That other part of my brain

I think one of the nicest parts of starting my PhD is being able to use that part of my brain that thinks. I've been doing math again! Talking about ideas! Solving problems!

You just don't do these things as a medical student. I'm sorry, but calculating renal clearance or GFR* is just not the same. And in my experience, nobody on the wards cares one lick about the cool paper in JAMA you just read or the article in the NEJM that just came out on pay for performance (it's really interesting, you should check it out).

If you were to bring something like that up:

1- It would waste the time of everyone on your team who is trying to get "real work" done.

2- It is highly likely that it would be perceived as brown nosing by your colleagues and possibly by the attending.

The sad truth is that nobody cares about what's going on in the brain of the medical student. All people care about is that you're able to regurgitate facts. Opinions? You're better off keeping your mouth shut and any interesting thoughts to yourself in most cases because otherwise you'll just be seen as annoying and occasionally arrogant.*

After a while, the brain shuts down the analytic, creative, idea part to make room for the hypertrophy of the memorization and facts quadrant. Sometimes I'd wonder if I even had a right hemisphere any more. I'm glad I'm finally getting to use it again!


*And if your class is anything like mine, even learning to calculate renal clearance caused a total anxiety attack/meltdown from people in the class who had forgotten how to do division.
*I wonder whether doctors actually find these things annoying (I'm sure some do), and if rather it's that they're mad that they don't have the time or energy to read these things themselves and/or are mad that you may know more than they do about something and are making them feel stupid.