{"id":7317,"date":"2009-12-23T13:00:56","date_gmt":"2009-12-23T18:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=7317"},"modified":"2009-12-23T13:39:53","modified_gmt":"2009-12-23T18:39:53","slug":"school-days-are-long-gone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=7317","title":{"rendered":"School Days (Are Long Gone)"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is actually a political post.\u00a0 But you gotta be just a little patient.<\/p>\n

Back in my senior year at college, I was sitting in the Philosophy “department” (my college had one philosophy prof; I was waiting for him in his office), reading one of the academic philosophy administration’s trade mags (sorta like Variety <\/em>or Radio and Records<\/em>, only advertising job trends for post-structuralists and help wanted ads for Nietscheans).\u00a0 And I happened upon an article that explored a trend (or “trend”) of people applying to medical school with Bachelors’ in Philosophy (as well as, y’know, degrees in Chemistry and\/or Biology, to boot).\u00a0 The piece touched heavily on the worth of, and need for, doctors who could see beyond the\u00a0numbers in the test results (as important as they are) to the larger values and ethics of the field.<\/p>\n

And in twenty-odd years of dealing with doctors (mostly pediatricians), I’ve seen there’s some merit to this; while medicine is at its core a scientific field, most of them still have to not only deal with people, but with people who are frequently under immense stress, undergoing some of the most miserable traumas in their lives.\u00a0 The best doctors do it very well; the worst are terrible.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0\u00a0Minnpost last week had a post on the subject: <\/a><\/p>\n

Do you have the personality to be successful in medical school?<\/p>\n

A recent study<\/a>, co-authored by a University of Minnesota psychology professor, has found that certain personality traits may be a better predictor of success in medical school than MCAT<\/a> scores \u2014 particularly during the latter years, when students are out interacting with real patients.<\/p>\n

As medical students become \u201cmore involved with patients and applied work, personality becomes more and more relevant and predictive\u201d of how well they do in their coursework, said Deniz Ones<\/a>, professor of psychology at the University of Minnesota and one of the co-authors of the study. I talked with her about the study on Thursday.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In other words, the real predictors of success in medicine are not <\/em>the grades a student gets in high school, college and med school, or the half-decade of test scores leading up to medical school.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It’s the personality.<\/p>\n

The study, which was published in the November issue of the Journal of Applied Psychology, looked at five personality traits (neuroticism, extraversion, openness, agreeableness and conscientiousness), each with six different sub-traits.<\/p>\n

The one trait that remained consistently important throughout the seven years of medical training was conscientiousness (competence, order, dutifulness, achievement striving, self-discipline, deliberation), said Ones.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the dimension that is particularly found in education achievement because it\u2019s related to effort and hard work,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s been shown to be related to college performance in other graduate settings as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

In medical school, however, conscientiousness became doubly important, said Ones, because attention and diligence is not only essential for good study habits, but also for diagnosing and treating patients.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But there’s a surprise; extroversion is the other <\/em>apparently-dispositive trait for predicting success.<\/strong><\/p>\n

But another personality trait that showed up among successful medical students did surprise Ones and her colleagues: extroversion (warmth, gregariousness, assertiveness, activity, excitement-seeking, positive emotions).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cAt the beginning of medical school, this trait was actually negatively related to performance,\u201d said Ones. After all, extroverted students are more likely to spend their time socializing rather than hitting the medical texts.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut over time, if they managed to hang on, this liability became an asset,\u201d said Ones. \u201cThis is the dimension that allows them to talk to patients, to have an interest in them and care about them.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Of course, we’ve all run into doctors who lacked any human-interaction skills whatsoever.\u00a0 I’m willing to bet that the resident who presided over the early labor before my daughter’s birth, a dour Hindi woman with the people skills of the west end of an eastbound lawn mower, got really <\/em>good grades in high school, college and med school.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost of education is geared toward the acquisition of knowledge and skills. That\u2019s what MCAT assesses,\u201d she said. That\u2019s OK, she says, but, as this study and other research shows, how smart someone is often fails to predict how successful they\u2019ll be at a specific profession \u2014 particularly one like medicine, which requires such strong people skills.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Of course, it goes well beyond doctors.<\/p>\n

I read this study, and I’m reminded of the concentrated snootiness that the left – the “party of the people” – focuses on politicans who, for whatever reason, did things with their early lives other <\/em>than playing the paper chase.\u00a0 Sarah Palin’s an obvious example – and too current, really.\u00a0 A much better one – Reagan.\u00a0 Reagan was an adequate high school student, went to a very obscure college (Eureka), got further adequate grades…<\/p>\n

…and pretty much ended his academic career.\u00a0<\/p>\n

During Reagan’s political career, some razzed him for not having had a more distinguished academic career – as if he’d have done a better <\/em>job of reviving the economy, restoring America’s mojo and peacefully toppling the Soviet Union if he’d started his adult life as an insufferable Ivy Leaguer.<\/p>\n

Indeed – as the survey of medical students shows – he’s have likely not done nearly as well.<\/p>\n

Think about it; the people who get into either medical school or the Ivy League based purely on their high school grades (let’s leave out legacy admissions for now) did so because they were among that thin film of high schoolers who were motivated from Junior High onward to do one thing; get grades.\u00a0 Not develop social skills; not diversify their personalities; not develop all the soft skills that go along with having to deal with people <\/em>and navigate real life.<\/p>\n

What do you get with a doctor or a politician whose highest pre-adult achievement was getting straight A’s, thereby getting into top-ranked schools?\u00a0 Someone whose entire formative experience is focused on the academic skills – reading, regurgitating facts on command, kissing ass – and who may or may not have the faintest interest in or empathy for you, the patient\/voter.<\/p>\n

And someone who may have put grades, if not in the back seat, at least in the shotgun position?\u00a0<\/p>\n

Well, the article above explains the results with doctors.<\/p>\n

So do you think things are different for everyone else <\/em>in the real world?\u00a0 Say, with the leader of the free world?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is actually a political post.\u00a0 But you gotta be just a little patient. Back in my senior year at college, I was sitting in the Philosophy “department” (my college had one philosophy prof; I was waiting for him in his office), reading one of the academic philosophy administration’s trade mags (sorta like Variety or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,24,53,10,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conservatism","category-culture-war","category-the-universe-and-everything","category-education","category-pc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7317"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7317\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7320,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7317\/revisions\/7320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}