Indiscrimately positive

Once a friend told me that I have the tendency to always think that everything is good. Every PBL group has been pleasant. All my tutor have been fine. All the medical specialities are interesting. BBGS, UTP, KMB and Manchester have all been amazing. Where I am living now is not the most expensive accommodation, but it's fine and I have no complaint. My family is the best in the world. All is well.

Unfortunately this doesn't agree with everybody.

Ok, this entry, so contradictory to the title, is a rant about my current PBL group. Since the beginning to the term but more so recently, I always find myself disagreeing with the rest of the group. They always have lots of complaint. Whenever they have just a little bit of free time to chat, they would complain. They talked about how the renal doctors were unapproachable, how the podiatry and hospice placements were boring, how teaching were not held on time etc, and very often I had to disagree with them all. However, I still wanted to be accepted by the group and hence very often I've just kept quiet (especially when they were giving feedback at the end of the renal firm). Also, whenever our clinical teachers were late for teaching, a few in our group would always suggest that we leave or make excuses to delay or cancel the teaching rather than making some effort to make our time worthwhile. To be honest, I have come to a point that I just can't to tolerate this anymore. Before this I would sometimes have gone away with them wasting away two hours sitting in the crush hall. Call me a boring person but I really hate wasting time just sitting around chatting when it could be used for more productive things like sitting in a clinic or clerking patients or practising skills. In the past two years I was involved in so many voluntary work not because I want to enhance my CV, but because I genuinely enjoy keeping myself occupied doing meaningful things. My groupmates are just the exact opposite. My clinical partner actually said to me that she enjoyed standing around doing nothing while we were on-call yesterday rather than taking blood. For the last few weeks she's been complaining that we don't get to practise the skill (which is not true by the way), and now when the opportunity arise she's not bothered, how obscure is that?

In this firm, we get lots of teaching sessions, which are overrated by my groupmates. I have no idea why but my groupmates love to be spoonfed. They were continually saying to the other doctors 'this firm is so much better than the renal firm, we've learn more in a week here than we had for eight weeks in renal', and I sometimes just had to say something to the contrary because I have thoroughly enjoyed and have learnt as much in the renal firm. The people in my group always speaks as though they represented the view of everyone, and my view always happen to be completely the opposite of the supposed majority view. Sigh... this is so difficult isn't it? A few girls in the group had started to avoid talking to me, don't really know why but I assumed it's because I enjoyed the renal and community block while they didn't. Is it my fault that I went to the trouble of learning things and making myself useful? Is it my fault that no one wants to take my offer when I ask them if they want to go to the ward? Is it my fault that I've seen and examined more patients than the rest of them? Is it my fault that they are not positive enough to look at the brighter side and cease learning opportunities?

I know I can be overly keen at times, which is why I have made it a point to not be at hospital after 5pm and I shall be engaged with extra curricular activities. Over the last two weeks I've been thinking that I really want to get along with my groupmates. But, maybe it's my fault or maybe it's their, we just disagree all the time (while I kept quiet most of the time). I have tried to reason with them, yet they just kept making excuses. Most of them are 1-3 years younger than me. I remember doing silly things just two or three years ago, it's amazing how much I grew just over the last few years after leaving home. Maybe it's just part of their process of maturation. I will be bitched behind my back but I don't care. I am not prepared succumb to behaving like them, turning up just to compulsory teaching, clerk the minimum number of patient and engage in discussion just to ensure that the teacher sees it and not mark us down. My ultimate purpose of studying medicine is to learn to become a competent doctor and I will do anything to achieve that.

p/s - Latest venupuncture stats: 7 successes 3 failures. Getting better!