#41 bad names

So, apparently yours truly has garnered a name with the faculty of Surgery as one of the delinquents of my batch. I've been skipping so many classes that my attendance rate is in the 70's. Hmm, let me try to gauge my feelings about this. I feel... proud? Since I was in the kindergarten up to A-Levels, I have apparently been a kind of a dork - the term is "skema", as in someone who's stuck to doing things the right thing - so having this kind of reputation is a kind of a supporting bra for my ego.

The issue is that the college where I'm studying has a 90% attendance policy. Which is a hard thing to do when A. you hate the posting; B. one of the faculty members is Evil Incarnate; and C. apparently the whole thing was a sham. Around here to be considered a good college you have to suck up to a committee called LAN (National Accreditation Bureau, or something like that) and one of the good things to have when you're trying to suck up to LAN people is ISO qualification. And among the things considered for ISO qualification is the attendance policy.

Get it yet? They're not really into "hospital exposure" thing, they just want to get 5 star status and have the chance ask students to pay exorbitant fees. Which is a load of bull crap considering the computers of the comp lab and classes are probably prototypes of the ones Bill Gates played with in the '70s. And when you see your friends in other colleges traipsing around Europe for one whole month when your longest holiday is probably two weeks, and that after a lot of fighting with the admin guys? The stuff tastes like shit.

I am not being a thankless SOB (which around here means "sudden onset of breathlessness"). Being a scholarship recipient, I am more than thankful for a chance to study in a very prestigious med school. Some of the faculty members are really world-class; the problem is this only applies to "some". Which is a very sad thing, a very very sad thing because I like the clinical situation very much: I like talking to patients; seeing them light up just being able to talk about their conditions validates my decade of hard work, tears and years of being away from home.

Maybe I'll sabotage myself: I'll fail one of my exams and stay back a year and get to have a longer clinical phase. That's a thought. But then again, one of my psychiatry lecturers said he always get the same answers when he asks the graduating batch about their motivation:

"They just want to get the hell out."

Rant over. I've been running through six years equivalent of The Office clips. It's kinda sad to see Steve Carell go, but ah well. It's better people ask "Why did he left?" rather than "Why's he STILL not leaving?" There's a couple of episodes where he's just damn annoying as opposed to entertaining or funny, and I think he's seen those scenes and thought, this kind of shit would probably crop up more often in the future if I keep doing this gig, so I better bail out now.

Which is kind of like what I'm feeling right now.