Sincere gratitude

Thank you for laughing at me when I needed help.
Thank you for being incredulous that I couldn't read your mind.
Thank you for making me guess when you knew I didn't know.
Thank you for answering my question with a question
Thank you for questioning my answer too.

Thank you for being too busy for me.
Thank you for having heard more interesting stories far away, in another time.
Thank you for not meeting my eye.

Thank you for wandering and hiding and making me chase you.
Thank you for your affectation of indolence which told me what I needed to know.
Thank you for dismissing me.

Thank you for monitoring me.
Thank you for checking up on me behind my back.
Thank you for offering. I agreed, but then the offer changed.  Thank you.
Thank you for making me feel like I could do this.

Thank you for staring at me in disbelief.
Thank you for mistrusting me.
Thank you for threatening me.
Thank you for trying to take away my options.

Thank you for talking and talking and talking.
Thank you for not listening.
Thank you for not trusting me.
Thank you for bragging and strutting and pouting.

Thank you for grinning and smiling and acting like my friend.
Thank you for seizing the opportunity to belittle me.
Thank you for asserting your dominance.
Thank you for your misperception of my admiration.

Thank you for being lazy.
Thank you for making me do your dirty work.
Thank you for mocking and boasting and preening.

Thank you for trusting me.
Thank you for thanking me for what I have to give.
Thank you for listening to my opinion.
Thank you for sympathising.
Thank you for making me feel like a human.

Thank you for interrupting.
Thank you for correcting.
Thank you for not listening.
Thank you for looking so bored.
Thank you for making your obligations seem like favours.
Thank you for showing your contempt.

Some day

[The scene - watching an animated nursery rhyme ending in a teddy bear going to school]

Hatchling

Teddy bear go to school?

PTR

Yes, one day you'll go to school too.

Hatchling

I go to school some day, when I am tall.

Confidential

A couple of weeks ago I got roped into a teaching session for the 2nd year students by my surgical team.  They were running a rotating series of 5 or 6 learning stations for about 8 students per group, and since one of the registrars was away they got me to run a station instead of him.

In the other stations the big boss surgeons sat the students down and presumably taught them surgeony things like the best bottle of red between $50 and $75, and who the best trainers for racehorses are.  My station, bizarrely, was a test.  Tough luck if you got the test first before you'd been taught anything.  Not that it really mattered because the test didn't count for anything.

It seemed to me to be a pretty pointless exercise.  Also, watching people do tests is not my idea of fun, so as each new group came into my room I would explain that they could choose between doing the test by themselves or having us all sit around and talk about the answers.  To their credit (I thought) the groups all chose a middle path and had a crack at it themselves before having a discussion afterwards.

The discussions were good. I would let them air their theories about what they thought was the right answer and why, and I made sure that everyone contributed at some stage, before I would tell them what I thought was the right answer (note the important caveat there - I was not given the answers) and why, and then we'd discuss it some more.  I got the impression they all found it kind of useful and somewhat interesting.

I was told to collect the papers but made an executive decision that the students might as well take them home instead, seeing as I pretty much told them all the answers anyway.  As a result I had this almost surreal conversation with one of the surgeons:

Indignant Surgeon

Where are all the test papers?

PTR

The students took them home.

Indignant Surgeon

How will the students know what the right answers are if we don't mark their papers?

PTR

I suppose they could always look things up.

Indignant Surgeon

But they'll pass the information on to the other students in other groups who haven't sat the test yet!

PTR

The test doesn't count for anything, right?

Indignant Surgeon

We'll have to change the test.

To recap, he was upset that students might go away and learn something, and even worse, might help other less motivated students to learn something too!  Silly me - I forgot that medical education has nothing to do with educating people.  It's actually all about making sure that people feel bad about how ignorant they are.

I was discussing this with my Smaller Half and she pointed out the additional absurdity that there is no way in hell that a surgeon is going to sit there and mark 50 exam papers that don't even count for anything.  I suggested that it would probably have been passed down to the Fellow, who would dump it on the Registrar, who would delegate it to the RMO, who would handball it to the Intern, who would sling it to me.

So not only was I able to actually teach people something, I also thwarted a stupid plan and saved myself some dull work in the process.  Win-win-win.

Education revolution

Here are the facts:

• Girls get better educational outcomes in single sex schools.
• Boys get better educational outcomes in mixed schools.
• Girls who go to single sex schools seem reasonably normal.
• Boys who go to single sex schools are thuggish ruffians of the first water.

So sadly it seems that we either have single sex schools and the boys lose out or co-ed schools and the girls lose out.  Unless ... unless ... someone, somehow, can come up with an ingenious scheme whereby we can have the best of both worlds.  But who could possibly be so clever?  Who amongst us, what paragon of untrammelled creativity, could draw together these disparate threads and weave a tapestry to hang high above us all and show the way to salvation?  Who?

Ahem!

My simple proposal is that all classrooms should be fitted with one-way mirrors down their length.  Boys and girls would be separated by the glass such that the boys could see the girls but not vice versa. 

Voila!