Knowledge Is Power

Or at least that's what I've been told. That is, unless you're an EABAGTSSB (to be elaborated on later).

In bigger lectures, I tend to focus my seating efforts around the same general area - usually towards the middle-back of the hall. Having said this, I'm not the only one with this idea and I usually end up around the same people. With physiology, there are two pairs of guys who sit close enough to me that I can overhear some of their conversations. The lecturer usually likes to ask questions before he gets into great detail with various topics. These questions are more or less rhetorical and he's trying to get us in a certain "frame of mind" - whatever that means. Every now and then I'll have an idea of what he's looking for, but I've definitely been proved wrong.

Now come question time, these guys proceed to answer the prof's questions. Every time. They don't answer so as to get called on, but quietly to each other in a "pssh, I know the answer and can't believe nobody else does" kind of manner. Entertains and pisses me off at the same time. If you knew your shit, you wouldn't be wrong all the time. I have no problem with people knowing more than me nor do I have a problem with people venturing a legitimate guess every now and then. It's when some jackass thinks he's the end-all, be-all, greatest thing since sliced bread (EABAGTSSB). These EABAGTSSBs take no heed of the fact that they're always wrong and consequently never think they can be wrong. That attitude not only pisses me off, but scares me.

Now when these EABAGTSSBs become doctors and whatnot, are they going to know everything? Of course not. It's when they come up on something they're unfamiliar with that scares me. What's going to happen is they're just going to assume what they think is right and scoff at the notion of consulting others or referring patients out. Odds are that such a decision will not end well for the patient involved. I'd like to think I know a little bit of the med-related stuff I've studied so far: biochem, micro, immuno, bacterial path, anatomy, physio, endocrinology. But put me in a clinical situation and I know I'm out of my league most of the time - I know my limits. Knowing limits is what made this cool, it's unexpected. These kids figure they've taken a few weeks of undergrad cardiac physiology and they're on par with any cardiologist. Throw in the thoracic unit of undergrad anatomy and they're CT surgeons. Yeah.

Now, how do I know these kids are going to be doctors? Oh, that's because one day they decided to talk about what med schools they're deciding between. In an upper level biology class, this shouldn't be unexpected. What's uncool is when they talk about it loud enough that I can hear them over my music. Pompous asses. Congratulations, nobody else cares. Combine these kids' God complexes with their pretentiousness and you've got some overconfident, elitist, semi-competent MDs. I mean, it feels good to have gotten into med school, but by that same token I don't go announcing it to everyone I see either.

Either way, it's kind of unnerving to see what some of my future classmates/colleagues are going to be like.