Posted by alexandra_k on October 12, 2015, at 17:16:36
In reply to Re: better-ish, posted by alexandra_k on October 6, 2015, at 17:13:20
I think it is probably true that we don't have the skilled senior people that we need. So then we have unsuitable / not entirely competent people who have been given positions of power because we haven't had those senior people. And then they jealously guard their positions of power. So when people who are skilled and senior come along... They are more likely to get turned on by the others. Or when people seem to show genuine talent or ability... They are more likely to get turned on. It has become about placating those incompetent people appropriately so that they choose to let you learn or work or whatever. The problem is that it is unending... On and on and on... You spend so much time placating the people who weren't doing their jobs that you can't get on and do the job either. 'helping' they were / are. mmm hmm.
Are there protected islands? Not sure. Think the idea seems to be... To get out. To get out if you can.
I think biology might be like that here. That's why 20% of the course was based on our labs... Why the laboratory senior students / demonstrators knew the questions / answers etc. So that there was a 20% discretionary component on how well you sucked up to them / extracted the answers from them / got them to check your work. You can lose one grade... Two grades... Because they decide (fairly much on a whim) that they don't like you. Unless you have a critical mass of students to back you / cross check your work against / employ a bully tactic with.
Combine that with multiple choice assessment that I don't seem able to break about a B- or a B on (where my intuitions about how well I've done simply don't track how well I've done)... And it looks like biology is not for me. Where they are more concerned about 'protecting the integrity of the test' than they are in helping you learn (e.g., they simply will not allow you to have a closed viewing or attempt to teach you how to get better at multi-guess). I do find it odd that I'm not better at them... I can get full marks for the same section that is short answer / diagram... I don't have trouble with psychology multiple choice or medical science multiple choice... I didn't have trouble with the biology textbook online multiple choice... Shame... I did like stuff about cells...
I didn't realise why people thought luck (and stuff like that) played such a big part of things...
Why?
Why are we determined not to make the world as good a place as we can? Why are people so freaking selfish?
People skills are a necessary precondition on your getting to do anything here. Not people skills as in your ability to understand and comprehend an english literature novel. Not people skills as in your ability to employ relatively sophisticated theory of mind with respect to people's motivations or intentions or whatever. People skills as in soap opera dynamics. People skills as in your ability to go 'coo coo coo' and have people believe that you think they are the loveliest loveliest loveliest loveliest loveliest loveliest thing in the whole wide world... And if you are sufficiently compelling at that... They might actually let you get on with your job / refrain from bullying you.
I don't play that game. I do have autistic spectrum here. Tis true. Took a recent arrival doc to see it. British trained. Of course. He'd be facing it... In the health system (lolz). Seems to attract them (because we have a local medial drama that gets people wanting jobs in health thinking that jobs in health will involve soap opera dynamics all day and sick people who are fairly powerless thus will probably learn to coo coo coo coo coo at you...)
I don't like who I am becoming. Here. Things are starting to get better. I think that is it. Protected environment. A little like hospital. Need to make sure one doesn't collapse with the protected environment. Next year... Class sizes down to about 200. Then down to about 60 for third year... Seems that the teaching quality isn't hard and fast divided between the medical school (medical students) proper and the medical science / physiology people. People teach in both. And the real cull is from this year with all the soap opera people. Will have more of the academic / science people... I knew quite a few people who voluntarily switched out of med and into science after a couple weeks med... When they were young... It will be okay. But I think I'll need to go back to psychology (to support medical science / physiology) and keep my fingers crossed it hasn't gone the way of biology here... Take some advice on more senior biology (could be biology's special way of placating a bunch of first year people / trying to boost enrolments on keeping students for an additional year who would leave the university / subject otherwise). It could well be that they have decided that biology / psychology will be the 'equity degree' option, or whatever... I don't know...
How did they manage not to wreck the GPA of the charmed circle of students? That's what I'd like to know... Population Health, too... Since there wasn't rhyme nor reason in their multiple guess (mostly next to impossible to parse)... Or have my intuitions deviated so very far from those of the kids from the elite schools? I think they decide that the right answer is whatever those kids think that it is... Pretty sure that's how they do that... Pretty sure...
Thank God the Australian Medical Council doesn't seem to have gone that way... And if we want our doctors to have registration between NZ and Australia then they get something of a say in entry exams and medical school exams. And the medical school exams... Well... Well designed and properly assessed. Not throw them down the stairs or marks for sucking up... Thank god. Not sure how they get the suck ups through... I guess the real thing is about what placement positions you get. And whether your application to specialise / work in different areas of medicine / work in different places gets accepted. Not all PhD's are equal when it come to any of that. I'd imagine not all medical grads are equal, either.
Seeing it this way makes me feel a lot happier about taking another couple years to spend on the science aspects of the content. Seeing it that way. Then when they decide to crap up a bunch of time learning about how you don't touch people on the head and about how the solution to the titanic dilemma is escalators... Installing escalators in the name of equity is the right thing to do (big eyes -- if they are big enough and the stare is vacant enough that is like the power of a mathematical proof, that is) and then grade people on their essay that isn't an essay that is graded on your ability to get them to believe that you have embraced the spirit of escalators in words of two syllables or less in conjunction with their having thrown them up the stairs and given you a worse grade for being white or an even worse grade for being asian... Tis the kiwi way... Wouldn't be equitable otherwise...
Then I won't get so very far behind on my anatomy. Since I'll have learned some already.
Mostly my worry is... That I'm not getting any younger. I know I do alright on longer interviews when they get the chance to actually get to know me a bit (over a half hour or whatever). They get to see that i'm coherent and intelligent and so on... But of course they have replaced the proper interview (too expensive) with something more akin to speed dating. And you only get 2 minutes with interviewers (because the kiwi way seems to be to reward any kind of bias or preconception or superficiality that there is. because we like to totally ignore all the literature there is on how such things reflect stereotypes etc). Health is *special*. Public acceptability... The other med school went with (mostly) opinions of elders. That is good for me because older people are sensible. Here... I'm not sure on the range. More of a range, I think. For better or worse. Younger academics. Good for me. Not sure who else.
The older thing will disadvantage me in a speed dating kind of a setup. I am worried about that. The superficial appearance thing seems much more important. And to think that they might be judging me on how they think that the unhealthy people in NZ society will be judging me... Anyway... That is my worry about... Delay... I'm not entirely sure I'll be able to suck up some of it if I get into medical school... I suspect there is a bunch of discretion about various things... How much they lean on people because here there and every freaking where people take an intense dislike (for whatever reason) and decide to fail. So... The ability to be inconspicuous in the middle of the herd... The children have indeed been trained to huddle... I don't know.. Perhaps this is backwards (it isn't really) but you need into medicine in order to get to learn stuff. Training is expensive (wouldn't be the kiwi way if we didn't cry about how expensive everything was all the time). And, of course, we must devote considerable resources to trying to educate people who don't even want to be educated. Such that we don't have enough to educate the people who do. Like health over again.
I don't know what is happening with my hair. It is decidedly thinning. I've started being much more aware of hairlines generally. i'm noticing that an awful lot of women in their 40's or whatever seem to have a slighly receded hairline. Talking about on tv etc. Maybe it will just sort of stay about where it it. I guess I just envisage that it will continue on at the same rate... And that I'll be noticably baldish in a few months... I guess the difference may well be that they got treatment. They probably don't have the broader pattern that I do (that is cheaper for doctors to be trained to not notice). Not helping with teh public acceptability thing at all. Of course I get that patients actually won't give a sh*t. But that is the dopey kind of thing that will likely impact on interviewers in a speed dating situation... I would suppose... Or perhaps I'm psychologically funny about it... Seems that most people are... With all the stuff about it... I was always surprised before with guys at how it really did seem to get at their self esteem... But Bruce Willis... And it really wasn't anything of a deal to me at all. I didn't understand why it bugged them. Not until it happens to you. Only *I'm a girl*. Not the same thing, not the same thing at all. Point being... Cometic, apparently. People are dying of self inflicted diabetes and so on, didn't I know? I'll be lucky if I get in in the next 6 months. Endocrinology. Dermatology? Forget about it. They're too busy waiting for people to become terminal with skin cancer so that nothing can be done...
I suppose I'll need to think about head scarves at some point... Figure something out. Want to avoid the closed breatheren look (guess I will in virtue of it not being long at the back). I do like the idea of headscarves... But we are a bit funny about them here (of course). Need to look into more athletic ones, I suppose... Which is starting to happen now... I'm not entirely sure what to do... My hair has always been weird and unruly (very fine but lots of it) only now... The follicles are shutting down... Not getting any greyer (and not actually very grey at all) but that's because it is simply falling out... Sigh. I wouldn't care... But public acceptability. If I ever want to get to do anatomy properly (which I do) then I need into medical school. And there it is.
I really don't know that they will let me here. Coo. Just not so good at that. And autistic spectrum? Yeah... Good luck with that.
I need the academic people to back me for me to have any hope at all. I guess that's the thing, really. So... Another couple years. Then I'll have a herd to make sure the equity people don't fail me in the name of equity (since the equity people would have smothered me once they realised i wasn't going to coo... once they realise I go rigid when people grab at me)... I guess I'll have to see about the academic people. See how much power they have compared to those other components. The equity thing... Tis designed to help with the academic component. But it isn't the academic component that I need help with (so long as we are talking about actual academics rather than the infiltrators)... I did remember seeing something about a guy in his early / mid fourties who started medical school in the US... Of course I see now that the difference is that he would have paid for that himself - whereas here any student can chuck any course on their student loan (though of course you do contribute more for certain degrees) but the real thing is: The government contributes a whole heap of money besides that. And the number of places / hence graduated number of people who are qualified is limited. And public acceptance on non-english speaking docs is low. And english speaking docs (who are qualified) don't want to come here... So... Then, of course, the docs don't want their kids places to be bonded because they want their kids to have the opportunity to get to practice cilnical competence someplace that cares abotu that (e.g., Australia). And they don't want to bond any of the places because if they start offering bonded places then there will be a push to increase the number of bonded places and before we know it we'll be stuck with 'there there, coo coo, feel better' and what the crap will happen when the government workers / academics get sick? There are limits on how many / how fast we can get people to Australia...
conflict between bill of rights and the treaty. international interests and local community interests (narrowly conceived). i hate here because.... it is making me feel racist. i need to remember that where i was before... little bit further south... they surely had a lot of nasty to say about the urbanised people up here who got stuff back in the name of equity and used that to screw the rest of them over... the people crying out for stuff in the name of equity... most of their own people don't accept them. not sure who gave them the power to choose the future equity trained kids when their own people don't accept the choosers... damned mess. those with power got it by 'stepping up!' and 'getting in there!' and bullying and conning their way about... and now they are there are are careful to pick those who will support them. that isn't the maaori way, at all. i need to remember that. tiny subset of them... the worst of them in many respects... having to contend with them... the students say they are disappointed because they thought they would learn stuff... but the curriculum doesn't have any substance. some of teh stuff is great - but applies to cultural sensitivity far more broadly. and a lot of it is nonsense that they want you to spout because they want to select for your ability to spout their nonsense just because they told you to spout it. practicing is something else... most of the actual people don't give a crap about their politics etc. they don't want whatever it is that the others are selecting for... what to do? leave them to it as much as possible. could spend ones life... what?? cooing at them... the advantaged ones. sigh.
ugh.
poster:alexandra_k
thread:1076978
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20150604/msgs/1083391.html