Primordial Chaos

 Song by The Beatles. None of the songs I could think of fit this very well. So, I just googled songs about doctors and chose that one. For two very specific reasons. First, I happen to know someone who is a bit of a Beatles fan so it's a nod to them, and second my dad's name is Robert so it's a nod to him too. :)

When the hell did I get a life? I just realized I have one while syncing Alexandroid (so fucking clever), Thunderbird my email client, Sunbird my laptop calendar AND my Google calendar. The mere fact I have to sync all my shit tells me I have a life, and a lot shit to keep track of that my memory just can't do. Crazy.

I have one less thing to take care of I was going to explain about before but totally forgot. I resigned from my position as the chair of diversity in medicine for the AMSA pre-med student org. Here's the detailed reason why I did.

Ever since the beginning, our directors have been irresponsible and absent minded. But they were nice, so I just thought they were new to this and needed time. Yeah, no. For national coming out day we were supposed to have been funded to hold a small event with the queer straight alliance (QSA), you know that whole diversity thing. we had our budget in on time and we asked what's up they said they're looking at it...at least a dozen ignored texts/emails later, me and my co-chair wound up funding it our damn selves. They made a BIG DEAL about AMSA supporting diversity and about how we needed to be there. Not one other damn officer, and they all knew where and when, EVER showed up over the two day event. Not even the directors.

I'm kinda peeved at this point, it was a month or more later they even acknowledged they'd just forgotten about the budget and event. You know, these are the same fucking people who were riding my case about how important it is for us to be there, my co-chair is an officer in QSA (intentionally picked for that reason) and he was kinda pissed off, so he tied us up to QSA to save at least some money on this super important event no one gave a shit about. We could have not been there and they wouldn't have known. This kinda pissed me off, but I let it go. One mistake doesn't hurt.

Next up was a person on our committee who made all these promises of showing up to meetings, getting involved, helping out and so on. She wanted to work with the mission statement diversity in medicine (DIM) had, she was super enthusiastic and seemed willing to get going on stuff. So our directors gave her some small, but goddamn important, stuff to do. We stopped hearing from her daily 2 weeks into the semester, we think she's busy with new classes, blah blah. We stopped hearing from her at all, no text, no email, no phone call replies, 6 weeks in or so and she was in my french class, but showed up very rarely and completely ignored me when I tried to talk to her. So DIM was a bit behind in getting this shit done because we thought she was on it, we eventually went on without her. The directors, who so nicely assigned us this flake BITCHED US OUT FOR BEING LATE ON THE SHIT SAID FLAKE WAS SUPPOSED TO DO. DIM as a whole, not just me and my co-chair (who I was so very glad was a reliable person and I definitely couldn't handle all the shit DIM had to do alone at this point), I'm talking officers down to just general members, we all got bitched out. I am pissed off once again and fire off an email that explains in no uncertain terms why blaming us was the wrong thing to do and how I didn't appreciate getting bitched at for something wrong that I didn't do. So here's time two they've horribly fucked up. I'm not really confident on their leadership at all at this point. They also don't respond right away to emails, but expect everyone else to. There's some bitching about that from them too.

I am VERY AWARE that most of the other officers are friends of the directors. This means I will never get a vote of no confidence passed, because I won't be able to get a majority fucking ever. I'm also VERY PISSED OFF. At this point though I'm working on the autism awareness events, so I stay because, you know, that's my cause. That was important to me. DIM won a $200 grant from national HQ for our idea to start an annual awareness day at UNM. This is pretty fucking cool, and I'm busting my ass working on donations, sponsors, fundraising ideas, etc., and I am so excited.

So, I had promised a local elementary school of particular importance to me (:P) a discount on tickets to the healthy halloween carnival another committee was holding. Said discount had been cleared with everyone on both sides. I get a count from the school of how many tickets to buy, so I try to contact the chair of that committee to get this done. No answer. Not calls, texts, voicemails, email...not shit. So I go to the directors to try and get this done. They tell me to ask the chair of the committee holding it. I inform them I have been trying for about a week. They swear they'll take care of it. At this point, I'm just pretty sure I'm about to look bad to these elementary kids and their parents. I had 300 people signed up. I lose sleep over this bullshit.

I wind up having to go to the school, apologize profusely, explain what happened, and they made the announcement over the intercom that the carnival trip was canceled for those who had signed up. See, I'd even gotten the school to agree to acquire us the use of some school buses to bus everyone over there and back, just as a matter of safety and parking. Angry hate mail to my officer mailing address and email ensued, how dare I say I can get the tickets, how could I let all these kids down...I was doubling up on anti depressants for at least 2 weeks. Even people who worked at the school called me and told me off. I felt awful. I still get shitty comments at the grocery store sometimes.

Starting slightly before the halloween bullshit and the ending happening right along with me dealing with hate mail, me and a friend design AMSA a new flashy website since the current one was looking geocities craptastic. He did artwork, I did layout, it was pretty fucking slick and we were proud of it. 4 weeks and still no one ever emails me the login info so I can have access to modify the website. My friend deletes all the artwork he did and said "fuck them". I delete my layouts and think the same thing because I'm now getting hate mail from 8-10 year olds and their parents, we go through the trouble to design this fucking website that we spent hours on, and then all the previous shit. I'm beyond pissed. I'm trying to hold on for my autism event, but it's getting damn hard.

My final breaking point was that recently they decided my team working on this autism thing needs TWO MORE co-chairs. Me and the one I picked don't have that much to do, how the fuck do we need two more people? So there would be a total of 4 co-chairs. This team had 3 non-officer people and me and the other guy. Are you fucking serious. I start feeling like my position means nothing and I've lost any semblance of authority. Fuck, let's just make EVERYONE an officer. I wasn't the only one who got some more helpers we didn't need, I think all committees did and special projects did. We had ~20 officers when I came on board beginning of fall 09. We had 45 when I said fuck this and quit last Thursday.

The new co-chairs pissed me off, but weren't what sent me over the edge. They, being the directors, did officer interviews AND PROMISED AND SWORE the current chairs would get to evaluate and yay or nay the newbies. They, of course, didn't. They'd already promised these people the position, so they "couldn't" revoke it if we disagreed. I got the excuse we didn't have time to check with you guys. Ok, first they had more than enough time to send an email and we send one back with our thoughts. Second, THEY FUCKING PROMISED TO DO SO. More of their friends come on board so said friends can put down they were a pre-med officer on apps and shit to look good. These people couldn't handle being a greeter at Wal-Mart, let alone be in charge.

That was god damn enough for me, thank you. The people I had to rely on as leaders were dipshits and kept fucking me over. I couldn't get shit done/organized/planned because of said dipshits. After the hate mail, I said to myself they have no more strikes, if they pull bullshit again, I'm gone. I can embarrass myself quite well as it is, thank you very much. And if I wanted hate mail, I'd put my address on my car while driving around churches blaring obscene rap music about bitches and hoes and pussy and tits and whatever. So, in a text message they responded quickly to for the first time EVER, I told them off and told them I quit, and I quit because they are dipshit leaders and this is not a student org I want to be affiliated with because with them in charge we were getting a bad rep as an org.

So, I have some more extra free time. :P I'm actually pretty happy about this. I didn't have to stress this bullshit or that they'd even give us the clear to buy shit for the autism thing. I had a feeling that wasn't going to go well. Can't imagine why.

Besides, I'm going from here to my PhD instead of MD. I'd have to read and write and do research working on a PhD. OH NO! What torment! What torture! I'd have to use SPSS (or my preferred open source PSPP)! I have no experience doing any of that so I'm not very good at them either!

Yeah, you all know I'm THAT student who lives in the library and has a good time doing so. I'm the nerdiest motherfucker I know.

But damn do I look good doing it.

~A.