuff with those who'd be willing to lend an ear and offer more insightful viewpoints and interesting arguments. You shop with people whom you think have more or less the same taste as yours (because the last thing you'd like to have is having your companion condemn something that you find irresistible). You don't joke with people who have no sense of humour. You don't gossip with those who have no interest in how other people lead their lives. And you definitely will not be sharing private stories with people you know only superficially.
But changing your presentation just to suit the listener - what's up with that!?
This is when we're dealing with objective stuff. One specialist wants you to "sell your diagnosis", another wants you "not to be biased".
What on Earth am I supposed to do?
I feel like shrinking myself in one faraway corner and sob.
Or, singing a line of Adam Lambert's popular song: What do you want from me?
I can't take this anymore.
Why on earth must people make things more difficult than they should be?
Another thing that irks me is how what we're doing right now - taking an oh-so-detailed history - is not exactly practised in real life situations at the hospital.
You ask a lot of personal stuff; in social history, how many cigarettes the patient's father smokes per day? Does the house come equipped with water and electrical facilities? Duration of previous admissions (every. single. one...in the worst case scenario), the follow ups and whatnots.
Were all these and more asked when the patients were clerked? Only God Knows.
Third issue: Housemen have no say over things. There are protocols to adhere to and superiors to obey. This hierarchy hammers into me a sense of timidness.
I'm a nobody, so excuse me while I cower before your greatness and say yes to whatever you say because I'm always, always wrong.
And do as you like to me. I'm your target practice. Yell at me because my eardrums can take whatever your voice box dishes out in whatever decibel.
And because you think that I'm always wrong, it naturally follows that I'm always stupid.
Cough.
Words will never hurt me. They'll only make me compelled to lock myself up in some secluded corner in the world and despair at the evil that exists within people, and my own indomitable weakness. Pfft, yeah right...
Here I'm guilty of only highlighting the ugly things. With all due respect, there are those that I respect...but me being me, my pessimistic side tends to see everything as half-empty.
Pardon me if I find that being pessimistic is a slight extreme of "having no high expectations from self and other people", which is only too easy to adopt.