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Time Zones, Reasonable Hours And The People Who Ignore Them
I appreciate being able to meet people from other parts of the United States and the globe because they broaden my perspective and remind me that the world is much larger than what I am aware of as I navigate through a typical day in Southern California. As a result of my travels, I communicate relatively regularly with people who live in time zones that are 3 to 19 hours ahead of me. Whenever I attempt to communicate with them, I try to remain acutely aware of what time it is for them in their corner of the world. That is why I become very irritated when I get text messages and messages on Facebook Messenger in the middle of the night from people who are on the other side of the globe and think it’s a good time to initiate a chat with me. Some people are so clueless that when I respond to a message stating that I am trying to sleep, they KEEP MESSAGING me, causing my phone to clang repeatedly like a bell. I realize that I can (and DO) turn off my ringer, turn off my phone or ignore the messages, but there are two reasons why I respond to such communication attempts:
1. If I don’t respond immediately, I must deal with and endless stream of lengthy messages the next morning, scolding me for not responding.
2. I feel strongly compelled to inform the person that it’s late and that I must put an abrupt end to the conversation stream.
To be honest, I know that I test people when I tell them that it is late and that I am going back to sleep. The way to pass my test is to register a quick apology and allow me to rest, but some individuals seem to lack the sense to drop the conversation. One person who was an acquaintance I knew through Facebook contacted me last night past midnight and kept sending messages and images which woke me up repeatedly, so I told him to please stop. Instead of stopping, he explained to me that it was 12 noon where he was. Okay, that’s fine, but why did he keep messaging me, trying to engage me in a conversation I wanted no part of? I told him to please stop sending messages so that I could go back to sleep. His reaction was to KEEP MESSAGING ME. I have been in situations where I had miscalculated the time zone where a friend was, but as soon as I realized my mistake, I sent a quick apology and then stopped communicating with them. Unfortunately, this guy didn’t have the sense to realize how much of a pest he was, so my reward for his persistence was to block him.
I deal with people who think that because I am in the public eye and a physician, I must be on call 24/7. Not so, ESPECIALLY if someone pressures me to take care of their needs immediately when I have no professional responsibility toward them. The sense of entitlement some people have just blows me away! So-called “quick questions” become long, drawn-out consultation requests, and when I don’t have answers, some individuals cop an attitude after I have taken time out of my busy day to be cordial and helpful. It’s enough for me to consider telling everyone that they must submit questions to me during normal business hours, otherwise leave me alone. I must draw a line in the sand because I tend to sacrifice a great deal of my time and resources to help others, and run myself into the ground as a result.
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My Education Never Stops
For those of you who think that physicians are done with educational pursuits once they complete the rigors of medical school and residency, think again. We must complete continuing medical education credits (aka CME’s) for the length of our medical careers. This means that we must attend conferences and seminars, take online courses, complete quizzes in medical journals and take recertification exams to retain our board certification. Such CME’s aren’t cheap either. The average cost of each credit hour is $25, so when you multiply that by the 150 hours required in each three year cycle for board certified physicians like me, $3,750 has flown out of your wallet, and that doesn’t take into account the association dues for the governing sites which offer the most desirable and relevant CME credits.
Today I decided to chisel away at my ongoing requirements and took two online CME courses. The first was on diabetic foot ulcers and was quite graphic and disgusting, but since I am required to know how to treat this condition, I tolerated the images which flashed on the computer screen. I then took a course on gastrointestinal disorders which was far less graphic but yielded valuable information which was a great review for me. At the end of my two hour review, I received two CME credit hours which will be counted toward the 150 total hours I will need to accumulate by the end of 2015. I wish I could do most of my CME credits online, but there are limits on online coursework. What that basically means is that I am forced to participate in live courses, which means that I must figure out what courses my schedule will accommodate. In addition, live courses are significantly more expensive. I was investigating medical conferences yesterday and discovered that one major conference would set me back by $1,400 just for the registration alone! Since I cannot afford that conference, I must get creative and find other options which aren’t nearly as expensive.
I research CME opportunities every few months for the most respected and accessible opportunities, so I feel confident that I will find cost-effective ways of fortifying my medical knowledge while fulfilling my CME credits before the end of the current cycle. Since I also recently obtained an NAFC Nutrition Coach Certification, I will need to keep up on CEC’s for that as well. Oh, the learning never ends!
Education Is VERY Expensive!
My mother struggled to send me to excellent schools because she wanted me to have the best education possible. I know that she borrowed money from her family to send me through my senior year of high school, which back in those days was pretty expensive at around $4,200. Had she opted to pull me from the school I had been at from fourth grade on and put me in public school during my senior year, I probably would have been really screwed up from the shift, so I am very grateful to her for what she did.
It has been 31 years since I graduated from high school. I figured the cost of an education at my alma mater had risen, but when I checked out the school website to see what tuition was these days, I got the shock of my life. Here is the current tuition schedule, not including books and other fees, for the 2014-2015 school year:
TUITION 2014-2015
Elementary School (K-6) $27,690
Secondary School (7-12) $32,690
How does anyone begin to afford such an expensive education?
For those of you who are curious about my alma mater, you can click on the link here:
Spelling Champ
I have been a excellent speller since early childhood, when I exhibited an intuitive sense of word structure. I still remember shocking my teachers during my very brief time in kindergarten (I was advanced to first grade at the age of five after a few weeks in kindergarten) by spelling the word SCISSORS correctly. Apparently my ability to spell this word was rare for my age, and from that point on, I earned the label of great speller. In the fourth grade, at the age of eight, I decided to learn the longest word in the Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary, and I remember it to this day. It is a 45 letter word which is synonymous with a coal miner’s lung disease. Here is the word I memorized:
PNEUMONOULTRAMICROSCOPICSILICOVOLCANOCONIOSIS
I was honestly fascinated with words and loved spelling them and investigating sentence structure as well. This continued throughout grade school, and by sixth grade, I was the kid to beat in the spelling contests my homeroom teacher Mrs. Mackenzie would conduct. The fact that I was unbeatable sparked a great deal of competitive energy in my classmates who wanted nothing more than to make me topple from my spelling perch. At the end of the school year, Mrs. Mackenzie hosted the grand finale spelling bee, which, instead of featuring candy as the grand prize, boasted a gold toned medal hanging from a red ribbon. The instant I saw the medal, a fire was lit inside me and I was determined to take the big title. On the big day, one student after another was defeated by words that proved too challenging for them to spell properly, and I stood there unfazed while they dropped out of the competition. Finally, it wound down to two of us: Martha Phelps and I stood across from each other, glaring daggers at each other. I could feel her anger seething from her, and could tell that she was out to destroy me. She was given a word, puffed out her chest, and began to spell it. F, A, C, E, I, OUS!
WRONG.
I almost jumped out of my skin, I was so excited. Mrs. Mackenzie turned to me. The word was mine to spell. F, A, C, E, T, I, O, U, S. Yes, I emphasized that T, rubbing it in like a smoker would rub out a cigarette on the sidewalk. It was like slow motion after that, when Mrs. Mackenzie turned to the table behind her, grabbed the medal, and handed it to me. A roar erupted as the students who had been standing around watching cheered for me.
Martha was not nearly as pleased as the others were for my victory, and made her displeasure known by punching me in the gut after we had walked from the auditorium back to the classrooms. What a sore loser and a snotty little bitch.
My classmates mentioned my talent when they scribbled in my yearbook at the end of the year. Two girls who were exceptionally poor spellers wrote “spelling medle” and “spelling metal”, which gave me a chuckle. It was a very memorable year for me and I took great pride in achieving an academic pinnacle so early in life. I think it would be fair say my hunger for competing began with spelling bees.
Skip ahead to high school, during which time I served as a living spell-check for my best friend Diane. Diane would call, and after I would say “Hello?”, I would hear a word being uttered, after which I was expected to spell it. Then I would hear, “Thanks” and the conversation would usually come to a quick end. Sometimes Diane would tell me that she had looked up the word, but her spelling was so off the mark that she couldn’t locate the word she was trying to spell. This free best friend service was something I was always happy to do, and because I made myself so readily available with my knack for spelling, this amusing little ritual continued throughout college and beyond.
To this day I am still asked by a number of good friends how to spell certain words, and I always oblige without any hesitation. It’s almost automatic for me, when a person asks me how to spell a word, to launch immediately into the spelling, as if I was in Mrs. Mackenzie’s class, standing at my desk, spelling until I was the only student standing. It’s how my brain is programmed and is better than an electronic spelling app!
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