Work days are long and nights are short for medical students. Gruelling 17-hour per-day schedules include class time, labs, lectures, homework, shadowing doctors and practicing golf. That kind of stress puts a lot of pressure on students of medicine, but most of them consider the hard work part of a higher calling.
“I’m in it to help people,” said Tamara DeJondis, U first-year medical student.
“I really want to help people,” said Ben Ghoughlaghson, third year medical student.
“I’ve always wanted to help people, sick people,” said Michael Foley, second-year medical student.
“Helping people is really what medicine is all about,” said Katherine Giffin, pre-med student.
One medical student is bucking the trend, however. The only person John Corbitt wants to help with his medical degree is himself.
“Yeah I want to help?myself get a bigger house!” Corbitt said.
Corbitt has no compunction against admitting his desire to pursue medicine is motivated almost purely by greed.
Medical school Dean of Admissions Sally Vacuum says this is not uncommon.
“We usually have a couple students who are?more concerned about the financial rewards of medicine than the more important, non-tangible rewards of helping people,” Vacuum said. “But they usually drop out before finishing all four years?um, have you seen the keys to my Porsche?”
Wearing a shirt that reads, “Will work for hundreds of thousands of dollars,” Corbitt is confident the hundreds of hours of volunteer work and studying he put into the application process will pay off.
“You don’t really have to work that hard, really,” Corbitt said. “You just make nurses do all the work, don’t you?”
Faculty members in the College of Nursing declined comment on whether or not some nursing students are “in it just for the money.” Nurses The Comical spoke with uniformly agreed, however, they “hope all doctors die and can’t afford to be resuscitated.”
Corbitt thought about becoming a lawyer or a real estate agent as a quick way to earn top dollar, but decided against it.
“Dude, I have some standards,” he said.
Disclaimer: The Comical is pure satire and appears at the beginning of every week on The Chronicle’s Web site. Please take the stories as jokes and don’t call your lawyer. Thanks.