Double Flee A

I wander around a hospital semi-dressed in scrubs, therefore nurses think I'm a doctor and smile at me like something very good is about to happen. I notice this, and would enjoy it more if A) I was a doctor and deserved it and B) wasn't already married to a hot nurse at the very same hospital. When I'm dressed that way and people are nice to me for some reason that seems hidden and slightly out of proportion, I'm guessing it's because they think I am, or at least have a good chance of being, a doctor.

My brother is applying to medical school and wanted to know some good points to hit when writing application-style essays. I waffled on whether it would be good or not to bring it up, but now I'm pretty sure it's a perfectly acceptable reason to want to get into the field that you get more respect from the most people as a doctor than maybe any other profession there is.

Let's think why this is. When you're a medical doctor you know how things work. You're expected to have an understanding of the functions of the body, of diseases and the ways they operate, change, and can be fought, of cell types, anatomical systems and how they interact with each other, lots of biochemistry, in short, the things that make up the human body; verified anatomical and medical science. It's a difficult field of study.

As I was thinking about the respect that (and I'm not qualifying this) all people afford doctors and how well the doctors deserve it, I thought of the respect that preacher-men get, and I thought it was quite funny and revealing that most people think any given preacher man is just a quack with nothing important to say. Take the pope. Most people in the world don't give a crap what he says or does; they aren't Catholic. Repeat this for any other flavor of supernaturalist. Who do you want helping you out when you're sick? I'm gonna go with the person who knows something about something, period.

To sum up, the respect is commensurate with the reality. The doctor is required to know something and does, because he is a scientist who, like all scientists, study nature. The supernaturalist on the other hand, well...

posted by dale @ 8:41 PM