My mood
This is going to by a whiney post.
I've had a rough...couple of weeks? Maybe? It's really hard for me to pinpoint when this started, but I have not felt the usual enthusiasm and raw enjoyment in my job that I experienced as a resident.
I think it's mostly that I don't like being responsible for others' education, especially when I feel I care more about it than they do. I don't like dragging doctors-in-training along their journey to competence and feeling like an asshole when I have to be stern and no-nonsense.
I also don't like my additional bullshit duties. I hate the constant giving of feedback and evaluations. I hate the 7am meetings that make me miss my morning workouts. And I am starting to hate doing presentations.
Back in the autumn, my co-Chief and I offered to do a "Humanities in Medicine" discussion over obesity. This was months ago. I started researching, compiling ideas and objectives, and trying to find a good media piece to center our discussion around months in advance and would occasionally work on this project. My partner? She didn't start taking it seriously (despite my occasionally bringing it up) until about 2 weeks prior to our presentation date. Ironically, this suited me just fine. I like working alone. What made me started to get nails-on-chalkboard irritated with her was when she started to "help."
To be honest, she is the nicest person in the world, but she is simple, lacks any capacity for profundity, is boring, and, to be honest, a bit stupid. She works really hard, so I'm glad that she's my co-Chief, but we haven't really collaborated on projects in the past.
The first thing she did was make suggestions of videos we could use as our discussion center-piece. I had spent quite a bit of time searching for multimedia and could find nothing that was more effective than a set of letters written by obese people describing their struggles. And her movie suggestions were really fucking dumb (one of which was a clip from the movie "Precious" that was basically the eponymous character stealing a bucket of fried chicken. Like, the fuck? How is that at all helpful to our objectives?). The rest of her ideas were similarly stupid. And, to be honest, the more the "helped" the more irritated I got (and the less I was able to hide that irritation, I fear). Then, the day of the presentation came and I was stuck in clinic helping our program out by doing a direct observation clinical encounter for an intern that we are going to fire and I ran the risk of not making it to the meeting on time (which is another thing that pissed me off). She got really anxious that I wasn't going to be there and asked me to ask the clinic director (aka, the scariest faculty member we have) if I could get out of helping. And, to my disgust, I actually did sort of ask and was unable to get out of it. In the end, I made it on time, but I find that her anxiety/weakness really irritated me.
The actual presentation/discussion went quite well, I think. I did most of the talking, which I admit was both intentional on my part and slightly vindictive. I had done more reading on the subject and, while my ability to develop profundity and nuance is not amazing, it is a far cry better than hers and I honestly feel that her inability to think beyond the superficial would have made it a boring discussion. My main takeaways were, I felt, nuanced and somewhat profound and hers was basically "make sure you ask for permission before launching into a discussion regarding a person's weight," which is pragmatically helpful, but is a good example of the limits of her intelligence.
A couple of days before the presentation, I had agreed to do a short 20 minute discussion of a topic of my choice to be done two days after our Humanities lecture. This was because the absolute waste of carbon who is in charge of the lecture schedule didn't bother figuring that week out before "going on vacation" (though he was still present this week?) and the guy he got to cover for him works really hard and is one of the few faculty members whom I actually like. He was struggling to find someone to do a talk on Thursday, asked me, so I agreed. My schedule was busy the rest of that Tuesday (the day of the Humanities lecture) and I was in clinic all day Wednesday. Long story short, I gave up my Wednesday evening (sacrificing cooking for myself and exercising) to prepare another talk (my second in a week). I got it done and even got a decent night's sleep. I spent this morning going over it and putting finishing touches on it (sacrificing not being able to read the intern's landmark paper he was presenting to the depth I would have liked). When I got to work, I was told that there would be another presenter and that my presentation was not needed.
The irritation that had been building prior to the Humanities lecture and that had mostly subsided once that was done came back all at once. My presentation was not going to be very high yield and the faculty member's presentation was actually a really interesting case that I learned a lot from, but still.
I...feel like an exposed nerve. I'm much more sensitive to bullshit than I was even just several months ago. I wonder if this is burn-out? Am I depressed? I do know that I feel such remarkable relief when I am alone, which makes me wonder if this is introvert-burn-out? And what should I do about it?
I cannot wait to get the fuck out of this program.
I've had a rough...couple of weeks? Maybe? It's really hard for me to pinpoint when this started, but I have not felt the usual enthusiasm and raw enjoyment in my job that I experienced as a resident.
I think it's mostly that I don't like being responsible for others' education, especially when I feel I care more about it than they do. I don't like dragging doctors-in-training along their journey to competence and feeling like an asshole when I have to be stern and no-nonsense.
I also don't like my additional bullshit duties. I hate the constant giving of feedback and evaluations. I hate the 7am meetings that make me miss my morning workouts. And I am starting to hate doing presentations.
Back in the autumn, my co-Chief and I offered to do a "Humanities in Medicine" discussion over obesity. This was months ago. I started researching, compiling ideas and objectives, and trying to find a good media piece to center our discussion around months in advance and would occasionally work on this project. My partner? She didn't start taking it seriously (despite my occasionally bringing it up) until about 2 weeks prior to our presentation date. Ironically, this suited me just fine. I like working alone. What made me started to get nails-on-chalkboard irritated with her was when she started to "help."
To be honest, she is the nicest person in the world, but she is simple, lacks any capacity for profundity, is boring, and, to be honest, a bit stupid. She works really hard, so I'm glad that she's my co-Chief, but we haven't really collaborated on projects in the past.
The first thing she did was make suggestions of videos we could use as our discussion center-piece. I had spent quite a bit of time searching for multimedia and could find nothing that was more effective than a set of letters written by obese people describing their struggles. And her movie suggestions were really fucking dumb (one of which was a clip from the movie "Precious" that was basically the eponymous character stealing a bucket of fried chicken. Like, the fuck? How is that at all helpful to our objectives?). The rest of her ideas were similarly stupid. And, to be honest, the more the "helped" the more irritated I got (and the less I was able to hide that irritation, I fear). Then, the day of the presentation came and I was stuck in clinic helping our program out by doing a direct observation clinical encounter for an intern that we are going to fire and I ran the risk of not making it to the meeting on time (which is another thing that pissed me off). She got really anxious that I wasn't going to be there and asked me to ask the clinic director (aka, the scariest faculty member we have) if I could get out of helping. And, to my disgust, I actually did sort of ask and was unable to get out of it. In the end, I made it on time, but I find that her anxiety/weakness really irritated me.
The actual presentation/discussion went quite well, I think. I did most of the talking, which I admit was both intentional on my part and slightly vindictive. I had done more reading on the subject and, while my ability to develop profundity and nuance is not amazing, it is a far cry better than hers and I honestly feel that her inability to think beyond the superficial would have made it a boring discussion. My main takeaways were, I felt, nuanced and somewhat profound and hers was basically "make sure you ask for permission before launching into a discussion regarding a person's weight," which is pragmatically helpful, but is a good example of the limits of her intelligence.
A couple of days before the presentation, I had agreed to do a short 20 minute discussion of a topic of my choice to be done two days after our Humanities lecture. This was because the absolute waste of carbon who is in charge of the lecture schedule didn't bother figuring that week out before "going on vacation" (though he was still present this week?) and the guy he got to cover for him works really hard and is one of the few faculty members whom I actually like. He was struggling to find someone to do a talk on Thursday, asked me, so I agreed. My schedule was busy the rest of that Tuesday (the day of the Humanities lecture) and I was in clinic all day Wednesday. Long story short, I gave up my Wednesday evening (sacrificing cooking for myself and exercising) to prepare another talk (my second in a week). I got it done and even got a decent night's sleep. I spent this morning going over it and putting finishing touches on it (sacrificing not being able to read the intern's landmark paper he was presenting to the depth I would have liked). When I got to work, I was told that there would be another presenter and that my presentation was not needed.
The irritation that had been building prior to the Humanities lecture and that had mostly subsided once that was done came back all at once. My presentation was not going to be very high yield and the faculty member's presentation was actually a really interesting case that I learned a lot from, but still.
I...feel like an exposed nerve. I'm much more sensitive to bullshit than I was even just several months ago. I wonder if this is burn-out? Am I depressed? I do know that I feel such remarkable relief when I am alone, which makes me wonder if this is introvert-burn-out? And what should I do about it?
I cannot wait to get the fuck out of this program.