![[dr. bob]](/dr-bob-sm.gif)
Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.orgShown: posts 55 to 79 of 79. Go back in thread:
Posted by alexandra_k on July 20, 2015, at 0:37:08
In reply to Re: another degree, posted by alexandra_k on July 17, 2015, at 19:05:20
If you walk at your ordinary walking pace all is good...
If you need to walk with someone whose walking pace is faster than you, then things can get painful (my mother).
If you need to walk with someone whose walking pace is slower than you, then things can get equally painful.
It can be easier to stop. Then wait for the person to get sufficiently far ahead... Then to start walking again. That can be less painful.
And that was math. Until... Maths got too far ahead. Oops.
And then there was science. And we did biology. And I suspected that biology was a slow-walker for physics. And physics was the epitome of science (one could study biology a little bit earlier than chem / physics and I guess I had reductionist ideology all the way back then)...
So I didn't try particularly at biology. Thought I'd let it get sufficiently far ahead for it to be fun. But then physics... Turned out to be math. Ooops.
Oooooooops.
Oh wells.
Posted by alexandra_k on July 31, 2015, at 19:22:00
In reply to Re: I have figured it out., posted by alexandra_k on July 20, 2015, at 0:37:08
so i got a months free subscription to the paper. which is kinda cool, actually. anyway... there was this article on how some kinds are learning maths kinesthetically... on their fingers... and a photograph of a teacher holding up her hands... counting off from the thumbs (so you end up with the dead-end meeting in the middle once you get to 10 and no concept of a number line).
sigh.
I do need to work on my basic maths concepts. no help around here... too many people failed to acquire them.
just simple maths...
i sat the UMAT. i ended up not studying for it majorly... realising that it was a practice run. anyway... it is a nice test, yeah. well written. sometimes the answers surprise me... sometimes i need to think very hard to follow their reasoning... but i did work through some of their practice stuff and i certainly went 'oh, one of those, i see' quite a lot. so i think that it does indeed intend to teach you some skills and then test whether you learned them (from them or from school or whatever). anyway... i need to do simple 'liklihood'. and there is some stuff, too, on being able to write (simple) equations. just a very basic understanding of concepts. i see... i think i can do it... but need to put some work in, yeah. the work in did on maths before wasn't wasted.. i just need more practice.
i keep to-ing and fro-ing about things here. somtiems i think they are just profiteering from me, somehow. thinking that they can keep me here on around minimium wage or whatever forever... i mean... sometimes i think i am happy here getting this opportunity to learn stuff. but then other times i rail about how it isn't an opportunity at all it is just babysittting and then rewarding the people who were educated before they came in... i don't know... i am fairly undecided, i guess.
i feel like what is hard is that i can't trust / rely on honesty. because people don't speak honestly anymore. perhaps that is just health. all over. people don't communicate informational contents. most of the informational contents they do communicate seem designed to be (intentioanlly) misleading... people are very selfish... their own interests... the more you learn about how superficial etc most people are the more you feel justified in looking out from your own / treating others differently from how you would want to be treated. most people... like the attention from an operation - right? that is the point. nice food... whatever... stuff like that. service quality... bait and switch...
i remember being surprised that this guy i know... smart guy... was a doc for a while then switched out... he had this sort of thing (obsession? Hobby interest? curiosity about? fascination with?) psychopaths. the idea that someone might be very prosocial to the world but have very disturbing tendancies behind closed doors... i was surprised about this because i didn't think the idea was psychologically plausible. i was quite attracted by some of the moral theory stuff on how you act in a certain way because then you make it more psychologically likely that you will act in certain ways... fostering certain traits... i didn't think it was possible to partitioni like that (maybe that is kind of ironic, or something, but my best efforts to dissociate were surely leaky...)
anyway... i think hidden curriculum... trains people to be like that. to put on a facade... that getting better at the facade... is like standing on a bump on the rug. and then the weird thing bumps out the other way. the anti-social tendancy. what might have been a disagreement... soothed away with some acknowledgement and processing... festers and swells... and some sicko thing gets fostered indeed.
and perhaps... that is the... what do you call it... not a costly signal... a committment signal. to the group. your fate is tied to the fate of the group. like the neurosurgeon who (eventually) got called out for his drug and prostitution parties... eventually... for a long while... that was probably the thing to keep him in line... what sort of a committment signal do they need for sometone to work in social policy.
shudder.
i'm scared. this is why girls aren't supposed to work, and stuff, huh.
hmm...
i don't know what to do... try not to let it distract me from studying, i suppose. even if they are just going to take my money and redistribute it to the stupid kids of the wealthy parents... i mean... what ya gonna do?
Posted by alexandra_k on August 3, 2015, at 22:29:13
In reply to Re: I have figured it out., posted by alexandra_k on July 31, 2015, at 19:22:00
so, it just properly hit me today... if you get to do a heart transplant you might actually get to hold a living and beating live healthy heart in your hands. how cool is that? really... i mean... wow.
when we did the rat dissection i found myself looking around a bit... sort of... is it alright for me to be doing this? i mean... really? it's okay? i should be a bit aggressive with the blunt scissors to open the peritoneal cavity? to hack through the ribs... to hack through the jaw to expose the epiglottis? we are really allowed to be doing this?
it is pretty freaky...
i'm really enjoying my classes this semester. Medsci is great. it is just so interesting... i'm happy spending most of my time studying for it because it is so interesting... And law is going pretty great... very much a new application of philosophy skills... I didn't realise that this country is so new... has only been making it's own laws pretty recently (like, in the last 30 years) and so on... that's the problem, really. developing the knowledgeable people to run this country well... it is taking time and people do head off overseas...
But medsci is great, yeah. i am disappointed that i really don't think i will get to do medicine next year (there actually is some ambiguity in their application stuff where i might actually be able to apply since i will have done a full time year and i have done a degree already...)... but then... Given that I really do want to do the science / surgery / anatomy side of it (not singing placebo to the masses in rural communities or nodding and smiling because that is so much cheaper than running tests of prescribing things or actually treating people...) ... I might be better off doing a couple more years of medsci before going in. so i'm more likely to do better on the exams etc so i'm more likely to get good placements / to be slightly impressive or at least not too ignorant and or annoying on placement / to get accepted to further training programs... I don't know... The physiology is about to pick up with cardio, I think... Lets see if I can keep up...
Anyway... Happy, yeah. I was really worried after last semester. I've done some of the practice multiple choice assessments for Medsci and... Have come home, yeah. Like the UMAT. I know I didn't do well at it (due to my own lack of study on it) but then... They were fair questions. Not ambiguous or (IMHO wrong). Which is what most of last semester seemed to me to be in biology and population health. So... Huge relief that Medsci is making sense to me. It is mostly about the volume of information, yeah. Not to say it isn't about understanding... But you have a volume to get through before you have the information you need to be puzzling about... And it just takes time, yeah. Fortunately... It is really interesting, yeah. A heart. An actual beating heart. Damn.
I feel like some part of my brain woke up during the UMAT test... In the practice for it all the practice is online... And I tried printing off bits... But they tell you not to... And then I read something about how if you practice a skill in (certain kinds of) non-optimal conditions then that can result in your having increased performance under ideal conditions. And so I sort of went with that... Only working through problems on the computer (which, for me is far from ideal). And it used to be in three sections. All the science reasoning first then the verbal and then the picture sequencing pattern stuff. But now it is all jumbled up... And so some people are saying to go through one kind of task and then the next and then... And with it not being in sections now you really need to figure how you are going to pace things... Anyway... I thought I would basically not worry about any of this and just see how I found it...
I feel like part of my brain has woken up to the picture completion / pattern recognition. Especially having it on paper there in front of me. I can use my hands to cover irrelevant bits... That seemed to me to be a significant part of the test - your ability to ignore the distractors. I'm probably not to great at that (I think maybe my working memory workbench is a bit on the small side so I need external / environmental strategies to help with that defecit). .. Anyway... Using my hand to cover up answers I've eliminated or aspects I'm not supposed to focus on... It really helped, yeah. And just seeing a problem and going 'oh, its a growing pattern I remember those' or it's a '+1, +2, +3...' or whatever. I have some of the categories, now and sometimes the pattern... Is almost pop out in it's salience. More practice, for sure. Really loving the visuo-spatial thing. Doign that too with anatomy... Different sections... Building a mental picture. Lots of closing your eyes and visually remembering... Before sleep seems best... Brain really seems to remember... Visuospatial workbench increasing f*ck yeah!
It is great fun, yeah. Like the gym... When I felt like a different part of my brain woke up, or something.
Life is pretty good. Yeah :-)
Posted by alexandra_k on August 7, 2015, at 3:54:39
In reply to Re: perks, posted by alexandra_k on August 3, 2015, at 22:29:13
Soooooooooooo many graphs. Sigh.
Posted by alexandra_k on August 9, 2015, at 5:16:30
In reply to Re: perks, posted by alexandra_k on August 7, 2015, at 3:54:39
It looks like they are closing it down. The place where I was staying before. Over the bridge... The accommodation, I mean. The dilapidated buildings.
I feel sad about that. It gave a relatively safe space to people who would likely have worse without it. Sure it was cold. And sure the sewers backed up sometimes. And so on... But it was alcohol / drug free. And nobody was abusing anybody.
I'm still undecided about what to do about my grades / what happened with me out at the 'health science' campus. I think... I shall leave it be. I... Could make an appeal... Judicial review of administrative action. There is stuff in the education act about education being internationally focused (rather than focused on serving the needs of localised communities) and so on... In many ways it would be an interesting case, I suppose. But... I feel like it will get the wrong people. The health sci people... They are kind of being set up to take a fall... Again...
This guy was down to give a talk, I saw... It was about whether they had dumbed population health down too much. When the smart people run for the hills and you are left with people who think that this, that, and the next thing is a 'no brainer' (because they haven't thought about it very hard) then, uh, yeah, you probably dumbed things down too much. But then... If your intention was to get people to run for the hills / to truly undermine the prospects for success... Couldn't have done much of a better job if you had have set out with that intent. For the people who have that intent... Well... They couldn't have done much of a better job than appointing someone like you to 'look after' the whole project.
There was this thing recently about trouble in the prisons. Some of the prisoners were uploading phone videos to the internet of them having organised fights inside the prisons. The foreign managed prisons. They lost their bonus for managing them well... But, well, how else are they going to offer such a cheap service? Cut down on the number of guards and basically let the prisoners fend for themselves... Then appoint a minister to look after the whole situation... Who.. Well... Isn't very bright. Lovely guy, though. Really lovely guy. Looking out for his people... Boys are boys, hey, nothing you can do about that...
Sigh.
Meh.
They have introduced mooting into first year law. We don't know very much yet so it is kinda hard. They are releasing the scenario (or whatever it is called) tomorrow... And we are only allowed to refer to 5 cases (in our coursebooks) but they will make the full case available so we can use that... It gets you feeling... A bit competitive, yeah. In a good way, I think. But yeah, you want to hide your thoughts a bit and hope to be one step ahead of the next guy... Heh...
Something different from cardiac output, hey. medsci has gone quite physiology on me, which is as I thought it would, I guess. This section and respiratory are the ones to watch out for, apparently. Glad I'm only doing 2 papers... I see that it is pretty much the decider... Whether you understand the content or are... Doomed to going through even simpler versions of it over the next however many years in order to scrape up some kind of a job in... I dunno... Aged care. Or something... You get the idea... It is pretty cool... Just a bit boggling... I have trouble with two variable relationships and things get pretty complicated pretty quick. I guess the idea is to try and grant the idealisations / simplifications... Focus... Be able to draw all the graphs from memory... All the graphs. ALL the graphs. ALL the freaking graphs.
Posted by alexandra_k on August 15, 2015, at 18:08:18
In reply to Re: perks, posted by alexandra_k on August 9, 2015, at 5:16:30
couple weeks till break and feeling kinda burned out.
I'm so sick of first year. I'm so sick of first years. Even the mature students amongst them... Since they aren't graduate students...
I'm sick of the dull-witted uncaring attitude. I'm sick of people delighting in their stupidity and ignorance. I'm sick of people being all, like 'omg this person was, like, so excited about that lecture, and I was, like, but omg it is so boring really, and then I set about to make them just as dumb and uninspired as me, because clearly being like me is the very best thing of all, dull and ininspired that I am'. I'm sick of the people who have internalised the 'fake it till you make it' idea so they somehow think that they belong... I'm sick of it... I'm sick of all of it...
I'm sick of activity books that are supposed to 'encourage us to think'. Because somehow filling in the blanks or coloring in is 'thinking' over in science. I'm sick of having to spend so much time doing 'busy-work' of finding bits of information from here there and everywhere and copying it down into someplace else in order to collate a comprehensive full set of notes... Which is all a precondition on my actually getting to lean it / to think about it. I'm sick of them thinking they know best how I learn that they fill up all my time doing stupid copy paste or fill in the blank exercises instead of giving me the f*ck*ng information they want me to learn and letting be f*ck*ng get on with it already.
I'm tired of being treated like a child. I suppose that is it, really.
We have a first year moot... For the first time. And so I got assigned a partner. She is really unbelievably dumb. I mean... Really, unbelievably dumb. I basically need to do the written submission myself since she doesn't get what to do. I suppose it is possible that she is playing dumb. I don't suppose there is much difference for a bunch of people out there... But it is f*ck*ng insufferably from my pov. We advance (or not) as a team. Oh joy.
I'm sick of it, already.
I spoke to the surgeon. It was hard to get a straight answer out of him... He decided that it was a 'fools errand' to get the rest of the screw out. He had the extraction equipment to do it. He had the time to do it. But he made the executive f*ck*ng decision that it was a fools errand to do that and so he didn't do it. I asked him whether he thought it was likely that it would break BEFORE the operation and he said something about how there may have been a crack in it visible on the x-ray (but that might have been his way of attempting to cover his *ss about his being a bit of an idiot in not figuring it likely would break there before the operation). He wasn't consistent with me about whether he thought it likely would break before-hand or not. But he certainly never mentioned to me beforehand about that. He never told me before-hand that he planned on stopping if it broke. Afterwards... He just thought that I wouldn't know any better. I suppose that's how he makes a living. Doing 'easy' operations. Lots of them. Unnecessary ones (since I'll need to find someone else now, to get the f*ck*ng rest of it).
I told him it wasn't his decision. That that's not what 'informed consent' means. He decided it wasn't worth it to... To whom, exactly? I made it f*ck*ng clear I wanted him to get it out. He should have told me he was only planning on doing a half *ss*d job and I wouldn't have let him anywhere near me.
F*ck*ng idiots. I'm so very tired of them.
There are people about... Only they get swamped by all the desparately needy people who won't leave them alone... The ones who are so needy they end up leaving or whatever anyway since they are so ill suited... But sure, drag down a few others with you on your way out...
I'm sick of the tragedy of commons situation that we have here. I'm sick of Maaori this and Maaori that wah wah wah we got f*ck*d over help us help us help us help us we won't help ourselves but help us help us help us. Or even don't even help us just whisper sweet sweet placebo to us to help us feel better that's what we need...
Maybe get a f*ck*ng dog.
I don't know what to say.
I feel pretty f*ck*ng grumpy with the world. Isolated. Everyone says this year really sucks because there are... Too f*ck*ng many people. Most of whom shouldn't f*ck*ng well be here. They think no harm or whatever to let them in... And of course it is people like me who get f*ck*d over because of that.
I am feeling burned out. Yeah. I guess I'm going to go to the gym. Then come back and do the rest of the f*ck*ng work on this moot so I don't make too much of an *ss of myself tomorrow...
Only 8 more weeks of first years. Whatever happens next.
(Med is actually slightly ambiguous since the situation is basically that they never envisaged that there could be a PhD student who decided not to - like me - which would mean they completed their degree more than 5 years ago - but weren't out of the habit of university study. In other words, they could consider this to be a full time year for me... Or not... I bet they will say I needed just one more paper this semester for that to happen...I'm sick of being f*ck*d over by people who don't f*ck*ng know the first thing about me. Who assume I speak sh*t because that's what most people do. Speak sh*t. Talk nonsense. Don't even f*ck*ng know themselves at all. I can't possibly be listened to about what is good for me...)
I'm going to the gym.
Not the university gym since it has been raining piss for a couple years now and nobody seems to think there is anything wrong with it. I'm sick of this toilet of a country.
Posted by alexandra_k on August 20, 2015, at 23:29:34
In reply to Re: perks, posted by alexandra_k on August 15, 2015, at 18:08:18
I'm feeling better-ish.
Medsci is going great. I'm really enjoying it. A lot. It is really interesting. Different from psychology... And different from sportsci... But I'm really loving it, yeah. And the lecturers aren't idiots. Which is terrific. Because I'm not entirely sure how we've managed to manouver things so that there are a bunch of idiots taking charge of such things... But taking charge they have been given the power to. Here, there, and everyfreakingwhere... But I don't think I've encountered any over in medsi yet. So... Fingers crossed...
Fingers crossed... I do well enough to keep doing it... Because if I don't do really well in it... There isn't any point in keeping on doing it... Because opportunities... Go away... If you don't show that you can appropriately respond to their teaching.
Thus far... Fingers crossed, indeed. Because I'm really enjoying it, yeah. Really enjoying the content a lot. The subject matter (me! ha!) is just so interesting... Yeah :-)
:-)
Honestly...
:-)
What could be more interesting?
And the people who are interested in it... They are fitter and healthier than most people. And that is kinda cool, yeah. People who value that. I mean... Starting to value that... That's what drew me to it in the first place...
I think...
People are starting to get to know me, too. In a good way. Actually. Which is good. Because... I guess I've found my cohort. And a lot will drop out between now and next year... But my cohort is basically... The people who (also) got screwed over by 'Health Science' or the people who weren't well enough Secondary High School prepared to have done well enough in BioMed... The ones of us doing degrees... With as much MedSci as our workload can handle (given GPA requirements)... Eep...
Science....
Tis a weird and wonderful world...
And I suspect we'll all basically be okay... The ones of us who love it enough to stick with it. And the ones who don't... Will largely drop out at the end of this year... And the ones who really aren't smart enough... Will probably be gone the one after... And the remainder... I think we'll probably be okay... Then a bunch of medschool will basically be revision. Which will be just as well... For all the new content that they'll be throwing at us... Yeah. I think I get it...
3 year's for pre-clinical... 2 after the first year that this year is... Then clinical. Really? Are you quite sure? Then only 2 years of that... Before you are 6th year... Which makes you a student... But also a junior.... Actually earning a (pitiful admittedly) living stipend... Not being allowed to order tests or write prescriptions (fairly sure) but being the only person in the actual f*ck*ng ward for periods of time... You really wanna call the person on call? You really wanna??? Holy crap...
Anyway...
Medsci is fun, yeah. And I am working really hard at it. So... Keep your fingers crossed for me... And law is going okay, too. It is kinda boring... But it's not laws fault it is all reading and writing... Reading and writing... The moot was good for the seminar / oral / court aspect of that. Yeah. That's what makes (the thought of it / it) fun. My partner really (genuinely) was a lovely person. But she also was not the brightest. I don't know if she will get a place in law, or not. I think we are struggling, honestly. I mean... Politicians need to have law background so they know how to write law. And government advisors also need law background so they know how to advise how law should be written... And then you need judges... And you need lawyers... And you have a population around the size of the state of North Carolina... Who has only had the confidence to be making it's own laws for the past 30 years or something (because, lets face it, England would surely love to let it's colonies go)... We have only had a supreme court... Really f*ck*ng recent... Privacy law has started to go the way of US which is historic given our historic allegance to UK law... But we don't have a constitution... So no f*ck*ng rights engrained... But given our tragedy of commons...
F*ck. I really might end up with law and medicine... Which would be great... Honestly... But at some point.. I'm scared people will be like 'too old'. 'Too old. We not gonna train / teach you'. It helps that I'm female... It makes it... Not creepy. I think guys who study forever... There is a creepy aspect even when they aren't creepy.... But anyway... I hope I get to do med before I die. But I would also like to do law... Yeah...
It would be nice to stay here and make this country better. Help make it better.
I would like... My own space. I don't feel like this is my own. I worry about who owns this building. And I worry about what my digital TV is broadcasting to the folks all around the world...
Yeah.
Dr Bob... Have you moved to Hawaii yet? Did you manage to make much money off this site? I just wonder because of all hte money some people make from getting lots of hits from their youtube videos and stuff... I don't you didn't (much) sell out to google advertising... But did you make a fortune on what you did sell out to them? Or did the pharma people employ reps to 'troll' (probably not the word) the meds board... To get people beliving in whatever was most expensive... I guess their ain't sh*t that you could have done about that... Even if you had ISPs... Whatever...
I miss you Dr Bob. There aren't many people in the world who... Surprise me. Or something. I don't know. Anyway. Thanks for Babble. Even if it is largely done now. Thanks for having done it. Yeah. I miss you, Dr Bob.
Posted by alexandra_k on September 11, 2015, at 1:14:10
In reply to better-ish, posted by alexandra_k on August 20, 2015, at 23:29:34
I'm losing my hair. It is freaking me out. I've shed crazy amounts of hair since forever. I remember going through a bit of a phase when I was 16, thinking that I must be going bald, the amount I collected off surfaces and out of the shower... Well, it's kept on, over the years, and now... Tis true. I actually am. I don't think anybody else would notice, yet, but it has decidedly thinned all over. And my parting right at the front is starting to widen. I really am going bald.
Cries.
I actually went to my GP about it a couple weeks ago. Got hormone levels checked. Normal. She suggested a progesterone pill because apparently my progesterone levels were low... Mumble mumble something about maybe depending on when I am in my cycle... That I'm probably not ovulating... Only... I'm fairly sure that I am. Get a little pain around them sometimes... Fairly sure that I am...
I had a bit of a look online and there is a 5-alpha reductase inhibitor that is funded over here. Of course they mean for it to be for benign prostate enlargement... But, meh, I'm been on all kindsa psych meds that weren't exactly supposed to be for peops like me, anyways, so whats the freaking difference? There were a couple of Aussie studies about it helping women with normal levels of androgens... I wanna try.
Have you heard of the 'extreme male brain' theory of Autistic Spectrum? Wouldn't it be funny (strange not funny haha) if this actually helped more broadly? To... Soften me. Or something...
I went on that skin one for a while... Vitamin A... My skin changed heaps. The quality of it changed. My pores shrunk and it softened and smoothed out. And I stopped producing so much ear wax, ha. And I think... I sweat less. In a good way. Then I got scared about my mood. Which was probably unrelated... But I stopped taking it. And things gradually reverted back. I regret not finishing it... It really did help. I wonder (I didn't think at the time) but I wonder what effect it had on hair...
I wonder what effect this will have? Does DHT have effects on the brain? Course it does... Hur...
Please oh please oh please let my hair grow back to the unruly mess it was before. cries.
Posted by alexandra_k on September 15, 2015, at 23:33:17
In reply to Re: better-ish, posted by alexandra_k on September 11, 2015, at 1:14:10
I got an A+ ha! Finally! I hope I get to keep it! MEDSCI, yay!!!!!
We are doing bones. Yay. Finally, again :-)
I am taking this medication... It lowers blood pressure... Diuretic... You lose salt... Side effect is anti androgenic. Will take it for 6 months and see... If it doesn't work then it seems that off to the endocrinologist I go... Finesteride, or something. Yeah. But 4% have liver problems so...
So happy so happy so happy about my test, yay. Only about 100 of us... In a class of around 1,300. Phew. I feel f*ck*ng relieved, actually. Really worried about the exam, though. Like... Draw a bunch of heart graphs from memory...
Posted by alexandra_k on September 28, 2015, at 16:33:50
In reply to Re: better-ish, posted by alexandra_k on September 15, 2015, at 23:33:17
weird thing happened at the boundary of waking and imagining.
i sit up the front to one side in class which makes me salient. yes. not imaginary. they run the lecture in 2 streams and once before i went to both (to hear the lecture again) and the lecturer noticed me and called me out on it 'weren't you here this morning?' 'yes... but there are empty seats!' part of the salience is because i'm older and i try and sit by myself (or with a free seat to the sides of me) whereas last semester particularly the 18 year olds sort of huddled together in clumps and avoided the first few rows like the plague.
anyway... i thought i saw one of my very early psychologists there before class. sort of pottering about before lecture started with the lecturer. i remember her name. i think she was the very first psychologist i had when i went to hospital for the first time. i don't have notes for that period. something happened and they told me they lost my very first / earliest file. so i don't have anything from then. pretty hazy... i just remember i said to her (after i saw her a couple times) that i didn't feel like we were really doing anything together... didn't she have hard questions or something for me to try and get at what was wrong... and she said that the idea was to get me stable so i could get out of hospital. that i was too fragile for anything else.
i just remember that. that i really wanted to talk to her... that i wanted to let her know what was wrong. what was wrong, really. but she... didn't seem to think that that would be a good idea.but maybe i misremember.
anyhow... there she was. pretty sure. and i recognised her. and they (her and the lecturer) noticed me recognise her.
and that was all.
i was a bit like 'oh noes'. like i'd been caught with my hand in the cookie jar.
i suppose i forget how close where i was really is... the psychologist who terminated me... i had a look... she's the head psychologist there, now. a lot of the people are still the same...
anyway... my very first hospitalisation... happened the start of my second year. i did really well in my first year and then lots of pressure to do well in my second and i fell apart after the first lot of tests (turns out i did well in them). of course there was a lot more going on.... my relationship at the time... that was what it was really about. because i wanted out of that. but because i also wanted to succeed. because i didn't know whether i could succeed as well as that without her. anyway... i did well in that first medsci test. yay. finally. so now... time will tell, i suppose.
it is possible that i can apply after one full time year. Otherwise I'll need to take two more years to finish BSc.
I'm pretty sure now that what I mostly want to do is anatomy. Physiology... Not so much. Too mathsy / engineering. I like the anatomy more. And the qualitative story about what happens. Cells are pretty cool as well. The different types and how they migrate about... Anyway... We don't do an anatomy degree... I asked about that.. Apparently it is because they are expensive. Need to do medicine to do anatomy. Or histology, even. Expensive... I do really want to do it. I guess maybe they just need some more time to see that I'll likely stay stable enough to get through the degree. And maybe they are a bit curious about my actual motivation etc (I suppose around the time I started my PhD I was sort of thinking to do psychiatry -- probably for wrong reasons).
Anyway... Not sure what I'm saying. Was odd. To see her.
Posted by alexandra_k on September 29, 2015, at 15:52:30
In reply to Re: better-ish, posted by alexandra_k on September 28, 2015, at 16:33:50
oh. and my UMAT test score came back. i did alright, i suppose. i mean, i was a little disappointed, but i'm hearing of people who are A/A+ students this year who did worse on the science and on the maths section, even. (Not maths - apparently it is most useful for histology stuff... Patterns...) I got in the top 90 percentile for verbal. Not as well in the other sections. I got, like, two marks short of the cut-off for some of the Australian major universities med schools on the maths / picture completion section. Which, considering it was my first shot ever at it and I didn't work my way through all of the official prep material is... Pretty f*ck*ng great, really. And I didn't do so badly on the first section (mostly graph reading) as I feared I might.
It's not a deal breaker, in other words. I'm actually feasible. And doing that well on the medsci test... Apparently some people just don't seem able to crack the multi-guess thing. I didn't for biosci last semester. Walked out thinking maybe 3 or 4 wrong... Finding out it was more like 3/4 wrong... More than that, even. Things feel back on track with medsci... I have a better (more accurate) self-assessment. When I get them wrong I can come to understand why I got them wrong and I've learned something about how they think that will help me do better in future.
I worry about whether I can keep it up with a full time workload. One thing to be doing well now, when I'm only doing 2 classes... How will I go with 4? I guess that is the whole idea of 'the same and a bit more' repetition of content. Looks like one of the courses next year goes into a lot of muscle / bone / joint anatomy. So I'll do a first year sportsci anatomy course at the same time and there will be a lot of overlap of content. We have to do neurobiology for medsci and psychology offers neurobiology, too. That seems to be the idea... The volume of information accumulates, for sure, but the amount of study time you need to devote to learning it decreases with repetitions.
Apparently med school is organised into modules. Here, anyway. Fairly short module / intensive and then you get tested and then you move to the next. So... Focus on one thing then move onto the next thing. Much better for me than trying to juggle a bunch of things working up to lots of exams at the end of the year. I really might get to do this... I don't know... So much discretion built in... I don't know... At least I feel like I've found my people a bit with medsci. And good people to have found, too. I've also found a bunch of course reviews for the course I had trouble with and lots of studnets have been complaining about it for years now. I really will follow up on that. Legal action. F*ck*d me over. And who knows how many other people. It really isn't good enough. The whims of bullys... In the name of equity... I really don't think so...
Posted by alexandra_k on October 1, 2015, at 16:28:04
In reply to Re: better-ish, posted by alexandra_k on September 29, 2015, at 15:52:30
So then she went and there were a couple guys right up the front. Standing around before the lecture. One of them looked suspiciously like my old t / p-doc from Aussie. So I didn't look properly, of course. Because if it really was him... That would be just too damned bizarre.
What are they (is me) trying to tell me?
I don't think I wanted to do psychiatry for the wrong reasons. I do think that I wouldn't have been able to last very long at it. How come? Because damn near everybody else didn't last very long at it, either. So damned underfunded... Such need... There has been a stream of p-docs from there... Turns out they don't have any qualifications (they are fraudsters, basically). I think it really is THAT HARD to recruit people to the region. And they practice for ages before getting caught, too. And they get caught for things like... Well... The last guy... Sounds like he got in trouble for admitting someone when he was supposed to release them. I know people think that is horrible - given past abuses of psychiatry. But once you understand the typical housing situation in this country and so on... Most likely he got into trouble for trying to treat someone that the more senior people had decided to give up on. Or something... I don't know... I do know nobody in their right mind would want to be a p-doc for that district health board. Fairly sure. And I wouldn't have lasted 5 minutes. That's for sure. Even though most of the people (p-docs) have moved along now... The situation is still much the same.
There are so many cool sounding things... Radiology, too. Maybe I should do that physics paper... And more cell biology... I just really found that the medsci part of biosci was great (the lecturers, the content) and the biology people... I don't get them. I don't get their multi-guess. I don't like their labs. I don't like the instructions on their labs... I don't mesh at all. Maybe it is a first year artifact and things get better next year? I feel like they screwed me over a little with throwing so much content at us in such a short space that was secondary school based. Instead of scattering it a bit to give the rest of us a chance... And they tested us on things they hadn't taught us (some of those I got right because of not having a standard background - but I still don't think that is particularly fair). I don't know. I don't know. I would like to do more mechanics... But a bad physics / chemistry / biology person... My interest isn't resilient enough to cope, particularly. I don't know.
The whole DID thing... I wonder if that will come out to haunt me at some point. Whether it is haunting me already. Hard to tell online.. But seems to me that some people are getting graduate entry places on the basis of degrees done overseas... Or NZ degrees done more than 5 years ago. So why not me? People are getting told to have a reduced workload to prepare and only B average. So why didn't they think I'd get through on that? Maybe it is because I'm not 'I want to be a GP in a rural community'. Maybe that is it. I don't quite understand how many places really are left after they've given the places to the doctors kids... And the academics kids... I don't know. The kids whose parents have invested a lot in their education... How many then? The equity places... Nobody will notice you aren't giving them any treatment at all so long as you are nice. That's what really matters, of course. Being nice.
Anyway... I got sick. Pretty bad. Still recovering. F*ck*d up the musculoskeletal lab. Somehow I convinced myself that they didnt' really expect us to learn the chicken leg muscles and so on... And of course, they did. Only 1 month till exams. Law the morning of medsci. Cries. Couldn't be worse for exam scheduling. And not multiguess. We need to be able to draw flow charts and stuff. And it is really unclear how much detail they want / expect. We don't have model answers. Sort of. Anyway... A bit afraid I may bomb the exam. Anyway... Just keep on trucking...
I hope they let me apply from the end of next year. I'm.... Really ambivalent about staying here for 3rd year since... I'm not that into any of the 3rd year papers they offer. Anatomy goes away after next year it seems. Of course the OTHER uni (down south) offers anatomy major. And they do human limb dissection 3rd year. If I move down there... FFs... Getting a bit tired...
Posted by alexandra_k on October 6, 2015, at 17:13:20
In reply to Re: better-ish, posted by alexandra_k on October 1, 2015, at 16:28:04
at some point there was this thing about 'work for the dole'. they were going to make people on the dole do volunteer work, or something.
it didn't happen.
what they didn't tell us:
it didn't happen because we can't organise our way out of a paper bag. for all the management degrees we give people... we can't organise people into any kind of meaningful activity.
growing food in local community centres.
building houses for all the overcrowding.
putting in insulation.
painting things / planting trees / city beautification.for all the people we have on welfare...
for all the tv sets we give them so their children are sufficiently entertained...it breaks your heart.
but what can you do? what can be done?
i can't function in this environment. a lot of people can't. i think that is the thing about when you go away... you see how things could be... then you come back. and despair.
and occasionally people say 'stay and help make things better then'.
and the problem is... LET ME then. and people don't. people simply refuse to acknowledge (they simply don't seem capable of seeing) the skills that those people come back with. they don't let those people employ their skills in making things better.
so what's to be done?
i guess some people do adjust back / aclimitise.
our health professionals... go to australia if they care about clinical competence. i think that is the thing. there are the doctors who will serve the interests of local communities... and there are the doctors who will go to australia and develop clinical competence. then they'll come back and try and get a little clinical competence going on... and they will discover that clinical competence isn't valued here. they will discover that the local community students will effectively prevent the students who are capable of learning to be clinically competent from actually acquiring clinical competency... and the person will become bitter and disillusioned and then most probably piss off overseas in order to get to practice what it is that they are good at / can offer the world. it isn't about the money...
though they pay more because they value it more, tis true. but it is about the value...
i would like to talk to the best people we have here. why they stay.
oh yeah... it is about things like.. my husband is deeply embedded in club rugby.
i think... they won't let me. the places are for... their kids. that's the idea.
Posted by alexandra_k on October 12, 2015, at 17:16:36
In reply to Re: better-ish, posted by alexandra_k on October 6, 2015, at 17:13:20
I think it is probably true that we don't have the skilled senior people that we need. So then we have unsuitable / not entirely competent people who have been given positions of power because we haven't had those senior people. And then they jealously guard their positions of power. So when people who are skilled and senior come along... They are more likely to get turned on by the others. Or when people seem to show genuine talent or ability... They are more likely to get turned on. It has become about placating those incompetent people appropriately so that they choose to let you learn or work or whatever. The problem is that it is unending... On and on and on... You spend so much time placating the people who weren't doing their jobs that you can't get on and do the job either. 'helping' they were / are. mmm hmm.
Are there protected islands? Not sure. Think the idea seems to be... To get out. To get out if you can.
I think biology might be like that here. That's why 20% of the course was based on our labs... Why the laboratory senior students / demonstrators knew the questions / answers etc. So that there was a 20% discretionary component on how well you sucked up to them / extracted the answers from them / got them to check your work. You can lose one grade... Two grades... Because they decide (fairly much on a whim) that they don't like you. Unless you have a critical mass of students to back you / cross check your work against / employ a bully tactic with.
Combine that with multiple choice assessment that I don't seem able to break about a B- or a B on (where my intuitions about how well I've done simply don't track how well I've done)... And it looks like biology is not for me. Where they are more concerned about 'protecting the integrity of the test' than they are in helping you learn (e.g., they simply will not allow you to have a closed viewing or attempt to teach you how to get better at multi-guess). I do find it odd that I'm not better at them... I can get full marks for the same section that is short answer / diagram... I don't have trouble with psychology multiple choice or medical science multiple choice... I didn't have trouble with the biology textbook online multiple choice... Shame... I did like stuff about cells...
I didn't realise why people thought luck (and stuff like that) played such a big part of things...
Why?
Why are we determined not to make the world as good a place as we can? Why are people so freaking selfish?
People skills are a necessary precondition on your getting to do anything here. Not people skills as in your ability to understand and comprehend an english literature novel. Not people skills as in your ability to employ relatively sophisticated theory of mind with respect to people's motivations or intentions or whatever. People skills as in soap opera dynamics. People skills as in your ability to go 'coo coo coo' and have people believe that you think they are the loveliest loveliest loveliest loveliest loveliest loveliest thing in the whole wide world... And if you are sufficiently compelling at that... They might actually let you get on with your job / refrain from bullying you.
I don't play that game. I do have autistic spectrum here. Tis true. Took a recent arrival doc to see it. British trained. Of course. He'd be facing it... In the health system (lolz). Seems to attract them (because we have a local medial drama that gets people wanting jobs in health thinking that jobs in health will involve soap opera dynamics all day and sick people who are fairly powerless thus will probably learn to coo coo coo coo coo at you...)
I don't like who I am becoming. Here. Things are starting to get better. I think that is it. Protected environment. A little like hospital. Need to make sure one doesn't collapse with the protected environment. Next year... Class sizes down to about 200. Then down to about 60 for third year... Seems that the teaching quality isn't hard and fast divided between the medical school (medical students) proper and the medical science / physiology people. People teach in both. And the real cull is from this year with all the soap opera people. Will have more of the academic / science people... I knew quite a few people who voluntarily switched out of med and into science after a couple weeks med... When they were young... It will be okay. But I think I'll need to go back to psychology (to support medical science / physiology) and keep my fingers crossed it hasn't gone the way of biology here... Take some advice on more senior biology (could be biology's special way of placating a bunch of first year people / trying to boost enrolments on keeping students for an additional year who would leave the university / subject otherwise). It could well be that they have decided that biology / psychology will be the 'equity degree' option, or whatever... I don't know...
How did they manage not to wreck the GPA of the charmed circle of students? That's what I'd like to know... Population Health, too... Since there wasn't rhyme nor reason in their multiple guess (mostly next to impossible to parse)... Or have my intuitions deviated so very far from those of the kids from the elite schools? I think they decide that the right answer is whatever those kids think that it is... Pretty sure that's how they do that... Pretty sure...
Thank God the Australian Medical Council doesn't seem to have gone that way... And if we want our doctors to have registration between NZ and Australia then they get something of a say in entry exams and medical school exams. And the medical school exams... Well... Well designed and properly assessed. Not throw them down the stairs or marks for sucking up... Thank god. Not sure how they get the suck ups through... I guess the real thing is about what placement positions you get. And whether your application to specialise / work in different areas of medicine / work in different places gets accepted. Not all PhD's are equal when it come to any of that. I'd imagine not all medical grads are equal, either.
Seeing it this way makes me feel a lot happier about taking another couple years to spend on the science aspects of the content. Seeing it that way. Then when they decide to crap up a bunch of time learning about how you don't touch people on the head and about how the solution to the titanic dilemma is escalators... Installing escalators in the name of equity is the right thing to do (big eyes -- if they are big enough and the stare is vacant enough that is like the power of a mathematical proof, that is) and then grade people on their essay that isn't an essay that is graded on your ability to get them to believe that you have embraced the spirit of escalators in words of two syllables or less in conjunction with their having thrown them up the stairs and given you a worse grade for being white or an even worse grade for being asian... Tis the kiwi way... Wouldn't be equitable otherwise...
Then I won't get so very far behind on my anatomy. Since I'll have learned some already.
Mostly my worry is... That I'm not getting any younger. I know I do alright on longer interviews when they get the chance to actually get to know me a bit (over a half hour or whatever). They get to see that i'm coherent and intelligent and so on... But of course they have replaced the proper interview (too expensive) with something more akin to speed dating. And you only get 2 minutes with interviewers (because the kiwi way seems to be to reward any kind of bias or preconception or superficiality that there is. because we like to totally ignore all the literature there is on how such things reflect stereotypes etc). Health is *special*. Public acceptability... The other med school went with (mostly) opinions of elders. That is good for me because older people are sensible. Here... I'm not sure on the range. More of a range, I think. For better or worse. Younger academics. Good for me. Not sure who else.
The older thing will disadvantage me in a speed dating kind of a setup. I am worried about that. The superficial appearance thing seems much more important. And to think that they might be judging me on how they think that the unhealthy people in NZ society will be judging me... Anyway... That is my worry about... Delay... I'm not entirely sure I'll be able to suck up some of it if I get into medical school... I suspect there is a bunch of discretion about various things... How much they lean on people because here there and every freaking where people take an intense dislike (for whatever reason) and decide to fail. So... The ability to be inconspicuous in the middle of the herd... The children have indeed been trained to huddle... I don't know.. Perhaps this is backwards (it isn't really) but you need into medicine in order to get to learn stuff. Training is expensive (wouldn't be the kiwi way if we didn't cry about how expensive everything was all the time). And, of course, we must devote considerable resources to trying to educate people who don't even want to be educated. Such that we don't have enough to educate the people who do. Like health over again.
I don't know what is happening with my hair. It is decidedly thinning. I've started being much more aware of hairlines generally. i'm noticing that an awful lot of women in their 40's or whatever seem to have a slighly receded hairline. Talking about on tv etc. Maybe it will just sort of stay about where it it. I guess I just envisage that it will continue on at the same rate... And that I'll be noticably baldish in a few months... I guess the difference may well be that they got treatment. They probably don't have the broader pattern that I do (that is cheaper for doctors to be trained to not notice). Not helping with teh public acceptability thing at all. Of course I get that patients actually won't give a sh*t. But that is the dopey kind of thing that will likely impact on interviewers in a speed dating situation... I would suppose... Or perhaps I'm psychologically funny about it... Seems that most people are... With all the stuff about it... I was always surprised before with guys at how it really did seem to get at their self esteem... But Bruce Willis... And it really wasn't anything of a deal to me at all. I didn't understand why it bugged them. Not until it happens to you. Only *I'm a girl*. Not the same thing, not the same thing at all. Point being... Cometic, apparently. People are dying of self inflicted diabetes and so on, didn't I know? I'll be lucky if I get in in the next 6 months. Endocrinology. Dermatology? Forget about it. They're too busy waiting for people to become terminal with skin cancer so that nothing can be done...
I suppose I'll need to think about head scarves at some point... Figure something out. Want to avoid the closed breatheren look (guess I will in virtue of it not being long at the back). I do like the idea of headscarves... But we are a bit funny about them here (of course). Need to look into more athletic ones, I suppose... Which is starting to happen now... I'm not entirely sure what to do... My hair has always been weird and unruly (very fine but lots of it) only now... The follicles are shutting down... Not getting any greyer (and not actually very grey at all) but that's because it is simply falling out... Sigh. I wouldn't care... But public acceptability. If I ever want to get to do anatomy properly (which I do) then I need into medical school. And there it is.
I really don't know that they will let me here. Coo. Just not so good at that. And autistic spectrum? Yeah... Good luck with that.
I need the academic people to back me for me to have any hope at all. I guess that's the thing, really. So... Another couple years. Then I'll have a herd to make sure the equity people don't fail me in the name of equity (since the equity people would have smothered me once they realised i wasn't going to coo... once they realise I go rigid when people grab at me)... I guess I'll have to see about the academic people. See how much power they have compared to those other components. The equity thing... Tis designed to help with the academic component. But it isn't the academic component that I need help with (so long as we are talking about actual academics rather than the infiltrators)... I did remember seeing something about a guy in his early / mid fourties who started medical school in the US... Of course I see now that the difference is that he would have paid for that himself - whereas here any student can chuck any course on their student loan (though of course you do contribute more for certain degrees) but the real thing is: The government contributes a whole heap of money besides that. And the number of places / hence graduated number of people who are qualified is limited. And public acceptance on non-english speaking docs is low. And english speaking docs (who are qualified) don't want to come here... So... Then, of course, the docs don't want their kids places to be bonded because they want their kids to have the opportunity to get to practice cilnical competence someplace that cares abotu that (e.g., Australia). And they don't want to bond any of the places because if they start offering bonded places then there will be a push to increase the number of bonded places and before we know it we'll be stuck with 'there there, coo coo, feel better' and what the crap will happen when the government workers / academics get sick? There are limits on how many / how fast we can get people to Australia...
conflict between bill of rights and the treaty. international interests and local community interests (narrowly conceived). i hate here because.... it is making me feel racist. i need to remember that where i was before... little bit further south... they surely had a lot of nasty to say about the urbanised people up here who got stuff back in the name of equity and used that to screw the rest of them over... the people crying out for stuff in the name of equity... most of their own people don't accept them. not sure who gave them the power to choose the future equity trained kids when their own people don't accept the choosers... damned mess. those with power got it by 'stepping up!' and 'getting in there!' and bullying and conning their way about... and now they are there are are careful to pick those who will support them. that isn't the maaori way, at all. i need to remember that. tiny subset of them... the worst of them in many respects... having to contend with them... the students say they are disappointed because they thought they would learn stuff... but the curriculum doesn't have any substance. some of teh stuff is great - but applies to cultural sensitivity far more broadly. and a lot of it is nonsense that they want you to spout because they want to select for your ability to spout their nonsense just because they told you to spout it. practicing is something else... most of the actual people don't give a crap about their politics etc. they don't want whatever it is that the others are selecting for... what to do? leave them to it as much as possible. could spend ones life... what?? cooing at them... the advantaged ones. sigh.
ugh.
Posted by alexandra_k on October 12, 2015, at 19:25:26
In reply to Re: better-ish, posted by alexandra_k on October 12, 2015, at 17:16:36
And now I see that this is why people said that I was going about things backwards. What they really want is the kids who are young enough such that they don't see any of this. The kids who are young enough such that they are used to doing what they are told and they are close enough out of high school to be used to placating those who give them contradictory / impossible instructions / mixed messages.
That's what last semester was mostly like.
And you get rewarded for huddling with the herd and they'll likely go for your head if they think you aren't suitably protected...
I suspect when you just start out on the wards things are roughly similar...
?
This semester is a bit better. Some of them are finding the transition to medsci harder. Because medsci isn't so much like that. E.g., labs aren't worth very much at all (but a bunch of content that is properly assessable in exams) and what little they are worth... They have different versions of a multiple choice at the end that you do individually to time constraints (so the lab demonstrators don't know what questions the group is going to get). So... It is more rewarding of actual work / individual effort, in other words.
I'm procrastinating respiratory graphs. Can you tell?
Cries. Manageable... We have practice multiple choice and I am learning stuff... Some of the graphs I don't know... But he isn't trying to trick us with the maths... I'm just not used to comprehending graphs with, like, two variables on each axis eep. And I guess he is trying to get us to understand concepts / variable relationships by throwing a bunch of graphs at us. eep.
I really want an A+
I keep thinking about the guy... Autistic spectrum... Studying at a university in England... They wouldn't pass him his very last rotation (obgyn) and he killed himself. They said something about not having the infrastructure.... Not having enough supports... obgyn is pretty notorious for... Clicky girls. Doing their clicky girl thing. I'd imagine it would be pretty hard to be a guy in that set-up. I'd imagine it would be pretty hard for me in that set-up too, now, actually. He didn't have the supports... For them to not fail him. Was he ever going to end up working in obgyn actually? ??
The disability equity thing is interesting... Not bonded apparently (aka: no obligation to work with disabled people). But I suspect there is something implicit there... The academics better like me a bunch, in other words. My physics really better come along... It might with good teaching (that isn't trying to trick us with the maths). It has to.
I forget that is partly why you work so hard.... Because you really want out / up.
The law lecturer at the moment is really lovely. In a slightly old fashioned english kind of way. We like him, well enough. But damned if it isn't hard to supress yawns looking at statutes. Apparently we are lucky that we aren't looking at the tax statute (but the finance people have been introduced to that over there already). Apparently out tax statutes aren't as bad as most countries... But still... Nobody does tax law for the lolz. Pretty damned sure of it. They have great study desks over at their library, though. Huge desks with a shelf and partition walls so you don't get distracted by people bobbing about. I don't suppose it would be possible to learn tax law otherwise lol. Meeting rooms with whiteboards, too. Whiteboards are great. I got a smaller one that I take with me and I can practice drawing graphs and stuff. Writing out lists. The medical library... A bit more mixed. People are a bit more social... It is odd... Health and law attracts very different people, to be sure.
Picture books, though. I mean, really. And layers of tissue... All the different kinds of cells on your way down / through / wherever. Amazingly interesting...
Posted by alexandra_k on October 25, 2015, at 22:06:14
In reply to Re: better-ish, posted by alexandra_k on October 12, 2015, at 19:25:26
Exams one week today. Hmm.
I think I'm going to stick around another year. I don't have much choice, really. Happy to get accommodation renewed... But then realising that we don't do anatomy here, I'd have to move to another university, and it is a bit too late now, with accommodation. And not really anything comparable down there... It is ridiculous... But we simply don't have anywhere near enough habitable homes in this country. Just a bunch of glorified wooden shacks. Even the pretty old stone buildings were built by the scottish... Freezing f*ck*ng cold all the f*ck*ng time and we are raised to laugh at people who say they are cold and huddle under our coats indoors.
And wonder why there is so much pain, so much pain, so much pain growing up. Why you just want to curl up and die / hibernate or something for so much of the year.
I guess I'm worried that physiology will turn into physics. Respiratory sort of went that way and the lecturer started to get a bit tricky and be like 'well, that would have only helped people who understood it already' etc the way they do when they actually can't be *ss*d teaching anybody anything particularly. Basically... An exercise in graph reading and some calculations (simple to be fair) involving graphs and some facts we are supposed to know etc. But I'm worried about what will come in later years.
I'm starting to realise that I was really very lucky as an undergraduate before to get such a wonderful education. For my lecturers to have trained overseas... In the UK and the USA... For class sizes to be small. For lecturers to do their grading (for the most part) and take a big role in teaching graders / ensuring consistency etc.
Here... I'm seeing that the whole problem with starting over (one of the problems, at least) is that they just want to make money off of first years. The good students... There isn't a whole heap more content than what they did at school already. They basically get a year of making friends and learning how to cook etc. And there are so many kids who simply can't sit still for 50 minutes. Who are incapable of allowing the people around them to focus on the lecturer - who simply must get eye contact out of you on demand.
I see that they want to take a bunch of kids out - not make them suffer along with the others anymore. Take the doctors kids out, at least, get them started on a medical degree so they are less likely to fall in with...
Of course the worst of them simply won't be around next year. But biology seems to be doing a pretty terrific job of convincing them that everyone can succeed at university - no matter how dumb or ill motivated or unmotivated they might be. So, plenty of them will still be around next year..
The courses look interesting... Not sure how much they will be willing to throw people away, though. I got a D for one of my law assignments. Seems to be the thing that when a lecturer marks my essay I do really very well indeed. When a Masters student marks my essay then it doesn't conform to the one and only ideal that they have in their head (or a stupid f*ck*ng grading criterion document that they might have been given to try and help the stupid only to assist it to magnify still further). i see that some of our courses next year involve our peer grading 4 peoples assignments. apparently the lecturers will read a random sample, or something. sounds like... sh*t to me. complete sh*t. is this really what an education is around the world? Is this science? group posters in third year? get the smart people doing everyones work so the dumb and ill motivated get their degrees? really? my GPA is determined by crap like that?
?
seems so.
I mean... what alternative is there? i don't have power... people with power... i kind of want to say seem determined to abuse it. but the more exposure i have to 'the people' the less empathy i have for them. people...
you have to look out for yourself - because nobody else is going to. everyone is just looking out for themself. it isn't about prosociality, or whatever. people have this idea of a hierarchy... they only want power for what it can do for them... it's pretty rubbish, actually. people give very bad advice because they don't give advice on the basis of looking out for the people they are advising. they give advice that keeps them in work.
i thought medicine was different.
i'm not sure that there is medicine anymore. i think the selfish fools have ruined it for everyone.
all there is is the power to look out for yourself. which is a huge f*ck*ng thing, indeed. the idea of... doing unto others... seems to be lost here.
this is why they take them out?
i think they come to the same sorts of realisations once they get to clinical...
i think i'll be okay in medsci. 2 more years... B+ average to apply... will have to see, I guess. The main thing seems to be to hide the fact that I want to apply / hide the fact that you are doing well enough to apply. because if certain people get wind of thinking that you might get to.. but you aren't going to make serving their interests your top priority... then they will do everything they can to f*ck you over. which really doesn't seem to be hard, in this part of the world (and perhaps in others too).
i mean.. give something a D and what is the person going to do about it? what can you do about it? complain... 'university policy was followed'. they say. throw thousands of dollars into something to have a masters student not like the fact that you don't suck up to her hard enough.
this country... there is something special about here. pretty darned sure of it.
it will be better in medsci. more international people. less locals.
beam me up.
Posted by alexandra_k on October 25, 2015, at 22:40:37
In reply to Re: better-ish, posted by alexandra_k on October 25, 2015, at 22:06:14
I guess this is how much of the world is. That's why people who leave... Tend to hang around philosophy. Tend to go on a lot about how wonderful the people are. Because it is true. People who have a genuine curiosity about the world. Often a curiosity about what it means / is to be a genuinely good person. Or about what it is to be wise. People who embrace things that are hard and who come to learn to love complexity and ambiguity.
I like learning stuff in science... But I don't like how many people seem motivated by money or hierarchy considerations. I don't like how people seem keen to snigger at others for being stupid or whatever when it isn't about stupid it is that they have heard things 9 times before whereas other people are hearing it for the first time. On the other hand it does get tiresome hearing people ask (what does seem to be) the same questions over and over and over and over and over...
Things are feeling random. Hard work... Is needed. Sure. I really genuinely do see / get that. But it really isn't any guarantee. Your fate is also partly determined by things like whether the people over the road decide to have a party so you aren't well slept before your exam... Or whether they thought that grades should be determined by popularity contest...
I guess I was odd before in having such consistently high grades...
I can't tell how much people have consistenly high grades here / anymore... Or what is common to those people (if it really does come down to things being cumulative so the kids from certain high schools)... I don't have any kind of faith that the process is objective. That it is anonymous. Replicable. Etc. Perhaps this was obvious to others. That's a frightening realisation. To see that there are a bunch of idiots in charge of things, indeed. To better preserve the idocy. For the good of themselves.
Or perhaps the thing is that I'm not like them so it is a clash of interests insofar as it's not what's good for me.
There isn't really a genine proper place for higher learning anymore, is there. Not sure why I thought that there was... I guess people like NEwton etc did poorly in school... Weren't liked by academia.. Journals these days are more like those stupid grading rubrics than I'd like to think... Especially these days with the internet... The idea seems to be the more references the better and people are only really referencing the title (oh look! a title agrees with me! that lends more weight to my opinion!) not even reading the abstract... certainly not reading the whole article... decidedly not trying to follow their method and / or make sense of their data handling.
Posted by alexandra_k on November 26, 2015, at 0:04:02
In reply to Re: better-ish, posted by alexandra_k on October 25, 2015, at 22:40:37
and there it is.
This was meant to be the year that would get me into medical school. Except of course, that it wouldn't. It is designed to get the top school leavers. For a variety of reasons. And I am not one of them. And so it did not get me.
And I'm okay with that.
I guess I made it clear... And I guess I was clear in myself that I wanted to do research and teaching and practice. Because there is this thing... The 'graduate student tsunami' they are calling it. There is / was a shortage of doctors and so the governments increased the intake of students and so now there is a tidal wave of graduates... And the problem is that there are too many young'uns and not enough people willing / able to look after them / train them. And they aren't at the level yet, of being competent left to their own devices.
And that's what's happened. The infant mortality rate fell. And so now there are Too Many children. Or adolescents. Or whathaveyou...
And I'm sorta kinda actually... Caught up in that. And that is why people say that they aren't sure they would have made it if they had to start out over. They aren't sure they would have been selected in the first place. They aren't sure they would have had the investment in them... That they needed.
I still have this thing about how we seem to be determined to invest in people who don't want / appreciate our investment. How we pass over those who do... There is still something in that. In our inability (I think actually our unwillingness) to select for people who would do best. I think nepotism is a significant part of it. Because we care... Because our caring blinds us to the bigger picture. There is a bunch of ethics stuff on that... On whether we have greater duty of care to those who are sufficiently related...
I'm an academic. My family are... Likeminded. That's all that matters to me. That makes me an alien to the Way Things Are.
Anyway.... I made it pretty clear and I was clear in my mind about the research thing... And so I don't mind that I get to do a medical science degree before applying back to med. I have 7 papers each year over the next two years till I'm done. And my place depends on that... So... It seems okay, to me.
I got an A for medsci. The first year one. The only medsci paper amongst the chemistry requirement etc etc etc. I got through the requirements - but didn't do well enough to be taken out at that point. Since I wasn't a high achieving school leaver (with calculus / chemistry / physics etc) and I wasn't a population health kinda person (happy to fit right in to providing no health care to the most vulnerable in the name of their 'best interests') there wasn't anything left to be done...
This could actually work out for me okay. Mostly... International students. Mostly... A vast body of knowledge to be learned. That's how it is starting to feel... There is a vast tract of knowledge... And I need to learn all of it. If not over the summer over the year if not over the year over the next summer... And so on... I guess... It culminates eventually in... Whatever step that is. If I want to take it that far...
We'll see how far I get. I suppose. We'll see.
I do still want to be a surgeon. Not sure if I'm too old to train... Hard to say. Impossible for me to tell... Onward, ho. At least I feel like I've come home. To some degree. After all the alien I've experienced over the last however many years... Since returning to this country.. I've finally come home to the international crowd, basically....
At least I've found it. Was worried that I'd f*ck*d up irrevokably. At least I've found it. Hard work... Will tell...
I think it will be okay.
It would have been worse to have gotten a place and then to have been failed out of it because my bio-chem (for instance) was too far behind. I am getting stuff... But I suppose it is taking me longer than some... It is taking me longer to get the biology case because I don't get the case in the abstract. I'm having to learn the graph interpretation skills / physics concepts / biochemistry as i go along... Every step of the way... And it just takes me longer to learn / understand stuff. I feel like... The kid who is slow to learn to talk... Because it makes more hearing discriminations than most... When I start to talk I'll be okay - I'm sure... But I'm still learning to talk medsci... ANd there are so f*ck*ng many respiratory graphs... And kidney biochem stuffs and so on... And it is interesting and all... And i DO get it (eventually).... But I am taking a while, I suppose.
And that's okay. I think. That's okay.
I get the opportunity to try. At least. And that is not insignificant. That is not insignificant at all. I think... I will be okay.
Pharmacology 2nd semester of next year... Huh. I think it's going to be okay.
Posted by alexandra_k on March 31, 2016, at 4:12:44
In reply to another year down, posted by alexandra_k on November 26, 2015, at 0:04:02
I'm sick. And grumpy. And horrible.
Actually, think I might just be coming out the other side of sick. Have had a pretty horrible couple days where the faucet wouldn't stop and hard to sleep... Taking lots of cold and flu tablets... Maybe losing track of time a little and double dosing... My face would feel pretty numb. Like I couldn't feel whether my mouth was open or closed or whether my face had been rotten away by flesh eating bacteria...
Classes are intense. Really full on. So very much to learn. Even when they say 'this isn't anything we didn't teach you last year' and I know they are telling the truth... I don't know that I could pass last years exam, right now. So much has been forgotten. Even when I got scared about that and worked most of the summer to keep the knowledge intact... So much has been forgotten...
The workload is really intense... Especially since I don't have the science background... Still... Sigh... One class on mechanisms of disease which is pretty heavy on the biochemistry. Learning about different ways cells can get hurt or different ways they can die etc. So many ways to die or get hurt. So many abbreviations... Reactive oxygen species and types of radiation... A class on microbiology and immunology with HEAPS of labs where we grow throat swabs and swabs that we've rubbed against door handles and the like. seeing if we've got a bunch of things... flesh eating bacteria and so on. feeding them horse blood because they are fastidious... Physiology... Boron... A HUGE freaking textbook. And it tries... But it is pretty freaking dull... But it's not that Boron is boring it's that the class is mostly about labs and mostly about lab reports. And I hate messing about with graphs in Excel... Really... And writing lab reports is a pain in the behind. And an anatomy course... Which I like... But I can't spend all my time on it, much as I'd like to... And it's all okay, I guess... But I'm grumpy and sick... Really sick. Was really awfully sick. And I missed some study time because of that and... It makes me feel kinda scared.
It was weird before... Last year they all assumed that everyone wanted to do medicine - and they didn't even ask. I mean, people went into the year already knowing they were Chemistry majors or they wanted to be pharmacists or optometrists or whatever... This year... It was like they assumed we all wanted to be scientists to start with... But now that things are getting a bit harder (the work is mounting up) they have started to go on about 'in your professional lives'... In your professional lives the number of people who have turned themselves into human foie gras can only increase...
Occasionally I'm like 'why do I want to learn about this'? I mean... Pathology is awfully morbid. And kinda disgusting, honestly. I mean, sick people, ugh. I got Robins and Cotran's pathological basis thinking it would do me for immunology and pathology for years to come and, well, I don't need to go to the gym if I carry that and Boron around... It's so freaking dense... I mean... I can barely parse it. Them. Either of them.
Apparently things come together nearer the exam. Because it is learning a new language... I hope so. I hope it does. I need to draw out family trees of bacteria, or something, because I can't seem to keep them straight...
It is pretty great, yeah. But my noisy neighbours are only pissing me off even more (and more) over time... The weather hasn't turned properly yet so they are still outdoors.
I need to get some noise cancelling headphones... I know I won't be able to sleep in them... Damn neighbours... They make living here unbearable for me.
Posted by alexandra_k on April 16, 2016, at 2:35:48
In reply to Re: another year down, posted by alexandra_k on March 31, 2016, at 4:12:44
Had my physiology mid-term. Don't have results back yet. I don't feel worried, because there really isn't anything that I can do... I think it went well. It felt pretty good. I'm very (very very) cautiously optimistic. But a little bit of fear / dread that I messed a bunch up, I suppose...
One week study break... Then 2 midterms first week back. Micro and Immune and then Anatomy. Then Mech of Disease the following week.
Wouldn't be so bad if I didn't have 2 lab reports to be doing, as well...
It really is a ridiculous amount of content. Made harder than it needs to be, too, with our having coursebooks with some information, powerpoints with some other information, lecturers presenting some different information, textbooks to be reading, and laboratory exercises that often bear dubious relationship to the other things... But it is what it is and they are teaching more to people without higher learning strategies... And fill in the blanks or label the diagrams activities are supposed to be encouraging people to think or to attend class or... Whatever. Anyway... Leaves you with a bunch of busywork to be doing after every lecture... Getting your information together... With learning outcomes that read like they are going to be parts to the lecture but the lecturers don't often pull through on that...
Anyway...
The content is interesting enough...
I think they run the same content with different groups. Someone said something about the pharmacy students getting the same physiology test that we do so we wouldn't have ECG questions in the test since they didn't give pharmacy students the lecture on ECG or the lab that we had... I think they probably give the optometry and the medical students the same test... I wonder how different the content delivery is... I'm discovering that medicine is the priority program... They think that because the fees are higher that means medical students should get access to a bunch of resources that the other kids don't get access to... I think it is part of the whole convincing ourselves that those kids must be smarter, thing... Taking them out quickly so their educational advantage didn't run out... Then making sure we keep up on that so they stay ahead on the tests... I would suppose that is it. Something like that. Convincing ourselves that the kids of doctors aren't just educationally advantaged they are actually genuinely smarter.
What other country selectes them 6 months out of High School ffs? On the basis of their performance in tests and exams done after 6 or 12 weeks of university? They start out saying 'I'm so glad my High School teachers explained that really well because I'd never have got it if I was relying on this lecture presentation to learn it!' and they... Learn to shut up. And be all like 'nah, I've never seen any problem like that before'.
Because they let in 1,300 kids... And you only need a salient 300 or so to demonstrate their inability to fidget and keep their mouths shut for 5 minutes... You only need a salient 300 or so to proclaim loudly that they are going to be doctors (while simultaneously proclaiming loudly how boring everything is and how they don't do any study and how they did really badly at high school)... You want to expose them to just enough of that so they think they better just nod and smile nod and smile nod and smile... Play dumb... And beam me up scotty after 1 year.
We so corrupt we don't even think this country has any corruption. Like, at all.
Anyway... By failing my population health essays they effectively prevented my applying to medicine... And now I'm seeing how they have really skimped on our resources now that they've taken the priority program kids out. I mean, last year all the microscopes worked pretty well. Because, you know, the deans daughter might have wanted to sit at the back. This year, you'll be lucky if you get one that works in the back row.. And the demonstrators just pretend like you mustn't know how to use the equipment properly...
Anyway...
Maybe things will be a bit better for me out of Auckland. Or maybe not... People say don't expect it will be much different... But maybe that's just what they say to try and encourage people to stay here out of inertia. I can't do any more anatomy here unless I get into med... And I guess I think that that is just a pipe dream if I stay here. The whole D for population health essay thing... I don't have any faith at all that there is any intellectual honesty or integrity here, anymore. Not at the appeal level - where you most need it just in case. Whether people choose to be intellectually honest or display individual integrity is all up to their whim... We don't even do blind grading. I mean, we have to submit everything to this foreign software program... And when the lecturers / tutors grade our name is all big and bold on the front page... There isn't any attempt to avoid prejudice or anything... It's shocking to me.. I've never not blind graded... I remember being lectured specifically on blind grading policies, like, everywhere I've ever graded... Seems that our solution to grade inflation is grade randomisation. Or... Worse than that, actual targeting and destruction of anyone who displays anything like originality (low 'plagarism' score) or creativity or innovation... I mean... Why would you encourage or value a person doing something that another person / a computer program couldn't do? You want to encourage them to only do what another person / a computer program could do. Then control them with external incentive. Obviously. Of course.
The university...
The whole love of learning thing...
It's kinda been wrecked. By the dull witted psychopaths who are all willing to take their luck (or their nepotistic advantage or both)... To get money so they don't have to live near people who drink and yell all the time.. Who sh*t on the streets... Who throw their trash about and who openly abuse each other... Someplace pretty...
I don't know... Too many kids... But organisational structures seem to really have broken down...
Something about... Local optima. Fitness traps. From my own limited and selfish pov there is no difference between my attaining / achieving something greater than other people vs my kicking other people downa nd preventing them from attaining anything at all. With respect to my position on the hierarchy it is all the same. It's typically easier to work on pulling other people down and preventing them from being able to achieve or do anything than it is to work on ourselves to do better. So we tend to settle in local optima. To the detriment of us all.
I think this country is... Extinction. Heading towards something like that. Some kind of demise. It really does feel like a sinking ship... And it's mostly being run by people who seem to have resigned themselves to thinking that it is a sinking ship so they are simply looting it for whatever they can get.
I'm sure their psychopathic kids will look after them just fine. Of course they will. Sure. So very much better than the kids who were able to respond best to the same standard of teaching. So very much better than the kids who are doing it not for external incentive but for genuine interest / less egotistical desire.
Anyway... half way through the first semester. 6 teaching weeks to go... Then some time to apply for studying in different places and accommodation... See what I get... See where I get to go... I don't think there is anything here... And I think they genuinely do think that I'll simply stay out of inertia...
I don't know how I'll find Otago... Best I can figure... That's where the rich doctors send their kids. Away from home. So they get to feel like they acomplished things all by themselves (smuggled protectively away in certain specific special residential halls with a little more of the academic supports and a little less of the free pizza).
I don't see why we can't see who wants something the most... In the good old fashioned way.. The people who are prepared to work for it over time... The people who are prepared to give up things like parties or whatever... To do something they actually enjoy (learning). The kids who aren't all like 'oh no way did I do anything at all over the summer lol I was far too busy having fun'...
Anyway...
Seems there really isn't any place in the world for people with genuine intellectual curiosity and love of learning to commune with likeminded others and engage in genuine learning anymore.
No place. No place at all in the whole world.
It's been wrecked by people who don't even give a sh*t.
Posted by alexandra_k on April 16, 2016, at 2:56:38
In reply to half a semester down..., posted by alexandra_k on April 16, 2016, at 2:35:48
I think Otago has a little more Science there. Here is... A bit too practical / population focused. So a little more serving of industry interests... Definitely a lot more corruption in the financial centre. Probably true of everywhere. The people who are attracted to financial centres... They aren't my kind of people... I don't know that it is a good idea to go to a university that is placed in one... The reasons people have for going there...
Anyway... I think there might only be, like, one anatomist here, even. Whereas apparently 3 of them share teaching of a 3rd year class... So...
Things seem pretty locked off to me, here. Not just about 'we don't have any resources cry cry' but also the hoarding away of the resources they have got. Locked shelves in the library even (historic collection) and the librarians not even letting me browse the shelves... Treating me like I'm some naughty child for asking...
There isn't any... There isn't anything academic about it.
It's like tech. Bums on seats from 9 to 5. Why? Why, to keep the crime rate down. If they didn't have their bums on their seats from 9 to 5 just think of the social problems we'd have. I mean, think of the social problems we have before 9 and after 5 once they get out...
Posted by alexandra_k on April 17, 2016, at 4:09:54
In reply to Re: half a semester down..., posted by alexandra_k on April 16, 2016, at 2:56:38
It's okay... I'm okay...
Gym helped, today.
Haven't been getting there, much. Really don't have time... We really do have a ridiculous amount of stuff to learn... I honestly haven't had the time...There is a field just across the road. I could do stuff over there before I get home. I should keep a kettlebell in my locker, or something... Animal walks... Cartwheels...
I will move next year. If accommodation etc works out. It is the thing to do... It is better suited to my interests (because of how they have physio and sport science is more of a big deal and physical education and movement biomechanics etc... anatomy major... post-grad stuff for surgey even that doesn't really seem to be offered here)...
I feel kind of annoyed that I invested in here... But I don't suppose that is the way to think of it. I did learn a lot from tech... The time I spent there... ANd I have certainly learned a lot here... I guess I do think that dissection is a big deal and I don't really get much of the point of it if you haven't had a good honest chunk of time to be learning what you can from books first... Then you can focus on the things in the lab that you can't learn from books... The textures and stuff...
Anyway... The gym really does help me feel much better about... Everything, really. It's going to be okay.
Posted by alexandra_k on May 5, 2016, at 3:49:47
In reply to Re: half a semester down..., posted by alexandra_k on April 17, 2016, at 4:09:54
i have a mechanisms of disease / pathology test tomorrow. i'm kinda scared. i didn't do biochemistry... was too busy failing population health... i'm doing my best... but there is so much to learn... and it is really hard to read my notes. IL this and TNF that... and then you hear the full names... and that isn't so helpful, either. just ridiculous amounts of information...
I'm enjoying all my classes... but feeling bad that i don't have more time to spend on all of them. i wish they wouldn't cram them into such a small space of time. i wish they would spread them out better... give us more time to study in between... it's really hard trying to prioritise time... i don't like trying to juggle my time between different things... would rather spend a few weeks on this and then that rather than trying to juggle... but it is interesting enough...
I'm scared i'm not going to do well enough...
Posted by alexandra_k on May 5, 2016, at 4:05:42
In reply to Re: half a semester down..., posted by alexandra_k on May 5, 2016, at 3:49:47
I got an A for my physiology mid-term. A high one. But then I came out of my anatomy mid-term feeling about as good... And ended up with a B. Loads wrong that I thought I knew... So... I've lost faith in my self-assessment, really.
And I didn't mess up 'oh, I said left when I meant right' kinds of questions... So... I have made a time to go back through the test and try and see where I went wrong but... I'm feeling pretty demoralised about it... Because I thought I did about as well as I did for physiology...
Had microbiology and immunology mid-term, too... I worked really hard for it. Was pretty scared... Because I don't have the biology background... Worked really hard...
I don't know how I did. I think I did pretty well... But I don't know. I guess I felt like I did A-... Maybe A with a bit of luck. But after my anatomy result... I don't know... Maybe I did considerably worse... B+... I suppose that is still pretty good... Worse... I don't know what to say...
Mech of disease is harder than micro.. I think. Because of all the pathways / cellular mechanisms we have to learn.
And then physiology has these lab reports... And the hard part is meant to be the discussion... Only I don't find that it is. The hard part is the however many hours it takes to copy and paste this and to format that and to rotate this and to re-font that... And the amount of time I have left to do the actual (fun to my mind) analysis at the end is next to nothing... Because of the amount of time I've spent doing hand calculations or whatever. Because the latest version of Word (or whatever software) is designed to waste your time such that...
I'm not really into science.
Anyway... Just kludge on...
I think they seem to be... Thinking to teach us a lesson, or something. I think it is broader than this country... But also a special feature of this country... To kick at people. As hard as you can... See what's left to straggle itself up (with as few resources as possible)...
Posted by alexandra_k on May 5, 2016, at 4:06:43
In reply to Re: half a semester down..., posted by alexandra_k on May 5, 2016, at 4:05:42
i guess everyone says it's crazy/stupid to do 4 medsci papers in a semester. but, whatever. it is what it is. there aren't many of us. that's for sure.
This is the end of the thread.
Psycho-Babble Social | Extras | FAQ
Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.org
Script revised: February 4, 2008
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/cgi-bin/pb/mget.pl
Copyright 2006-17 Robert Hsiung.
Owned and operated by Dr. Bob LLC and not the University of Chicago.