Musings
June 21st, 20236/21/2023 The Baader-Meinhof phenomenon describes an interesting type of bias whereby you notice something more frequently after it‘s initially brought to your attention, though its actual frequency of occurrence is in actuality no different. The example I always come back to in my mind is when I first learned about the phenomenon, I applied it to a situation where someone asked me about the Jeep Liberty and as I thought, realized I’d never seen a Jeep Liberty driving around town (when I still lived in Duluth, MN, to put an age to the thought). Naturally, I started to see them everywhere afterwards. I‘m certainly guilty of applying it erroneously, as I will here, but if for no other reason, it‘s worth mentioning as a reminder that our perception of the world often does not match the reality around us. And to teach at least one someone out there a new thing.
This afternoon, as I spent my 2 free hours between sleep and my overnight shift [side note: 13 hour shift, 1 hour in commuting/prep, 8 hours sleep if I‘m lucky…2 hours to live regular life any given day…how about that], anxiously awaiting my obligations and eschewing any other interim activities, I thought about revisiting this website where I once vowed to share my thoughts and art with the world around me. It was interesting and rather eye opening to receive a message from a colleague after the start of my shift stating he and another had briefly followed this blog out of interest of both cycling and sketching. I was and am still floored that anyone out in the Äther of the internet would have even stumbled upon these writings, let alone read them more than once! Perhaps a better descriptor is ‚coincidence,‘ or ‚small world,‘ rather than Baader-Meinhof, but I‘ll justify it by saying once the thought of writing here re-emerged into my thoughts, it was brought up in the context of my professional life the very same day (though I highly doubt there‘s any regular frequency of visitors here, let alone a recent increase). Coincidence, yes, that‘s a far better term. So I sit here on my overnight shift, one out of an entire month of them, covering the Neurosurgery service and wondering what the hell I‘m doing with my life. The hours are long, arduous, either on an overnight or weekend (or both), and the educational benefits are minuscule at best. With no disrespect to the field or its practitioners, it‘s been the least beneficial (i.e., most warm-body-busy-work) rotation I‘ve been on in my medical career thus far. I exist to do an evening evaluation and note for 10-12 patients a night, then tend to their basic needs like pain control and hyper- or hypotension. In context, this is supposed to be a surgical rotation for a surgeon resident…where I’ve not and will not enter the OR for a neurosurgical case the entire rotation. It‘s the glamorous medical life I always dreamed of having, all the work and none of the benefits (outside the patients hopefully improving along the way, yes, but even altruism has its limits and those who think otherwise are lying or ignorant). There‘s no salt in these words, I promise.
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June 2023
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