As I have mentioned many times before, I feel like our education system was developed with altruism and nobility at its core. I have seen it all the way from elementary school to undergraduate university (though obviously much less so at higher levels at education). While I think it’s nice that we’re taught to do “good” things, I think it is very problematic when this obsession with an ideal world clouds our ability to think rationally and critically. One of the most common examples I remember is being taught over and over again that “desiring money makes you a bad person”, etc. I don’t want to talk about money today because that’s a big topic I want to save for another day, but suffice to say, I think making simplistic statements like “desiring money makes you a bad person” is pretty ridiculous and dangerous, especially at a time when we should be helping young people to think instead of shoving ridiculous statements with no context down their throats. I’ll just stop here with the whole money thing and say that if you’re going to judge someone, judge them based on not just how they use money, but also realize that there is diversity in personal preference regarding luxury and even diversity in how that relates to our moral obligations to share with others.

I am not saying altruism is a bad thing. Being unselfish and serving others is something I highly respect and value, and is an important quality we all need to have at one point or another, particularly in the medical profession. It does become problematic, however, when you start taking it to the extreme and believing that only altruism is good and selfishness is bad in everything.

We all need to be selfish at some point, and anyone who denies ever being selfish needs a reality check. If you’re reading my blog right now (and I’m assuming because you want to and find enjoyment/value in it), I dare you to ask yourself whether this isn’t a selfish act considering that you could be out volunteering or cleaning up the park or something more altruistic. If you agree with me that we can’t be altruistic all the time (or that even if we could, it’s unhealthy), then let’s keep going forward. Clearly, there are times when altruism isn’t in our best interests and it has nothing to do with being a good or bad person – sometimes it’s just a choice.

Hey Guys!

So this is my first of hopefully many more blog posts to come.  Let me start by introducing myself.  As my profile mentions, I am a 2nd year medical student at UofT and previously completed my undergrad at York University in Biomedical Sciences.  I have lived in Toronto my whole life, and I am glad to have gotten into UofT med because I am not sure how life would be if I had to leave my hometown for good.

What do medical students do during their summers? Well for me, I did not take the usual route of research (~50% of UT medical students), traveling, rural electives, etc. Instead, I dedicated my last summer in achieving 2 objectives:

1) Start MedChatter
2) Shadow physicians from various specialties and decide a specialization for myself.

Since my life hasn't been interesting lately, I've decided to look back to my past shadowing experiences and share it with you guys. I will try to post on all of my experiences, so this post is the first of many to come.

I sit here typing this relaxed and in a pretty darn good mood. Although my first semester of medical school actually finished last Thursday, I've been too busy/lazy to actually sit down and write anything.

As I mentioned previously, one of the courses I take in medical school is the Arts and Science of Clinical Medicine (ASCM I) where we learn basic clinical skills. So far this year we learned to take patient history, vital signs (heart/respiratory rate and blood pressure), and some physical exams (precordial, peripheral vascular). Next semester we will learn more physical exams like neurological, abdomen, etc.

Okay not really much of a roller coaster, but definitely some ups and downs - sort of.

This morning I did my last anatomy dissection ever. We looked at the posterior part of the forearm and dorsal part of the hand (i.e. the back of the arm from the forearm to the fingers). Being able to see all of the muscles and their tendons, and essentially knowing how the arm and hand works mechanically was pretty cool.

So I got this nice email today…

"Liu, Joshua Paul

You achieved the following scores on the STF exams:

Blood & Gross Anatomy average: 84.3%, Your mark: 74.7
Histology average: 85.0%, Your mark: 67.5
Embryology average: 76.49%, Your mark: 70"