Medical School - full contact sport?

The foundation of the curriculum at my medical school is small-groups, referred to as Inquiry Sessions, or IQ groups for short. We’re given case vignettes at the beginning of each week, and during small group sessions, we discuss the case, in an effort to understand the problems facing the patient, identify learning objectives for ourselves, conduct research on the latter, and then discuss our research in subsequent sessions; we do this with the guide of a faculty facilitator, but their role is largely to guide us in a Socratic manner should we get off track. It makes for a very pro-active model of learning that is a departure from standard medical school didactics (many medical schools feature small groups, but few have designated them as the centerpiece of a curriculum). It also makes for absolutely priceless moments.

Small group are intended for us to learn to work with our colleagues (many of whom are completely fucking nuts) as much as with the material. Horrid tales of gunner excess have already emerged from small-groups; one nutty chick wrote up a 35 page report for her first IQ presentation (for comparison, the average person conducted about 2 hours of research for that case, and brought a few talking points). Thankfully, my IQ group has been one of the fortunate blessed with a complete lack of malignant personalities and basket cases; to boot we have an IQ facilitator who’s refreshingly down to earth.

But that doesn’t mean there is ever a dull moment. We’ve already had quite a few classic moments in IQ, whether it be yours truly bringing up “Two girls, One cup,” our Egyptian group member showing up 30 minutes later for everything, (his sad eyes always seem to say, “it’s in Allah’s hands ,” weakening any resolve we may have had to discipline him), or a number of other rich moments.

However, one moment towers above all others in our IQ group’s short history. We customarily start our IQ sessions with “check-in,” as a way to promote intra-group communication. People share stories about their weekend, their mood, anything at all really. Last Monday, rumors were buzzing about the class about weekend drama (med school is EXACTLY like high school with less sex, fewer attractive people, but more limited cruelty); one our classmates flipped out while drunk at a party, and started threatening drastic actions (I can't elaborate out of respect for privacy issues). It turned out one of our group members, we’ll call him Bob, was involved in restraining this girl, who we’ll call Jess; and subsequently calling campus security (which given the details he related, was entirely justified). The next morning, Jess sends Bob a message, in effect stating that Bob had ruined her life (by this point, the administration and his parents had found out about the incident). So Bob was worried about a physical altercation when he came to class that Monday, and jokingly related that he was wearing a cup just in case. We laughed heartily at the last detail, but Bob stared blankly at us, and once the laughter died out, somebody said, “Wait, you’re not serious, are you?” To which our intrepid friend replied by leaning back in his chair, thrusting out his crotch, and going tap-tap-tap. You really can’t make this shit up…..