Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Metaphor

Life
I've done it.  I've discovered the perfect metaphor (simile?) for how you learn information in medical school.  Med school's like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're gonna get.  Just kidding, that's wrong (who came up with that line? what an idiot.  I'm kidding, I obviously know it was Ferris Bueller, right?) - we know exactly what we're gonna get because we get all the power point slides for each lecture ahead of time.



Trying to learn information in medical school is just like playing a game of darts, whose rules I've completely changed to fit neatly into my metaphor.

Let me explain.  Your brain is the dart board.  You have a bucket of darts (that's right, a bucket - I told you I tweaked the rules a bit), and each dart represents a piece of information that you are trying to get stuck in your brain, aka the dart board.  But it's timed - so you have very little time to throw all those darts onto the board.  You can try and throw them one at a time so that you'll have a good chance of those darts actually sticking to the board really well, but you'll be left with most of the bucket still full of darts at the end that you didn't have time to even TRY and throw at the board.


your brain
Your other option is to pick up the bucket and just heave all the darts in the general direction of the  board, and hope that some of them stick (that's analagous to listening to lecture - a few facts may stick in your mind after hearing all the information once).  Then you quickly gather up all the darts on the floor, toss 'em back in the bucket, and throw them all at the board again (that is analagous to studying - you get through the lectures again and hope that maybe a few more facts stick in your mind).  Unfortunately, sometimes as a new dart reaches the board, it accidentally knocks another dart off.  And that's really all you have time for.  Maybe one more quick bucket toss, or maybe you'll have time to pick up one or two darts individually and throw those carefully at the board so that they stick, but that's about it.


And then test day comes, and the professors come and count how many darts you have on your dart board, but only certain darts are counted - so you better hope the darts that you got to stick (aka the facts you were actually able to memorize) are the ones the professor cares about (aka are the ones the professor cares about ... oh. wait.).

your brain on drugs

And that's why med school is so fun.

1 comment:

  1. Haha, this is hilarious and a really perfect analogy for med school!

    ReplyDelete