psychiatry
I have so many great stories from this rotation, but none of them can i post on the internets. I can merely bore you with my own meandering thoughts.
My grade 8 teacher (whom i despised at the time) had some pretty good pedagogy in retrospect. (Even if she got it very backwards when she told me that my best friend was a bad influence on me). She taught us how to make decisions by listing columns of plus, minus, and interesting consequences to potential choices. Psychiatry is the first specialty rotation that i have really thought might be an option. and I'm starting to feel a bit of pressure to make a decision already as to where i want to go with this whole medicine thing. I'm also open to advice.
Plus:
* It's a lot like camp
* I know stuff already: i.e. for the first time in medical school, my past life counts for something.
* The day starts at 9ish and ends by 5
* really good stories
Minus:
if someone yells "is there a doctor in the house?!?" they wouldn't really mean me.
I learned all that anatomy. And for what?
I'm having dreams about psychotropic medications again already, and it's only been 6 weeks.
Interesting:
* From my (non-representative) vantage point, this rotation made psych look like the gay-est job outside of queer community organizing. weird.
* I had no idea how many people have delusions about gay-ness, turning gay, being targeted by gays etc.
* I found it kind of tender and elegant that all these gay-fearing folk were heard, comforted and re-educated by a roomfull of queers, dykes, queens, twinks and fags.
life's funny.
People tend to be drawn to fields where they have had important/emotional experiences. Like the woman with diabetes who works in endocrinology, or the person with crohn's disease who is looking at a GI fellowship, my experiences with illness and disease have overwhelmingly been psychiatric. (blah blah blah sublimation blah blah)
Easily, it is the residency that i would enjoy the most. But i worry that i wouldn't love it for the rest of my life... that no one would ever talk to me normally at a cocktail party. And that if i moved to a small town, i would have way too much information to ever have any friends.
I still have a few weeks to plan my electives, i'll keep you posted.
My grade 8 teacher (whom i despised at the time) had some pretty good pedagogy in retrospect. (Even if she got it very backwards when she told me that my best friend was a bad influence on me). She taught us how to make decisions by listing columns of plus, minus, and interesting consequences to potential choices. Psychiatry is the first specialty rotation that i have really thought might be an option. and I'm starting to feel a bit of pressure to make a decision already as to where i want to go with this whole medicine thing. I'm also open to advice.
Plus:
* It's a lot like camp
* I know stuff already: i.e. for the first time in medical school, my past life counts for something.
* The day starts at 9ish and ends by 5
* really good stories
Minus:
if someone yells "is there a doctor in the house?!?" they wouldn't really mean me.
I learned all that anatomy. And for what?
I'm having dreams about psychotropic medications again already, and it's only been 6 weeks.
Interesting:
* From my (non-representative) vantage point, this rotation made psych look like the gay-est job outside of queer community organizing. weird.
* I had no idea how many people have delusions about gay-ness, turning gay, being targeted by gays etc.
* I found it kind of tender and elegant that all these gay-fearing folk were heard, comforted and re-educated by a roomfull of queers, dykes, queens, twinks and fags.
life's funny.
People tend to be drawn to fields where they have had important/emotional experiences. Like the woman with diabetes who works in endocrinology, or the person with crohn's disease who is looking at a GI fellowship, my experiences with illness and disease have overwhelmingly been psychiatric. (blah blah blah sublimation blah blah)
Easily, it is the residency that i would enjoy the most. But i worry that i wouldn't love it for the rest of my life... that no one would ever talk to me normally at a cocktail party. And that if i moved to a small town, i would have way too much information to ever have any friends.
I still have a few weeks to plan my electives, i'll keep you posted.
Labels: medskool
posted by lothyn at 12.3.07
2 Comments:
For the record, the one 60+ yr old psychiatrist I know (who runs a private practice in ktown) is one of the most friendly and interesting folk I know in that age bracket. And he has lots of friends.
Do people talk to you normally at cocktail parties now? (I hadn't realized you attended many cocktail parties to begin with.)
I was going to point out that becoming a psychiatrist would mean that you would have to hang out with crazy people a lot, but I caught myself just in time.
- Paul
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