Take the straight A students from grade school and throw them all into undergraduate education at a university. Now take the few percent of those students and give them all acceptance to medical school. Out of the students there who pass the board exams, give the ones with a good personal statement and that little something extra on their resumes some interviews for a residency. How smart will those other people be? The ones that work side by side with me for the next three years ? Now take the ones that do international electives during residency in areas with little supplemental clinical support (i.e. no labs, no hospitals, only doctors for miles and miles and miles) and the percentage of those that are humanitarians? Point them all toward the application process for Doctors Without Borders.
That's the application field against which I will be applying in 5 or so years. Apparently, when someone told me during medical school that MSF was "competitive", I hadn't fully grasped that previous paragraph I just outlined. The paragraph ends abruptly if one doesn't achieve a residency, which is what quite a few of my friends are currently suffering through, people I knew in medical school, people with whom I studied shoulder to shoulder. The competitive nature of medical school and residency is, to me, a microcosm of the current state of employment in the United States and Canada, possibly worldwide. Doctors are in huge demand in Canada and the States because nobody has the facilities to train doctors properly, so barely any of them actually come out of residency and out of those , only a few are willing to practice in the areas in which they are actually needed. Anyway, nowadays the job market is so brutal that everyone is looking for the competitive edge. Parents are sending their kids to French immersion because "he has to be bilingual", and then high schools are letting kids pass because "they have to get to university, they can't get a good job nowadays if they can't make it at least to college or university" and then I heard even universities are trying to soften their policies so that students can get better grades. Softening policies is not going to increase the number of available jobs. Don't get me wrong, I hated my alma mater for weeding people out and making cut-throat students, but it's not like having 20000 people with 90s enter the workplace is going to make things better.
I had to argue pro-con for my first MCAT essay that "the rich have a responsibility to help the poor" and one of the most brutal, cold, heartless and apparently fair stances (99.5th percentile) I have ever taken on anything, I took on that essay. I said the modern global economy is fundamentally based on a clear-cut gap between rich and poor. I basically threw socialism to the wind, completely. And I'm the one who wants to return to Canada to practice. I don't hate socialism, I was just trying to make a grade. Just trying to gain the competitive edge.
I had a really disturbing dream last night, and I was really anxious today so I overate, and now I just realized the overeating is going to predispose me to bad dreams again. I am such an idiot sometimes. Whatever, I'm gonna try and see if 'imagine you can get really big and shoot fire out of your hands' will work this time. That'll teach those giant black human-eating alien locust nymphs. I can't believe I was about to jump off that tower with everyone else to commit suicide and prevent myself from getting eaten. I mean I know it's just a dream, but is that really how I wanted to go out ? That's punkified, next time I'm gonna go with fire hands. Didn't get everything done that I wanted to do today, gotta play catch-up tomorrow again. This time for real though, because I have to take this massive exam in 19 days. And then another one after it. And THEN I'll start being a healthy, sensible, well-balanced human being. Yeah, that'll happen. Probably should start by throwing all the carbs out of the house. My parents probably wouldn't enjoy that.
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