Opinion

Dear Mama M.,

I am nearing the end of my first year in Pharmacy School. My problem is, I feel like I am an impostor. I just don’t think I'm smart enough to be here. Honestly, I don’t know how I got accepted here. I think it is some kind of mistake. It’s not that I am stupid, not really, but I am not that smart either—not compared to all my hot-shot classmates. They are so smart.

I look around class when we are in small groups, and I just feel smaller and smaller and smaller every day, next to them. I am somehow passing all my classes, but I am nowhere near the top of the class. I used to be tops at my undergrad school, and I used to get attention from classmates and professors.

Now at UCSF, I am in the middle to lower end of the class, intellectually, and I feel kind of like a failure most days.

I don't know how to go on in this program. Can you help?

Sincerely,
Just Pretending to Be Smart

Dear Mama M.,

People tell me I am too nice to be a good doctor. The thing is, I am near the end of medical school — I graduate in two months, actually, and I guess I haven’t learned how to be tough.

I am not jaded like a lot of my classmates, who have learned from tough patients and tough times on the wards. They tell me that I am still too innocent and too trusting of people, and that I care too much about being gentle and about listening to people and their stories.

And it is true; I do care about how people suffer inside, as much as I feel intrigued by their physical ailments. I want to help them emotionally as well as physically. 

I matched in an excellent Internal Medicine program, and will start my residency in a few months, but I am worried that maybe people are right.

By Alexandra Greer
Science Editor

Got a long incubation time to kill? Waiting for your cells to spin? Bored in-between classes? In class?

This week, check out the latest news in fake science at fakescience.org, a blog with many “science lessons” in the style of 1950s cartoons, with science tips and stories.

As the blog advertises itself: “Fake science—when the real facts are too confusing”! I might add that fake science is equally satisfying for when the real facts are too exhausting, too esoteric or buried too deeply in someone’s unread dissertation.

Also, for those of you with money to spare (joke! grad students are poor), Fake Science has also published “the most important textbook ever” — an archive of its best fake facts bound in book form. It’s worth giving the blog a look — it’s been around for a couple of years, so there are lots of “facts” to peruse during those incubation periods.

20 Minutes, One Theme, No Edits, Backspace is OK

By Akshay Govind
Staff Writer

Today’s theme:  Bowtie Friday

He was 96 when he passed away, and until his death in early 2011, every single periodontist who ever trained at Harvard School of Dental Medicine had been a student of his. There was a service held for him at the school, where several senior faculty members recalled being students of his. They told stories of his dedication as an educator, his warmth with patients, and his love for fine cigars and an old coupé.

There was a box of bowties at the entrance. He had hundreds of them, and no one had ever seen him without one since World War II. Service-goers took one each by which to remember him. Mine was a beige wool tie with clay-colored tear drops, slightly worn in the spot where the material would overlap if tied around Dr. Epstein’s collar.

By Alexandra Greer
Science Editor

Got a long incubation time to kill? Waiting for your cells to spin? Bored in-between classes? In class?  This week I’ve decided to finally dust off the official list of grad-student approved webcomics for your time-wasting pleasure. They’re all a bit goofy, esoteric, somewhat vulgar but safe for work; most importantly, they are all very, very nerdy.

1.     PhD Comics You should already be familiar with this comic from Synapse’s weekly print edition. If you are not, you need to go to PhDcomics.com and catch up. It’ll take a while, considering the comics have been around for almost 10 years. There’s a handy list of the 200 most popular comics on the lefthand side of the page.

By Yi Lu
Staff Writer

On Wednesday, April 17, the United States Senate voted down a series of bills aimed at strengthening federal gun control laws, including a bipartisan compromise expanding background checks for gun buyers.

Although the political conversation in the aftermath of the Newtown shootings seemed to indicate a renewed willingness for Congress to tackle gun control, hopes for any federal action on the issue were thoroughly deflated by the bills’ defeats.

Reaction from the bills’ supporters was swift and forceful. In an op-ed piece in The New York Times, former U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords, herself a recent victim of gun violence, wrote: “Speaking is physically difficulty for me. But my feelings are clear: I’m furious.”  

By Nicole Croom
Staff Writer

I first heard of couch-surfing two summers ago. It was advertised as a cheap way of traveling, by contacting locals of your destination of choice through an official website to see if, essentially, you could squat at their place for the duration of your trip.

After a study-abroad program I was attending in Spain came to an end, my best friend and I decided to bounce around the country for a few wild days to take in more of the beautiful sites and friendly natives. Ultimately, we ended up staying in hostels in the cities we visited, but the idea of couch-surfing stayed in the back of my mind.

By Alexandra Greer
Science Editor

Got a long incubation time to kill? Waiting for your cells to spin? Bored in-between classes? In class?  Now, PhD Comics is a well-worn rite of passage for graduate students around the world. Synapse, for example, both publishes PhD Comics weekly in the newspaper and recently hosted a viewing of The PhD Movie at Parnassus campus (thanks to everyone who came!).

It seems like a requirement that every grad student become intimately familiar with the ups and (mostly hilarious) downs of each grad student and postdoc in the comic series. But how many people are familiar with PhD TV?

By Akshay Govind
Staff Writer

The sport of marathon began in tragedy. The legend says Pheidippides lost his life after running from the battlegrounds of Marathon to Athens to deliver the message that the Persians had been defeated.

I don’t know if that’s really true. I mean, it’s plausible, but it doesn’t make any sense. I would understand if the war was at a turning point and he needed reinforcement, but if the war is over, why not take a little break? Get some water, have a little bit of food, and use the restroom.

Were it not for the gruesome photos I saw and heartbreaking stories I heard Monday, I might think the same of the bombing at the Boston Marathon this week. It’s plausible, but way too senseless to be true.

Raw emotion. Focus. Harmony of mind and body. These are what I saw the first time I watched the Boston Marathon on Patriots’ Day, 2005.

By Alexandra Greer
Science Editor

Got a long incubation time to kill? Waiting for your cells to spin? Bored in-between classes? In class?  This week’s time waster will have you truly wasting your time perusing the sub-reddit r/shittyaskscience (reddit.com/r/shittyaskscience).

For those of you unfamiliar with Reddit, it calls itself “the front page of the Internet” and is a public forum to post everything funny, controversial, newsworthy, conversation-starting — really, everything — from good to godawful.

There’s actually a pretty good sub-Reddit for real science questions (r/askscience) where people get their scientific questions answered by “verified” scientists. It’s not peer review, but many of the answers appear educated, at least. But that’s not what you’re there for — you’re there to waste time, not learn!