Across each of the scores of office desks that line any government office, we can find our typical government office clerk. They sip tea, eat biscuits, take breaks, comb their hair, rock their chair, and then, when their mood and motivation permits –do some paperwork that comes their way. They aren’t particularly fast at processing your applications, but the stash on their papertray stays slim. Every morning at their fixed time, they punch in their attendance card and occupy their chairs. They sit through the office hours, go about their stereotypical routine, and then they go home.
But then, they stay put. Even at the face of zero motivation and absolutely no workload they still keep their chair rocking. Before you feel offended at the idea of emulating them, think about your response to sitting across your table for the first five minutes in the morning not able to think what to do. Clearly, you should have something to do –duh, you are a med student. But you feel too listless to dig through your mind to make a plan.
Instead, you decide to check the headlines on the TV or log on to Facebook and check your friends change in statuses since last night. After 30 minutes of channel flipping or auto-scrolling, you find yourself still unable to decide what to do, more fatigued, and a full thirty minutes late in the day. The office clerk would have just sat through his urge to grab the headlines, or may be just combed his hair.
Sitting across your desk and flipping through your memos, stash of papers or performance sheets can be a great way to jumpstart a day. The trick is to take your time and arrive at any task that needs done. Heading into the right direction is more important right now than doing your things fast. So, you do have five minutes to spare. Stretch out, think about it, make the right choice, and get going. And that is when all similarities between the perfect med student and a public office clerk end.
Why Med Students Need to be More like Office Clerks
