Playing the game

I was sitting with an acquaintance of mine in the anatomy lab when he asked me if I was playing "the game". I assumed that he was not a character from The Executioner series of adventure novels, and I also assumed he was not asking if I was participating in everybody-wins-musical-chairs. I'm pretty sure he was asking if I was trying to get into a competitive specialty by sucking up to doctors and program directors.

Looking at the other clerks around me in the emergency room who want to do get into an emergency specialty program, I can't imagine ever standing a chance. It's very similar to Olive's entry into the Little Miss Sunshine competition: wrong reasons for entering, late to the competition and nobody likes the way I dance.

I can't imagine standing a chance cause some of those people are insane. They start emergency medicine clubs, where they get together and talk about emergency medicine and how much they love it. Are they really that in love with emergency medicine, or are they doing it mostly to further their career? I really love my Nintendo Wii and I haven't started a Nintendo Wii club. And I really really love my Wii. Or these people will get together and do research projects for their supervisors, or maybe follow them around all day laughing at all their jokes, maybe wash their car, walk their dog...

I guess that's what it takes to climb the ladder in any job, and the people who need to do it should be doing it to get where they want to. Short term pain for long term gain, so they say. Good thing there's family medicine. The underachieving, misunderstood child of the medical specialty family. To end up in family medicine, they'll have to kiss my ass.