Gunners...

Attention: If this post offends you, you should take that as a good indicator that you are indeed a gunner. For your happiness and mine please reconsider all your daily school behaviors.

Monday, I headed back to school for the final time. This, my nineteenth year of classroom based education, will be my last. It may still be a bit premature to make a paper-chain countdown of remaining multiple choice tests; but, even with the ridiculous number of tests we take in medical school, it has to be below 50. (To Communications and English majors, yes, only 50 tests remaining is a joyous occasion. To Premed students, if you want to remain premed students, refrain from doing any test number calculations.) There are many things to like and dislike about a new school year. I was hoping one of my dislikes wouldn’t bother me for the first few weeks, specifically until September 16^th and our first exam of the year. Unfortunately, within five minutes of entering MERF, before the first lecture began, I came face-to-face with a trio of gunners gunning.

I decided to refer to Urban Dictionary to get a less “Kaitlin-judgmental” and a more “universal-judgmental” definition of a gunner for non-medical students. These two were the best:

1. A person (usually a medical or law school student) who uses over 3 different colored highlighters, tabs every page in their notebook, and raises their hand after every question asked by their professor, regardless of if they know the correct answer or not. Gunners like to hear themselves speak. They use complicated words to make themselves sound smart even though they have no idea what's going on in class- they pretend they do. They are trying to intimidate you and eliminate competition.

2. A name for someone, typically a medical student, who will do anything (ethical or otherwise) to get ahead. M1 Dude: "So, Bunson explained that the kidneys are somehow connected to the islet of Langerhans?" Other M1 Dude: "Don't listen to Bunson. He's a total gunner. Bunson will burn you everytime."

If those two definitions describe people you would like to be surrounded with for four years, you are either a gunner or a saint. Clearly from this post, I’m neither. Now I’m not saying I don’t try hard in medical school. I work my butt off and I’m proud of it (hopefully literally today in yoga). However, if I ever turn into a bug-eyed, frantic, rambling, non-sense question asking, hypertensive, mass highlighting, Friday night studying version of myself, have my little sister forge my signature on a power of attorney and either medicate me or lock me up.

Now back to Monday. Morosely, I walked towards my community to put my frozen lunch in the refrigerator. Each step re-enforced that my final summer had come to an end. I resisted pumping my body full of caffeine because, although I hadn’t looked at the schedule yet, the first day couldn’t be too bad. I began to reconsider the coffee when I remembered that my first day last year involved cutting someone’s chest open with a bone saw and rib cutters. I turned from the refrigerator, heading for EMRB for coffee when I ran into the gunners. Three mid-twenties hypertensive males clutching freshly printed schedules began talking so the whole community could hear. Their topic of discussion: _ _ _ _ _ _. (Fill in the blank and check the answer at the bottom of the post.) If you got it right, you _ _ _ _ _ this post. One of the sentences said in the conversation was close to this, “If you’re going to pass a class you might as well honor it”. WHAT???????? Okay, I know you’re a gunner and I’m not, but I’m really confused by that logic. Instead of strategizing for honors before the syllabi are passed out, could we all just take a deep breathe. Help each other out. And most importantly, never forget that Ps get MDs.

Answer: HONORS