So I called the Telefund call center closest to me, in Santa Barbara. And explained the problem. And got a patient response. And the person offered to take me off the list and fix the problem without arguing.
I no longer think Telefund, the progressive call center company, can kiss my ass.
I'm just happy that they did.
Thank you, Telefund. My check is in the mail.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Telefund can kiss my ass
Who calls at 5 am? And at 10 pm? And every two hours in between? Telefund.
Who, when I pick up the phone and tell them the problem and ask to be taken off the list, gets testy with me and gives me lip and demand that I stay on the line while asking for a $75 annual renewal for the DNC? Telefund.
Who do I hope will be written up my his supervisor when his call is "monitored for quality purposes?" The not-so-nice-man at Telefund.
And who makes me ashamed to be a member of the DNC who may perhaps NOT renew her membership, due to the DNC's poor taste in call company contractors? Telefund.
Telefund, kiss my ass. That's the only way you'll see a dime.
Who, when I pick up the phone and tell them the problem and ask to be taken off the list, gets testy with me and gives me lip and demand that I stay on the line while asking for a $75 annual renewal for the DNC? Telefund.
Who do I hope will be written up my his supervisor when his call is "monitored for quality purposes?" The not-so-nice-man at Telefund.
And who makes me ashamed to be a member of the DNC who may perhaps NOT renew her membership, due to the DNC's poor taste in call company contractors? Telefund.
Telefund, kiss my ass. That's the only way you'll see a dime.
Monday, February 8, 2010
Finally Figured it Out
Lately, my parents (who are dear, sweet people) have been less sympathetic about my overwhelming stress and less encouraging about my work than they used to be. I have finally figured out why.
They are sick of hearing me whine. It's been twenty-five years, and they're getting tired of it. They're happy to help with editing/money/food, but I think they may have reached the end of their respective venting tolerances. Their reactions now tend to be more along the lines of "so get off the phone and go do your work," than "oh, poor thing."
Wait -- what? You expect me to grow up and take responsibility for my life? I should acknowledge that I knew what I was getting myself into? Those that dance will pay the piper? Bed to lie in, etc? You want me to deal with stress without being cranky to those around me and acting like I'm at the center of the universe? You (gasp) want your own lives?
Oh. That's actually kind of reasonable. Darn.
I guess that's what cats are for.
They are sick of hearing me whine. It's been twenty-five years, and they're getting tired of it. They're happy to help with editing/money/food, but I think they may have reached the end of their respective venting tolerances. Their reactions now tend to be more along the lines of "so get off the phone and go do your work," than "oh, poor thing."
Wait -- what? You expect me to grow up and take responsibility for my life? I should acknowledge that I knew what I was getting myself into? Those that dance will pay the piper? Bed to lie in, etc? You want me to deal with stress without being cranky to those around me and acting like I'm at the center of the universe? You (gasp) want your own lives?
Oh. That's actually kind of reasonable. Darn.
I guess that's what cats are for.
Full Plate, but Dessert Before Dinner
So here I am with post-symposium guilt, feeling like I've eaten dessert before dinner. For a week, it was mainly symposium stuff, which was super fun because it was single-minded. And now I have to get back to all the other stuff. I just got off the phone with mom, who obviously had no idea what all this 'other stuff' was. In case you are similarly in the dark, let me show you:
2/1: Get last thesis comments, prepare for admissions, Admissions committee mtg 6-9 pm
2/2: Preceptorship 9-12 noon, Study for CS exam tomorrow, Pelvic Exam 5:30-7:30
2/3: Practice presentation for prof, 12 -1 pm, Clinical Skills Exam, 2-5 pm, Practice for prof, 5-6
2/4: Make changes and practice, Give practice presentation 12 noon, make final changes until 2 am
2/5: Symposium, 8-6 pm
2/6: Sleep till 1:30 (after going to bed at 10 pm) from exhaustion. Go to dinner and a party.
2/7: Paper on the Krebs cycle due; struggle to understand carbohydrate, fat, and fed/fasting metabolism all day long. Fail. Eat more cooked food (not cereal). Work on thesis revisions.
2/8: Class 8:30-12 noon. Sleep from 12 to 3:30 pm. Work on thesis revisions.
2/9: Preceptorship 8:30-1 pm
When you combine medical school, clinical skills, a thesis symposium, admissions, and an actual thesis...you have chaos in a jar.
Our professors like to tell us, "It's great practice for the real world!" Okay, first, this is the real world. It's not like the world gets more real as you progress from your twenties to your fifties. It gets harder, but hopefully you've spend the interim decades, you know, learning. Try telling a preschooler that writing cursive is easy, why don't they just do it already? And playground fights are very real when you are four.
I don't NEED practice for the REAL world. Okay? I'll deal with my career when I'm ready to be a physician. I don't need to PRACTICE being CRAZY. There's PLENTY of time for that LATER. And the world that we're living in is VERY real. Believe me, this kind of intricate chaos doesn't happen in dream states.
I mean honestly, has any physician ever said, "You know, my life is so crazy. I wish I had PRACTICED this earlier?" No, they wish they had spent more medical school weekends sleeping.
2/1: Get last thesis comments, prepare for admissions, Admissions committee mtg 6-9 pm
2/2: Preceptorship 9-12 noon, Study for CS exam tomorrow, Pelvic Exam 5:30-7:30
2/3: Practice presentation for prof, 12 -1 pm, Clinical Skills Exam, 2-5 pm, Practice for prof, 5-6
2/4: Make changes and practice, Give practice presentation 12 noon, make final changes until 2 am
2/5: Symposium, 8-6 pm
2/6: Sleep till 1:30 (after going to bed at 10 pm) from exhaustion. Go to dinner and a party.
2/7: Paper on the Krebs cycle due; struggle to understand carbohydrate, fat, and fed/fasting metabolism all day long. Fail. Eat more cooked food (not cereal). Work on thesis revisions.
2/8: Class 8:30-12 noon. Sleep from 12 to 3:30 pm. Work on thesis revisions.
2/9: Preceptorship 8:30-1 pm
When you combine medical school, clinical skills, a thesis symposium, admissions, and an actual thesis...you have chaos in a jar.
Our professors like to tell us, "It's great practice for the real world!" Okay, first, this is the real world. It's not like the world gets more real as you progress from your twenties to your fifties. It gets harder, but hopefully you've spend the interim decades, you know, learning. Try telling a preschooler that writing cursive is easy, why don't they just do it already? And playground fights are very real when you are four.
I don't NEED practice for the REAL world. Okay? I'll deal with my career when I'm ready to be a physician. I don't need to PRACTICE being CRAZY. There's PLENTY of time for that LATER. And the world that we're living in is VERY real. Believe me, this kind of intricate chaos doesn't happen in dream states.
I mean honestly, has any physician ever said, "You know, my life is so crazy. I wish I had PRACTICED this earlier?" No, they wish they had spent more medical school weekends sleeping.
Saturday, February 6, 2010
Research Rocks the House at Symposium 2010
The symposium was fabulous! I don't know whether the audience actually enjoyed it, but I sincerely hope they did. I am SO PROUD of my classmates for doing their research, putting their talks together, and making 10 hours fly by. I arrived for the first panel and stayed till the last (which was when I was going). I thought I'd be really nervous, but seeing so many friendly faces in the audience helped tremendously. I wish I could bottle that euphoric feeling from right afterwards and drink it when I'm feeling down, cause wow. It felt GOOD.
It was so exciting and uplifting and fun. It was totally a dream come true! So much so that I can't write about it in the first person without bawling. So, this is what I wish had been written about it in the San Francisco Chronicle:
February 5th, 2010, Berkeley, CA.
The medical community sat up and took notice as the 15 stars of the Joint Medical Program (JMP) class of 2010 presented their research talks during the all-day symposium at UC Berkeley yesterday. Dr. Coco Auerswald, the head of the Master's program at the JMP, hosted the symposium, which was coordinated by the masterful Jessea Greenman of the JMP staff. Topics ranging from violence to God to STD transmission gave audience members a reason to stay for the 10 hours of sequential talks, as did the fabulous breakfast, lunch, and wine-and-cheese reception organized by the JMP's Mary Rita Algazzali.
The morning began with a 'violence' panel, in which three members of the class presented work about released prisoners' health outcomes, a violence-recidivism intervention for inner city youth, and how residential segregation relates to violent injury. These young investigators took the slight computer glitches in stride, which were in any case soon dealt with by Nina Green, the JMP technology whiz.
Following this, an entire panel was devoted to the single payer debate concerning national healthcare, which drew the audience into a compelling argument about moral intuition and how people come to decisions about policy.
A coffee break gave everyone enough energy to delve into the complex issues the third panelists tackled with their projects, including the use of race in pharmacogenetics, the relationhips between social integration and mortality, immunization coverage in the Native American population, and how Vietnamese-American youth prefer to access healthcare.
After lunch, which was filling, tidy (for those in suits), and delicious, we heard about sex and God at the same time, with a rousing discussion of cervical cancer prevention, concurrent sexual partnerships in Mozambique and their effects of HIV transmission, and how religiosity influences prenatal depression in Appalachia (pronounce it right or she'll throw an 'apple atcha').
More coffee, and then the last round of talks for the day: arsenic poisoning prevention in Bangladesh, participant observation from a residential student program in a retirement community, a sociological analysis of the free clinic movement and Big Pharma, and the finale -- how community ambassadors can force the public sector to do its job while providing immigrant seniors with health services.
The Joint Medical Program should be proud of its graduating class. The future looks bright for our country as these young professionals begin to make their mark in the world. We wish them all the best as they move on to their clinical medicine years (or nurse midwifery, in one case), and will follow their careers with interest.
It was so exciting and uplifting and fun. It was totally a dream come true! So much so that I can't write about it in the first person without bawling. So, this is what I wish had been written about it in the San Francisco Chronicle:
February 5th, 2010, Berkeley, CA.
The medical community sat up and took notice as the 15 stars of the Joint Medical Program (JMP) class of 2010 presented their research talks during the all-day symposium at UC Berkeley yesterday. Dr. Coco Auerswald, the head of the Master's program at the JMP, hosted the symposium, which was coordinated by the masterful Jessea Greenman of the JMP staff. Topics ranging from violence to God to STD transmission gave audience members a reason to stay for the 10 hours of sequential talks, as did the fabulous breakfast, lunch, and wine-and-cheese reception organized by the JMP's Mary Rita Algazzali.
The morning began with a 'violence' panel, in which three members of the class presented work about released prisoners' health outcomes, a violence-recidivism intervention for inner city youth, and how residential segregation relates to violent injury. These young investigators took the slight computer glitches in stride, which were in any case soon dealt with by Nina Green, the JMP technology whiz.
Following this, an entire panel was devoted to the single payer debate concerning national healthcare, which drew the audience into a compelling argument about moral intuition and how people come to decisions about policy.
A coffee break gave everyone enough energy to delve into the complex issues the third panelists tackled with their projects, including the use of race in pharmacogenetics, the relationhips between social integration and mortality, immunization coverage in the Native American population, and how Vietnamese-American youth prefer to access healthcare.
After lunch, which was filling, tidy (for those in suits), and delicious, we heard about sex and God at the same time, with a rousing discussion of cervical cancer prevention, concurrent sexual partnerships in Mozambique and their effects of HIV transmission, and how religiosity influences prenatal depression in Appalachia (pronounce it right or she'll throw an 'apple atcha').
More coffee, and then the last round of talks for the day: arsenic poisoning prevention in Bangladesh, participant observation from a residential student program in a retirement community, a sociological analysis of the free clinic movement and Big Pharma, and the finale -- how community ambassadors can force the public sector to do its job while providing immigrant seniors with health services.
The Joint Medical Program should be proud of its graduating class. The future looks bright for our country as these young professionals begin to make their mark in the world. We wish them all the best as they move on to their clinical medicine years (or nurse midwifery, in one case), and will follow their careers with interest.
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Eating Humble Pie
I forgot something. Because I'm in this longitudinal track for our clinical core rotations, I don't have to do the lottery to see where I'll be for which rotation. The lottery which is, of course, due this Friday. My classmates have to do it. I do not have to do it. I lose at misery poker :) And this is why I have been eating humble pie this morning.
No more venting. More sleep, more work, more learning, more showers.
I'm a lucky, fortunate, and grateful person!
Oh, and the cat likes honey nut cheerio-flavored milk -- ???
No more venting. More sleep, more work, more learning, more showers.
I'm a lucky, fortunate, and grateful person!
Oh, and the cat likes honey nut cheerio-flavored milk -- ???
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
A Day in the Life, or 'I Am De Niyavich'
Disclosure: this is a venting post. Don't read if you're not in the mood!
Two good but intense things happened today. I saw two patients, one in the morning and one in the evening. The morning was a 'real' patient who may or may not ever walk again due to infection. And this was particularly awful because the patient didn't understand how serious the illness really was, what the implications were for paraplegia, etc. And I wasn't supposed to say anything. Sigh. The second was a medical model educator, who taught me (and three of my classmates) how to do the OB/GYN exam along with our professor. It was a really, really good way to learn it. Our model/educator is incredibly good at knowing whether you're doing it right, and how to fix it, and how to relax while clumsy medical students examine your nether regions. But it is pretty intense to be doing an OB/GYN exam, or watching one, for three hours straight.
Those two things were quite medically amazing, and I learned a lot and I'm glad for them (patient suffering notwithstanding). However, they were emotionally demanding, and on top of them, all the small things in the day kept tripping me up -- starting this morning, when I literally tripped on my way to preceptorship and almost fell down the stairs. Other stupid things kept happening. My hairspray had no nozzle and I broke one of my favorite headbands. I thought our OB exam started half an hour later than it actually did and was late to a pelvic exam, which is very bad form and incredibly humiliating because it's so disrespectful (thankfully no scolding or parking ticket as vengeance for my error). Luckily, I think I did all right during the exam itself. I didn't eat a square meal till 9 pm, for various reasons. I haven't paid my bills or taken care of my cat today. There are dishes in the sink driving me nuts. The recycling bins are overflowing and need to be taken out. Plus a million important emails are sitting in my inbox, undealt-with. I need about twenty hours of sleep tonight.
And tomorrow is going to be so hectic. In the morning, I have to practice my complete research talk for the head of our thesis department (which is not done yet), and then I have a clinical skills exam where I get to do the entire physical exam in an hour from memory. Yikes. Add to this a still-undone thesis (!), a patient write-up, a paper due for class on Monday, and the actual research presentation this Friday, and you have just a little stress.
Oh, yeah, and the boards. I should probably start thinking about those. Too bad school is getting in the way of the boards, huh?
I keep telling myself to breathe. Air is necessary. Air is necessary.
But as they say,
"When you're cold, don't expect sympathy from someone who's warm."
- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
So, my friends, rest assured: this pity party is officially over.
Okay? Okay:
One.
Two.
Three...
GO!
Two good but intense things happened today. I saw two patients, one in the morning and one in the evening. The morning was a 'real' patient who may or may not ever walk again due to infection. And this was particularly awful because the patient didn't understand how serious the illness really was, what the implications were for paraplegia, etc. And I wasn't supposed to say anything. Sigh. The second was a medical model educator, who taught me (and three of my classmates) how to do the OB/GYN exam along with our professor. It was a really, really good way to learn it. Our model/educator is incredibly good at knowing whether you're doing it right, and how to fix it, and how to relax while clumsy medical students examine your nether regions. But it is pretty intense to be doing an OB/GYN exam, or watching one, for three hours straight.
Those two things were quite medically amazing, and I learned a lot and I'm glad for them (patient suffering notwithstanding). However, they were emotionally demanding, and on top of them, all the small things in the day kept tripping me up -- starting this morning, when I literally tripped on my way to preceptorship and almost fell down the stairs. Other stupid things kept happening. My hairspray had no nozzle and I broke one of my favorite headbands. I thought our OB exam started half an hour later than it actually did and was late to a pelvic exam, which is very bad form and incredibly humiliating because it's so disrespectful (thankfully no scolding or parking ticket as vengeance for my error). Luckily, I think I did all right during the exam itself. I didn't eat a square meal till 9 pm, for various reasons. I haven't paid my bills or taken care of my cat today. There are dishes in the sink driving me nuts. The recycling bins are overflowing and need to be taken out. Plus a million important emails are sitting in my inbox, undealt-with. I need about twenty hours of sleep tonight.
And tomorrow is going to be so hectic. In the morning, I have to practice my complete research talk for the head of our thesis department (which is not done yet), and then I have a clinical skills exam where I get to do the entire physical exam in an hour from memory. Yikes. Add to this a still-undone thesis (!), a patient write-up, a paper due for class on Monday, and the actual research presentation this Friday, and you have just a little stress.
Oh, yeah, and the boards. I should probably start thinking about those. Too bad school is getting in the way of the boards, huh?
I keep telling myself to breathe. Air is necessary. Air is necessary.
But as they say,
"When you're cold, don't expect sympathy from someone who's warm."
- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
So, my friends, rest assured: this pity party is officially over.
Okay? Okay:
One.
Two.
Three...
GO!
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