Sometimes being a medical student is a thankless job. More often than not it involves a lot of bowing and scraping, yessir-ing and yesma’am-ing. Trying desperately not to look like an idiot in front of the consultant, staying on the residents’ good side, befriending the interns and obliging the patient all have to be juggled on a daily basis at the hospital. It’s all a part of the job.

Did I say job? I meant it’s all part of the paid humiliation disguised as learning.

Don’t get me wrong; it’s not all bad. It feels good to answer a difficult question correctly, to be commended on a good examnation, and to site your first (successful) intravenous access. These are the priceless achievements for which we sweat and toil. And the payoff is usually worth it.

But you still have to put up with the consultant forgetting your name, the resident stealing your pen and the patient whose endoscopy you’re assisting passing gas on you for the fifth time in five minutes.