Monday, May 28, 2007

'Scuse me, while i snuff a cry...

Dear all, do not blame me for coming up with another dreary post about academic pursuits. You must realize that when one is a medical student hoping to pass exams, precious else happens besides turning one dreary page after another, all filled with graphic pictures of grotesquely diseased breasts and penises, and then some. (So much for action.)
It is quite the paradox that the very organs that can turn one on could also,when slightly out of order, possess powers to let one lose appetite for days.

Be that as it may, the raison d'etre for my abusing bandwidth and your stopping by this time, is to let you in on an impending task which is so impossible i have chosen to call it The Impossible Task or TIT, for short.
(Yes, i agree i have a very corny sense of humour. And yes, i have read How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild And Got A Life).
The TIT i speak of here could also be referred to as The Impending Doom, or TID. So, in the likeness of Daag - The Fire, Baaz - A Bird In Danger, this disaster shall be called,
The Impossible Task - The Impending Doom,
or TIT - TID. Tittid for convenience.

Whatitees, this Tittid?
My internal - sigh - assessment - sigh - exam.
About the unfairness of medical exams, the evaluation, the unfairness, the ugly unfairness, and did i mention the godawful unfairness, i shall write about some other time.
But today, let us dissect my Tittid.

(As i write, it rains outside real horrorshow; like the clouds have determined to wipe out the human race. Loud and dramatic. Ah, how well they complement my mood)

I have five subjects this time. Let us now anatomize Tittid in heartbreaking, cerebrum-spinning
detail. (okay okay, it won't be too long, don't worry. Or, may be it will.)

*drum rolls, horns, confetti et cetera et cetera*
(You may choose to ignore the details, and jump directly to the synopsis of the story)

{1. General Medicine - Portions
Recommended reading - Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine -
1600 pages
Compulsory reading - Davidson's Principles and Practice of Internal Medicine -
739 pages.
Sidey-book-shunned-by-professors-WORSHIPPED-by-students - Medicine by George Matthew -
476 pages.

2. General Surgery - Portions
Recommended and Compulsory reading - Bailey and Love's Short Practice of Surgery, or The Book That Almost Gave My Mother A Slipped Disk.
(Apparently, it's a Big Deal. I realize most things in medicine work on face value. Ask me, it's a hardly Love-able book that hardly ever Bail-s you out of tough situations (such as Tittid). And Short Practice my arse. It runs 1522 pages, with an index that runs a book length itself,
at 70 pages.)
The portion is a cool Cover to Cover, id est,
1522 pages.
Sidey-book-
HATED-by-professors - Manipal Manual of Surgery - 825 pages.

3. Paediatrics - Portions
Recommended reading - Nelson's Pediatrics - let us not even go there, but, for a ballpark figure, let's say
1200 pages?
Compulsory, sidey etc. - OP Ghai -
468 pages.

4. Gynaecology - Portions.
Recommended, compulsory, essential all rolled into one - Shaw's -
508 pages.

5. Orthopaedics - Portions
Like most paradoxes turn out, the chaps that deal with the hardest of things (thoo, gutterbrains all) have the softest of hearts.
Recommended, compulsory etc - Maheshwari's Essential Ortho -
26 (yay!) pages.}

So there.
Quick recap.
Recommended reading - 4,956 pages. Oh-ho-kay
Compulsory reading - 3,263 pages. Hmmm, but oh-ho-kay.
Sidey book reading - 2,103 pages. DANG. Et tu, sidey?

This is purest rant, i agree.
Does not warrant your time.
Does nothing to uplift you creatively. Or otherwise.
But, people-in-cushy-software-jobs, spare a thought for poor me. Me, with the exponentially sinking cheeks and shrinking waistline. Spare a thought. Do. I am coming off all clingy and needy, you think i don't realise that? But, how in the name of Hippo-fucking-crates am i to read 2,103 pages of mindnumbingly complex name-dropping in, let's see, EIGHT days?

You ask me to listen to Himesh Reshammiya for 20 hours non-stop. I will. Most that will result in, is brain damage. No problems, decent bargain.
But this?

I need sympathy. Not one of you can empathize, i agree.

While you are at it, pat yourselves on thine collective backs, for having made the right choice when it mattered most. To stay away from anything remotely close to a medical college.

Sigh. Unedited, at-one-go rants are all i am capable of writing. Blogs that discuss writing and ideas and 55-word stories give me a complex SO massive, *insert biggest simile you can think of here, and funniest*. But writing about those blogs where genuinely good writing abounds is
for another day. Also, about those that are famous for no particular reason. And of course, where pseudo- is the dictum.
All, my friend, in good time.
Now i have to get back to knowing what exactly constitutes a 'pain in the ass'.

For an aside - my multilingual, multi-genre playlist currently plays,

'Duniya mein hum aaye hain toh jeena hee paDega,

jeevan hain agar zehar toh peena hee paDega'.
(Lata Mangeshkar & chorus, Mother India, 1957)

Ah, old hindi film songs! How well they compliment my mood.

16 comments:

Anonymous said...

yeah. massive rant.

what else you want me to say?

Spunky Monkey said...

Well anonymous, you could say, aww poor you et cetera et cetera.

Well, whatever.

Quietly Amused said...

you whiny thing. bailey is one of the best books you'll ever get to read as is harrison. oh course you should have read both by now but considering you spent most of your second year either discovering new words or getting hammered by yours truly at jam i'm guessing the tomes are pristine. oh well tighten the belt live off coffee and get down to work. oh and all the best, you'll do fine. :-)

Anonymous said...

babbbi dowwrleeng, you are such a genius. i just wish you'd stop whining as much.

i don't want to encourage the whining with you-poor-thing type pithies. chee.

Spunky Monkey said...

@single-eyed dude - Yeah yeah, you can say things. Say Bailey is the best. And Harrison is God's own son and all that. I am just not that academic, guru.
Learning new words is NOT a bad thing. And you, you have a fascination for slurred speech. You'd rather have it blared across to you than clear, coherent, grammatically perfect sentences. That explains the getting hammered bit.
And thank you very much. I might have to resort to some amount of nefariousness, but i am sure it'll be worth it.

@anonymous - Are you the same one? I am genius? Gee whiz. Thanks!

(And, obviously, people don't like rants. Look at the dwindling number in my audience. Chah.)

tangled said...

real horrorshow.
ooh, listen to the doc! :D utterly shameless he is.

What's Sidey-reading?

Quietly Amused said...

sidey reading is the perusal of substandard books with substandard information that would get you to pass but never to be actually able to treat a patient. and monkey man, did i ever tell you the concept of measuring the amount you have to read in inches? burn the midnight oil son you considering you have inches to go before you sleep.

Malaveeka said...

Aw..

Poor you, sweetie.

Spunky Monkey said...

@tangled - Sidey reading is all that the amused chap said; only he forgot to add a much required epithet - Lifesaver. Don't know about patients, but definitely saves ours.

@scary eye - Not happening dey, just not.
Besides, is there any chance of His Long Sentences coming down here to pursue braincutting in NIMHANS?

@Malveeka - THANK YOU. The one response i wrote all this shite for. Thank you!

the Monk said...

Good Lord, girl, but that was fun.

Here's an idea: chuck medicine. Write.

Unless, of course, you really want to save lives and all that stuff.

Spunky Monkey said...

@The monk - Thanks you. But, Spunky Monkey be male. I wonder if it was the whining that got you thinking otherwise, or perhaps it's the American police dept.'s fixation of referring to everybody in the feminine.

I am INTO saving lives man, like completely.

And boy, aren't you popular!

Anonymous said...

Umm aren't you supposed to have read a fair amount of all this by now?
Good luck n all but no sympathies. It'll encourage the whining.

Spunky Monkey said...

Who told you so? You are misinformed. All of what we are expected to read is accomplished in three months before final exams. Or, have i been talking to the wrong seniors?

Quietly Amused said...

yup you have...

Quietly Amused said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Quietly Amused said...

yup you have...