I'm not sure about other programs, but they say your R2 year (second year of residency) of UCLA neurosurgery changes you. The neurology residents currently have bets going to see if I'll "stay nice" after the next year is over. The junior residents put their money on the persistence of good nature, saying I'll stay the same despite calamity and circumstance... but the senior residents know better. They've seen the lot of residents that come in smiling, charming, joking in common camaraderie, turn sour as the Q3 call (30 hour call every third night) and hail storms of consults (just last week the neurosurgery R2 got 7 consults in one hour) pulverize the softness of human civility and forge, out of necessity, the machine-like unfeeling neurosurgery junior. As if a surgical residency wasn't hard enough, now I have to be cognizant of staying humane while going through it? I don't promise anything, but I hope to write in this blog daily as this experience unfolds, so that if in 400 days the warm, young hearted boyish charm (^^) in my words degrades into the binary outputs of the terminator they expect me to become... somewhere, somehow, the slow transformation from man to machine will be documented and understood, and I'll be vindicated.
I'm getting temporarily promoted to R2 this Thursday and taking in house call. We'll see how it goes.
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1 comment:
you will stay lovely. you will stay you. i know it.
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