My Struggles with Biomed Monsters and Other Such Silliness.

Luckily, so far I have not seen anything too difficult to deal with emotionally. However, some papers that I’ve read have been really boring, and at times quite gross. But they couldn't help it—they were biomed papers. And then there were a few monsters for business classes; you know, something about profit margins, estimates, etc.

I found that that those papers are hard to follow; usually because they are very specific and are intended for the audience to which I do not belong. But I also found that it is totally OK to ask questions about concepts. I had to do that on a number of occasions in order to understand the sentence if the student had punctuation questions, for example.

If the paper is boring, I have to keep myself aware of the fact, so I don’t slip into the mode of nodding and agreeing while my mind is off somewhere else. So far the most effective way of combating this tendency to disassociate has been reminding myself the amount of work that must have gone into writing a ten-page medical paper. It would be rude to disregard that, and I would feel awfully guilty if I had, so my guilt-avoiding tendencies keep me in line. It also helps to ask questions, because understanding the paper better naturally makes it easier to follow. And taking turns reading the paper helped too.

Now that I think about it, there were a couple of charged papers that I agreed with and was tempted to discuss the topic further with the like-minded individual next to me. And even though this is a situation opposite to what Dr. Rogers is asking for, it is still applicable, in a way. Because I really had to bite my tongue and remember that it’s not about me or my thoughts and feelings (believe it or not, but there are times when I actually feel that way), whether I agreed or disagreed.