Monday, December 10, 2012

Two Down, Four More to Go

Today's finals are history. Despite last night's nightmare and the Klonopin I had to take after 4:00 a.m. as a result, I managed to make it through both of today's finals in a more-or-less wakeful state.  I have one final tomorrow, two on Wednesday, and the last one  on Thursday.

The exams I took today weren't overly taxing. Tomorrow's final will be a bit of a challenge, as will be the second exam I take on Wednesday. The first final I take on Wednesday is one that almost any primate would be expected to ace with ease. Thursday's final isn't quite so insulting to one's intelligence but, nonetheless, shouldn't  involve pulling an all-nighter the prior evening or biting one's nail's to the quick.

This has been an interesting quarter in that, overall, it's has probably been more cognitively demanding than anything I've ever done or am likely ever to do unless I enroll in medical school. It's been a good test as to whether I may or may not  be up to the rigors of medical school.

As to whether I am indeed up to the rigors of medical school, the verdict is not yet in. My best guess is that, cognitively speaking, the answer is probably yes. On the other hand, the strength my interpersonal skills has been questioned more than once.  Do I possess the empathy and communication skills to work cooperatively with fellow medical school students, much less with patients? Maybe, or maybe not.  If I choose the medical school option, time will tell.

Since my chosen specialty would be pathology, my dealings with other human beings would be finite. Once I made it through medical school and residency, if that;'s the direction I were to go, I would spend a whole lot more on-the-job  time staring through the lens  of a microscope into the morass of pathogens than I'd ever spend  attempting to navigate my way through  dealings with my fellow human beings. Still, four years of medical school and the first two years of a residency would be a long time for a socially-challenged person to undergo forced interactions with her fellow humans.  

5 comments:

  1. If you had just seen the woman I met on my cruise, the one with the MD and PhD, you'd probably feel a lot better about your communication and interpersonal skills.

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  2. Knotty, that is good to hear. I'll tell my mom that there is a woman already in the profession who is even more deficient in these areas than I am. My mom, who is not an MD, is the one who is concerned that I'm not well-suited to the profession. My dad actually wants me to study medicine, because he thinks it would be a waste of perfectly good math and science aptitude not to study medicine.

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  3. It sounds like you're pretty introspective, though, and you know what your strengths and weaknesses are. I don't have to tell you that there are things you can do as a doctor that don't necessarily require dealing with live patients every day. And just from interacting with you online, I can tell that you can communicate quite well, even if it's only in the written medium.

    Shoot, I have an MSW that, if I chose to use it, wouldn't necessarily entail being social and dealing with clients. A lot of social workers are administrators. My specialty was "macro" social work, which is about building organizations and communities, not counseling people.

    Alas, my true gifts seem to be in the arts... and it looks like we might be moving again, anyway.

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  4. Have you ever used your MSW professionally, Knotty?

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  5. Depends on what you mean by professionally. Since I got out of school, I've mostly worked as a technical writer, which technically I could have done with just my English degree. However, I'm pretty sure I got the jobs I got because of my MSW/MPH. Like I said, I'm not a counselor, though every MSW gets basic training in counseling during the first year of the program. I was really trained to be a manager, which I have never actually done... at least not for money! ;-)

    To be honest, I think I much prefer being a writer to being an administrator.

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