Medical School is a Gaaon (Village)

The major difference between the Home Country and America is individualism. In America, to paraphrase John Donne, every man is an island. We live on Thoreau's Walden Pond and pride ourselves on our rugged individualism, our ability to thrive without the confines of society, and our Hemingway-like stoicism in keeping our private lives and emotions to ourselves.

In a striking contrast, everyone in the Home Country is all about living communally. Teenagers don't say to their parents in a petulant, whiny voice as some loud, emo music blares in the background, "I am my own person." Instead, said teenager lives with not only his parents, but his grandparents, his uncle and two kids, and his other youngest unmarried aunt, usually named "Baby Khala." This teenager doesn't move out at 18 to go to college at Pakistani U; he commutes to class via a colorful bus. He doesn't move out when his parents find him a demure, silent girl who makes an awesome chapati.

Anyway, the point to this verbose introduction is that when I decided to go to medical school in Ohio, I expected classmates who were a part of this individualistic, "me" culture. I felt my deduction was logical, considering Toledo is in America. I was wrong. Very wrong.

Everything in medical school is a communal event. Everyone is involved in every, single aspect of another person's life. It's as if I live in a flat in Lahore with all of my khalas and mamoos and nani and nana, except that these people are all early twentysomething medical students from random countries. In short, medical school has proven to be a gaaon of sorts (in Urdu this means a village complete with buffalo chips).

For example, one day, after some internal drama regarding blog politics, I confided in the two people sitting next to me about my troubles - Farrah and Shlee. Farrah quietly commiserated, and Shlee, in his usual sensitive manner, said "Who cares?"
At break time, everyone got in on the action.
"What happened?" asked fellow blogger Ashot.
"You should really do something about this blog thing," advised fellow countryman Tahir.
"What you freakin' out about now, Mariam?" complained Eurotrash Elvis.
"I don't know why a 23-year old would care about this. It's so stupid," said the always tactful Shlee.

Another example of communal gaaon living is eating out with the backrow. After visiting Europe, I realized American restaurants give people way too much food, and hence, the obesity crisis! And so, I get overwhelmed by the amount of food with my plate overflowing with mashed potatoes, deep fried catfish, green beans etc. etc. The task of cleaning one's plate at a restaurant seems insurmountable, comparable to climbing Mt. Everest with all body parts intact or winning the hearts of millions on American Idol. Every time we go out to eat and I haven't finished everything on my plate, someone from the backrow calls me out. They don't say, "Oh wow you didn't eat much, Mariam!" Said individual instead makes a loud show of it, and says, "DO YOU EVER EAT?" The answer to which is obvious - um, yes, how else would I be alive? Even my idiosyncratic eating habits have become a village discussion amongst the medical school family.

The irony that I am left with is this - at medical school, I have learned more about the Home Country than I have about the muscles of the anterior compartment of the leg.

--By Mariam, who is firmly convinced that Ferris Bueller's Day Off is about the restrictive and soul-destroying nature of the American educational system on the youth.

How to be Girly - Lesson 3: Anatomy of a Facebook Profile

A wise sage once said, "A Facebook profile is a window into a person's soul." And so, every girl's Facebook profile should reflect the best, brightest, most artfully and artificially crafted version of herself. This will not only help you snag a fratastic, investment banker guy with strong, well-toned arms, but a bikini shot of you at the beach with your "girls" will help you get like 1,000 friends!
Below is a sample Facebook profile that will help you win friends, guys, and ummm....pretty!

Activities: All activities must be super girly (ex. shopping, going out, girly, fruity drinks)! It's okay to like some masculine things, like college basketball (or for God's sake, at least feign interest in it) so that you can have something to talk about with guys.

Interests: Hopefully, girl-appropriate interests. If you are unsure of what that is, then you need more help than even the backrowballers can give.

Favorite Music: Do not put obscure indie bands as your fave music. Guys will be intimidated by your pop culture knowledge. Acceptable: Paris Hilton's "Starz are blind." Not acceptable: Nada Surf, Marcus Eaton and the Lobby.

Favorite Movies: Never put foreign films, movies about the Holocaust, or any other pretentious Oscar fare as a favorite movie. Are you trying to look smart? Romantic comedies starring Kate Hudson or more old school movies with Meg Ryan (a la Sleepless in Seattle) are perfect.

Favorite TV Shows: Grey's Anatomy and Sex and the City are absolute must-haves on every Facebook profile, regardless of whether you are man, woman, child, old person. These shows totally capture the spirit of modern society. Women can, like, have it all - an awesome, sexy career, be sexually liberated, and have an awesome wardrobe designed by Comma de Garcons. It is not a TV fantasy, dammit!

Favorite Books: Always put The Great Gatsby. It makes you look somewhat deep because it's about, like, the corruption of the American dream, I think. Also, everyone read this in 12th grade English, so boys know that the last time you read one of those old-timey classic books that had meaning was when Mrs. W made you! Always include chick lit books because they are like fantasy life porn for the modern woman - a cute but endearingly awkward heroine lands a hunky, rich investment banker through a comedy of errors. Guys will think that you are non-threatening intellectually this way (yay!).

Favorite Quotes: Always quote Grey's Anatomy, Sex and the City, or Gandhi. Greys always has a deep Meredith quote at the end of the show, and like, this is advice every girl should follow (aka whatever superficially and deceptively deep crap Shonda Rhimes thought up on the fly that week). Shakespeare is acceptable only if it is a cliched, frequently quotable quote, like, "My love is as boundless as the sea."

--By Mariam and Farrah, MS1s who have a profound love of Veronica Mars. Dawn Ostroff, if you're out there, don't cancel!

How to Be Girly - Lesson 2: How to Act in Social Settings

" In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo." - A famous Eliot poem.

J. Alfred Prufrock was very paranoid guy about how high society women perceive him at a tea party:

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do I dare?"
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair--
[They will say: "How his hair is growing thin!"]
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin--
[They will say: "But how his arms and legs are thin!"]

I really feel for this poor, balding guy who has more self-esteem issues than an anorexic, middle school girl. However, true girls should gleam an important message - this is what not to do! Never make a boy, not even a paranoid loser like J. Alfred Prufrock, feel uncomfortable.

Here are some helpful hints:
1. Always look attentive and pepper the conversation with "uh huh, uh huh" ever so often to at least give the illusion that you are a good listener.
2. Never interrupt. What a boy says is so important, why would you even want to with your own stupid, inane, girl babble?
3. Always be supportive. Even when a boy says something completely dumb like, "Poor Donald Rumsfeld got the short end of the stick," or "Will Ferrell is the Peter Sellers of our time" (umm no - that would be Ricky Gervais!), you enthusiastically pipe up in agreement.
4. Never argue! Even though you don't live with your parents anymore, you still need male guidance no matter how "liberated" you feel by Betty Friedan's advice.
5. Always look pretty. Remember, lipstick, eyeliner, hair straighteners, designer denim, blush, bronzer, plunging necklines, chandelier earrings, leather clutches, Jimmy Choo stilettos (or their Steve Madden knock-offs), and oversized, aggressive belts are your friends! Don't let those crazy, bra-burning feminists convince you of how the modern woman's body is imprisoned and controlled by the consumer counterculture. Girls are meant to be high maintenance.

--By Mariam, who is really excited about seeing The Namesake (it's a movie about her people - sort of!).

How to Be Girly: A New Blog Series From Mariam

The Backrowballers and Farrah's pregnant sister Seusie went to Red Lobster on Tuesday afternoon. It was magical and fantabulous (I partook in ShrimpFest!), but I came to an exciting conclusion - I was the "girliest" Backrowballer. I realized that Farrah, Sarah, and Abby were not typical girls; they never talked about cute boys, low-fat recipes, clothes, gossip, cute boys, work out routines, feelings/emotions, and cute boys. Instead, we talked about being foreign, argued over how many shrimp my meal came with, and retold jokes from these strange stand-up comics I had never heard of (who is this Mitch Hedberg feller?). I thought that maybe I, too, could contribute to the group dynamic by teaching a lecture series on how to act more like a typical girl. And so a new blog column was born!


Lesson 1: How to (re)act when a boy 'pokes fun' at you

Pop quiz before we begin!

When a boy "teases" you about being an airhead/Valley girl/general cliched epithet associated with lowered mental IQ, you:
a) sock him in the face. Who you callin' stupid, ho?
b) remain expressionless. The best way to deal with the enemy is game face. Indifference, cold, ruthless skill, and a steely demeanor will allow you to win the battle of the sexes.
c) start wailing loudly because in 9th grade they called you Megatard the dyslexic monkey (true story!).
d) pout and say, "I am not!" and flip your hair aggressively.

Anyone with any girl sense knows that d) is the obvious choice.

Congrats, you have made your foray into Girl World! One of the most essential things is that when guys make fun of you, never EVER make a witty, funny remark back (Farrah, I'm looking at you, kid). Back and forth banter works well in romantic comedies starring Meg Ryan, but in real life, real girls pretend like they have no operating knowledge of sarcasm except when laughing at the boy's jokes. Everyone knows girls can't be funny - duh!

Also, even though a boy is teasing you, never get offended. A girl is supposed to be fragile and delicate like The Glass Menagerie but apparently have feelings that are unbreakable like Bruce Willis in the most awesome M. Night Shyamalan movie ever. When you reach your breaking point at being called an airhead/diva one too many times and you want to just smack said obnoxious boy upside the head, don't, if you know what's good for you. Girls are supposed to be soft and smell good, like flowers. If you go off the deep end, then you'll be forever known amongst the opposite sex as a deranged/evil psycho in the vain of Demi Moore in Disclosure or Sarah Michelle Gellar in Cruel Intentions. And really, would we even wish that reputation upon our own worst enemy?

--By Mariam, who has given up on October Road because apparently, even ABC has.

A Scientific Investigation of our readers

Abstract: When Mariam put the site meter on the blog, we got a magical window into the lives of our readers. Not only could we see where they were reading from, we could see the referring link that brought them to our page. Not too many people comment on the blog, so this is where we really see who's reading our thoughts. Mariam and I have a stalker like obsession with our readers. We get hopelessly excited if somebody from England stayed on the blog for 5 minutes. After a few months of checking the site meter, I noticed some trends in who visits the blog. I've organized the data into a pie chart. Why, you may ask? Back off man, I'm a scientist.

Based on the data, one thing was overwhelmingly clear. Mariam and I are responsible for about half of all hits we get on any given day. Sometimes Sarah and Abby look at the blog too, but not nearly as much. To ever get an accurate count, Mariam and I would have to abstain from visiting the blog ourselves. This will never happen.

We can confirm that are there are some readers from our medical school. These people can be separated into two groups. The smaller of the two groups are people who like what we write. They might stop us in the hall and tell us the last blog was "super funny." We blush, and automatically raise our opinion of that person. These are some of our very favorite people. The larger of the two medical school groups consists of people who need to know if we are writing about them. They will never acknowledge that they know about the blog to our face because frankly, they just don't know us that well. (don't be afraid, we don't bite) Some of them might leave an annonymous comment about how somebody else was funny before us. (we know that we're not the first med school blog) The fact that my opinion of these people matters at all only serves to feed my very hungry ego. The only other reader we can confirm from medical school is Ashot. He comments so much that he gets his own division in the pie chart. He should be very pleased about this because everybody likes pie.

Mariam and I have a few loyal friends from North Carolina and Colorado. They visit the blog even though they might not understand all the stories about people in medical school. They even comment once in a while. For this we are grateful, have some pie (chart).

The rest of our readers are strangers. I believe that many of these strangers arrive on our blog by some miraculous Google accident. Here is a sample of the Google searches that have led to the blog (these are real):

1) She splattered the bug
2) taranchula chilean rose hair
3) I killed a bug and my house smelled
4) left side on human back
5) my name in the back row wall
6) karachi pimps number
7) Pakistani hot aunties

Searches 6 and 7 lead me to believe that some of our readers are horny adolescent boys in Pakistan looking for porn. They will not find it here. Neither will you. Sorry.

For complete data, please refer to the site meter on the right side of the page.

--By Farrah, who made a pie chart, restrung her guitar, played spider solitaire, did laundry, called her sister, and cleaned her room, but couldn't bear to open her behavioral science notes

HALO Night: Revisited

"Separate but Equal" night was last Friday after disaster relief training. Dear Blog Reader, you may ask - what does "separate but equal" mean? One may remember it from tenth grade American history class as a phrase applied by the Supreme Court in the Plessy vs. Ferguson case as a semantic justification for segregation. But "separate but equal" night was something different for the backrowballers; since the girls wanted to play Trivial Pursuit Pop Culture, and the boys were obsessed with having Halo Night: Part Deux (see Ashot's post), we reached a compromise. There would be segregation of girls and boys doing their separate activities in one location, and there would be no intermingling between the sexes. This would be a simulation of almost all guy/girl encounters I have witnessed as a Muslim - girls one one side, guys on the other.

Although I kept calling the night "Separate but Equal," I was pretty sure that everyone realized that it was a joke because the majority of the people attending were not Muslim. For them, guy/girl segregation was as weird as say, roasting and eating their pet dog.

I should have seen it coming, though. The warning signs were all there, but as they say, hindsight is 20/20. It was B.Bo's responsibility to bring all the controllers and extra TV so they guys could play on teams (I know, I know, how did I agree to such a dorkfest?). B.Bo was late, and the guys, mainly Ashot and Tahir, got really agitated. Tahir yelled, "Okay guys, if he's not here in ten minutes, we're playing Halo at my house." Ashot looked like he had failed out of medical school and his favorite dog Sparky had died. He moped in the corner and became more emo than Death Cab for Cutie. Farrah, realizing the imminence an emo explosion amongst the boys, tried to damage control by enticing people to play Mario Cart on her Game Cube. However, no one gave a flying shit about "girl" games besides Farrah and Emily.

Miraculously, by the grace of Allah, B.Bo arrived with a flat screen TV and 7 controllers for the XBox. What followed was a crazy mess of wires, shuffling of electronics, and a complicated circuitry of two televisions that only 8 video game obsessed dorks could have set up. The girls (plus Habib and Jack) set up Trivial Pursuit on one side of the room, and the festivities officially began. On the board game side of the room, there were three teams: Farrah and I vs. Abby/Sarah vs. Jemily/Habib. There was nothing noteworthy going on on our side of the room besides Sarah showing off an extensive knowledge of arcane facts.

On the boys' side of the room, there were two teams - B.Bo (and his two minions, Matt and Mike) vs. Tahir, Ashot, and Elvis. B.Bo's team was really quiet because they were that good. The other team, not so much, as the resounding sounds of their four letter expletives (mainly from Elvis) reverberated throughout the room. What was noteworthy, however, was the fact that the Trivial Pursuit folk did not interact with the Halo gamers at all except when they deemed it was time for a break from the addictive, magical land of Halo.

At one point, during a break session, Tahir and Ashot congregated in the corner and whispered aggressively to each other. The nosy side of my personality perked up as I was sure they were gossiping about something important. Tragically, I then realized that they were just talking about game strategy. Lame!

The weirdest incident occurred near the end of the night when Abby needed Tahir to move his car so she could leave. Tahir would not put down the controller for fear of B.Bo's team killing him. Abby waited in the car for 10 minutes before everyone agreed to press pause so that a minor errand like this could be completed.

After the evening ended, Farrah and I decided, never again will there be a Halo night: Part 3. It left me wondering about who really my friends were as I had never seen such a dark side of these people before. It was as if these fellow medical students transformed into zombies, who only had eyes for human flesh eating.

--By Mariam, who wonders if the following analogy is equivalent - Boys : Video games, Mariam : Red Lobster/Olive Garden.

Med School Oscars

Best of the Best

Best outbursts in class: Ashot
Best use of a Bubba Keg (you know… those coffee mugs truck drivers use): Erica
Best Pop Drinker: Sarah – 1.5L Diet Dr. Pepper in just one lecture is a little excessive.
Best in-class treats: Brent and wife (Thanks wife!)
Best Blog Spin-off: Julia
Best interruption award: “I was wondering where the clitoris was, but never mind. I just found it”
Best (Freudian) slip: Dr. Morse’s “dick” slip in repro lecture. “Stop laughing”
Best Power Couple: Jemily. One turns the pages, the other takes the notes. Simply amazing.
Best school email address: chong@ourschool.com
Best Mustache: need we name names? See also, Most likely to be a child molester…

Most likely to succeed…

Most apropos name: Doktor… don’t think we’ve forgotten!
Most audible comments recorded on Lecture Audio: Ashot
Most College Humor hours logged: Jonathan
Most exclusive national representation: India (see previous blog)
Most hat days despite “dress code”: Simon
Most likely to aggressively request candy/snacks: Dimitrios
Most likely to feign friendship to get candy/snacks: Roman
Most likely to be married with 2.5 kids by the end of med school: Andrew
Most impressive student group: The mommy club. Seriously… we’re in awe.
Most likely to editorialize about this in the school news paper: Patrick
Most likely to wash hands: Shlee
Most questions asked of fellow students: Shlee
Most patient with question asker: Mariam
Most likely to by annoyed by Mariam: JPL
Most successful midyear seat change: Sapna and Eric
Most likely to have a baby: Verne
Most likely to be hated as a resident: “Anonymous” blog poster… A**hole!
Most unnecessary hand raising: 3-way tie… if you think it might be you, it probably is!

“Special” Awards

Worst use of a ball cap: B Bo. Sorry B Bo
Group most likely to give you that “Awww” feeling: The girls next door
Stealth Gunner Female: Megan-in-the-middle (of the room)
Stealth Gunner Male: Grant (in the back! Gasp!)
Mad Tech Skills: Joe
New Crush Award: Christy and John
Earplugs Award: Sapna and Lisa
EuroTrash Award: Elvis. Who else wears Armani Exchange and gold chains?
Hair Color Chameleon: Sarah
Lung Cancer Award: Smoker Crew – seriously guys… we’re IN med school
Emotastic Award: Farrah
Staring Problem Award: Abby
Still Fashionable Award: Lydia, Christine, J. Crew (see previous blog post)
Couple-so-cute-we’d-throw-up-if-we-could-just-stop-staring Award: Lindsay and Simas
Picture Frame Award: Travis and Casey (The beautiful couple in the frame when you buy it. You take their picture out to put your crappy photo in)
MIA Award: 25% of the class in Neuroscience… 75% of the class in Behavioral!
Best Blog: you’re reading it

Feel free to make your own awards and we’ll post them in the comments.
If you’re not included in this blog, we’re sorry! Just try to be more interesting next year!
Remember, the back row is watching you!

--By Abby, who is normally morally opposed to blogging and otherwise expressing feelings, but is making this exception with the help of Farrah