It’s no secret to anyone who knows me that I didn’t particularly care for my undergraduate experience. While I think I received a good education and met some great people, the extremely competitive environment bred a cutthroat attitude among the students. Because most courses were graded on a curve, other students had to perform poorly in order for you to do well. A certain amount of healthy competition is fine, but the survival-of-the-fittest atmosphere at my university went above and beyond.
When I started medical school, I thought this kind of pettiness was behind me. And for the most part, it is. Everyone is working toward the same goal, and while your class rank is certainly important when applying for residencies, letter grades and GPA aren’t nearly as worrisome. Regardless of how well everyone does, the valedictorian and the person with the lowest class rank will both still become doctors.
One of the grading policies that helped relax the students and give us a small cushion when we didn’t do as well on an exam as we’d like was the decision to drop test questions that performed poorly. At least two or three times on every test, a question would unintentionally be worded badly, contain a typo, or simply have more than one correct answer. These questions were either double-keyed or dropped, giving credit to students who got them right. As long as you were a decent guesser, you could usually count on an extra point or two on every exam.
However, today we were informed that, due to student complaints, professors would no longer be dropping questions with credit but rather removing the question from the exam entirely. So instead of an extra point or two, a poorly worded question makes it easier to do badly by lowering the total number of questions on the exam. Granted, we’re dealing with very small point values and the change isn’t likely to affect most grades or overall GPAs. But I cannot fathom why a fellow student would complain about a policy like this. The only possible benefit it could serve would be to raise his or her class rank a few points at the expense of the rest of the class.
If I had a choice between a doctor who performed well academically vs. one who barely made it through school, I’d obviously choose the one who got all A’s. But if those A’s come at the expense of common decency, I’d start looking for a third option.
My reviews for the Wii and Xbox 360 versions of Scene It? Bright Lights! Big Screen! went up on GameSpot today. I asked for a family-friendly multiplayer game to try out over the Thanksgiving break, and in that sense, Scene It was a good choice. It was a difficult game to review, though. Until now, Scene It has been an Xbox 360 exclusive. To bring the game to multiple platforms, it’s obvious that this version was developed for the Wii and then half-heartedly ported to the 360 and the Wii. Unlike previous games in the series, this one lacks online play, leaderboards, and avatar support. It also has a streamlined visual style that makes the game move a bit faster, but also makes it look like the art design was given about 5 minutes of consideration. It’s still good family fun (and your only option on the Wii), but there are better versions of the same series available for less money.
Dr. Mario has always been one of my favorite puzzle games. The formula never changes much, and it isn’t a particularly complex game, but it’s enjoyable enough that I keep going back to it for a few minutes every now and then. A couple of YouTube users collaborated on a hilarious video where they put lyrics to the Dr. Mario theme song. I just thought I’d share.
My review for Rainbow Islands: Towering Adventure went up on GameSpot today. It’s a fairly standard update to a classic franchise with the obligatory audio and visual upgrades. Local cooperative play is a nice addition, and the game goes a long way toward correcting the problems of recent remake efforts like Rainbow Islands: Evolution (PSP) and Rainbow Islands: Revolution (Nintendo DS), but the lack of some important features make it feel stuck in the past. If you’re a fan of the series looking for some nostalgia (because, let’s face it, there are no new fans of Rainbow Islands), you’ll probably find something to like. Otherwise, stick with Bubble Bobble Neo.
At various points in your medical education, you reach a point where you have to ask yourself whether or not all your effort has been or will be worth it. Most of the time, you tell yourself that everything you’ve done up until this point has been a step in the right direction that will ultimately get you to your career in medicine. Sometimes, it becomes difficult to keep your head above water and reassure yourself of what you know to be true.
You’re away from family and friends, and you spend any time you have outside of the classroom inside of a library. There will be some exams where, regardless of how hard you study or how much you think you know, you’ll do poorly. It’s discouraging, because you begin to feel like nothing you do to prepare has any effect on the outcome. You begin to resent the professors for writing ridiculous questions, your classmates for somehow outperforming you, or your friends outside of medical school who are busy starting their own families instead of wasting four more years and another $150,000-$200,000 after college.
I have plenty of things to look forward to at the end of my second year. I’m getting married in May, and I start clinical rotations in June. I’ll actually be getting hands-on experience with real patients instead of pretending to treat actors with fake medical problems. I’ll be leaving Pennsylvania and moving in with my wife to a brand new house.
But when you’re stuck inside every weekend preparing for a 2-3 hour exam every Monday morning, it’s difficult to think that far ahead. You start getting run down, tired of treading water and going through the motions. I know that it will be worth it in a few years when I’m starting a family and doing what I’ve wanted to do for as long as I can remember. It’s just that right now, all I can remember is that I should be studying instead of typing this.
Welcome to Brian Fishman’s little corner of the interwebs. I’m not really sure what I’m doing or why this blog exists, but I figured I’d give it a shot. Humor me.
Posted by brianfishman 
Welcome to Brian Fishman’s little corner of the interwebs. I’m not really sure what I’m doing or why this blog exists, but I figured I’d give it a shot. Humor me. 
