Recent Thoughts

They are raising the tuition at school again due to the falling dollar. I however entered this school in 2003 so my tuition doesn't increase from the $10,500 I signed a contract for however everyone else including transfer students who study in our year are forced to pay more. I spent the summer doing clinical rotations and quite often I was the only foreign student in the departments. I spent a lot of time with the Czech students in my OB-GYN clerkship in July and I can say that they don't really do that much more for the foreign students than for the Czechs. We are always made to think by our teachers that because we are foreign students who pay tuition we are given something more than the Czech students who study for free. This is not true. It has been my experience both as a foreigner amongst foreign students and a foreign student amongst Czech students that the teachers quite often ignore you and waste your time regardless of whether you pay to study here or not which leads me to wonder what it is exactly my tuition is buying me. In addition to paying tuition I also have the option of living in the student dormitories where the rent is about 500% of what it is for the Czech students. I find it ridiculous that the cheapest option for me in terms of living in this city is to live in a private apartment in the center of the city as opposed to the student dorm on the more suburban part of the city.

Anyway, the summer hasn't been all that terrible. I had some good experiences and met some good doctors and good people in my rotation but the 5th year left me once again with a bad taste in my mouth. Once again the winter semester was filled with idiocy which was just a waste of time where as the summer semester was all internal medicine and much time was spent reading Harrison's Internal Medicine.

I submitted my financial aid paperwork and am looking forward to doing my student loans for the last time. I am happy that if all goes well in less than one year I'll be done. I'd rather be an unemployed doctor than a stressed out student always wondering how my school is going to screw me over next.

On another note I am infinitely infuriated by the police state America is becoming. I have been seeing much news on the internet about how travellers are being forced to log into their laptops and show their data to the TSA and Customs agents and people are being charged with crimes based upon data on their computer and furthermore if you refuse to login you end up in jail or detained or computer is never seen again. America is really becoming a disturbing place with no recourse for anyone who feels their civil liberties are being trounced upon. I don't want to be in Prague anymore but I'm almost afraid to go back to America.