Sunday, March 30, 2008
Luck and Despair
Luck and despair seem to lie on opposite sides of the spectrum of the human emotion however here at Charles University they seem to be an often seen unlikely pair. You see as I have tried to describe many times before you're either lucky or out of luck here. Failing my exam in hygiene a few weeks ago made me reflect on how luck has all too much of a role in my education. It seems that all too often passing exams comes down to picking the right three questions at random, on the right day, with the right examiner, and you should make sure you wear the right outfit. I wore my grey suit with Brown Skechers and some have chalked up my failure to that fashion faux pas. I was trying to make no other statement except that I can't afford anything nicer than my 9 year old job interview suit and brown shoes which have not been worn while bicycle commuting. I sit here in my room on this first day of daylight savings time and I can't do anything else but avoid studying. Studying feels like a prison of sorts. I study endlessly and fail exams due to what I feel is my lack of mind reading abilities and when I sit down to study again I feel overwhelming despair because it's not as if I did something wrong and am back at the drawing board to rectify the problem. Once again I'm back to square one and I'm going to retrace my steps only to hope that luck is more on my side this second time when the stakes are higher.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
7 comments:
Boohoo cry me a river. You personify the glass is half empty. You know its gonna come down to luck, why not try to work the system and odds in your favor? You are after all uniquely aware that certain variables influence your official success in the academic world. Why not find out who the examiner is going to be? Find out what he/she likes or doesnt, find out what questions theyre likely to pose etc. You can work the system or let the system work you and sit their and cry and bitch about how unfair it is and how hopeless everything feels. Do or dont, you decide, that is not a power they reside over you.
Freedom of speech means you have to be for the guy you want to hear as opposed to the guy you don't want to hear. Although I respect your rights to say what you want I feel sorry that you are so narrow minded in thinking that this "education" is a big game. You go to an institution of higher education to learn something and the degree comes as a consequence, it's not the other way around where the goal is the degree and the winner of the game is the person who took the fastest path to it or the one who got their knowing the least and having had to off suffered the least. You personify that which is ruining a once nobel profession of medicine, you are no doubt the M.B.A. in M.D./M.B.A.
Oh and P.S. I don't personify the glass is half empty, I"m the guy who looks at the glass and says it's twice as big as it needs to be.
whats next in the world of Charles?
Education is in a sense a game, or more appropriately a system. There are rules and guidelines to follow. In many ways the educational system differs not so much from other forms of structured human activity, be it an office workplace, or a singles night at church. To cling on to ideals of what education should be and not facing reality will only result in frustration and anger(or hopelessness), but i rest assured from the contents of this blog you're familiar with these feelings.
You might go to an institution to learn something, but you can never be graded on your entire knowledge. A system in which the students are examined that thouroughly is simply too resource consuming. So to expect a certain level of variaton and error is to say the least of the not so narrow minded thing to do.
That it is either or in terms of education vs degree is an idea you have forced into my mouth. I never stated it in such terms or by such rules(either or). I left the door open for learning for the sake of learning(which is basically what I interpret your position as) while at the same time playing the system.
Learning for the sake of learning is supposed to be joyous, developing, intriguing and yield the type of knowledge which might save a patients life one day.
Learning for the sake of being a successful operator in a system with set rules is solely to get official recognition and satisfaction from peers in authoritarian positions. Failure to do so will render you quite simply an outcast of said system, in this case clinical work in a hospital.
As you might see now both methods of learning are required for a well-rounded and successful physician in the workforce. More importantly the latter one is indeed required if you are to stay inspired and motivated to keep pursuing the former one.
For more information see what George Bernard Shaw has to say about the schooling system and knowledge, I think you'd agree with his beliefs.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/audiointerviews/profilepages/shawg1.shtml
(click "the trick to passing exams")
I understand that a perfect system of education and evaluation of student's education doesn't exist and that if it could exist as you say it would be too resource consuming, however I think that statistics exist because perfection can't. If you look to the natural and physical sciences and actually to medicine you will see that statistics and probability are applied in decision making because almost nothing is boolean in nature and many decisions need to be based on probabilities of something occuring beforehand. Statistics and probability seem to be paramount in medicine because decisions seem to rarely be made according to absolutes and treatments seem to change according to the percent of patients who show positive outcomes from said treatments. Having said that I think that statistics in relation to this school point to more things being wrong than right. Many people who don't go to school and connive their way through and "play the game" pass and many who do things the way it should be done fail. This would be all well and good if we all agreed that this system of education is corrupted and it's our job to just get through but our teachers are constantly preaching to us that we go to the "oldest most prestigious medical faculty in central Europe" and when you fail they constantly point to the others who pass as shining examples of what to do. It just gets to be a little too much to swallow after a while. Everything you present to me is nothing I haven't thought about and nothing I haven't heard many times before. This place seems very wrong to me. In the past year I have been feeling very bad about my decision to come here because even though I am close to my goal of becoming a doctor I feel very ill prepared and although many students of medicine feel this way I feel that these problems on top of communication issues with teachers just does more to flatten my spirit than anything else.
I listened to the audio tracks of Shaw as you listed on the BBC website and it's funny because everything he says is my school to a "t" but let's not lose sight of the fact that Shaw was a playwright specializing in satire and I'm not too sure how much of what he says I should follow as the gospel.
Post a Comment