When I was in primary school, I had the unfortunate experience of being unbelievably unpopular as a direct result of my parents failing to educate me in one incredibly important matter (which as an indicator of my own short comings I did not figure out for myself for a number of years): specifically, nobody likes, or more accurately, everybody hates a know-it-all.
Unfortunately for me, every now and then I accidentally revert to know-it-all-ism, although usually it is only for a couple of seconds before I realise what I’m doing, blush, and stop myself.
Now I am not the worlds greatest academic. Never have been and never will be. But I compensate by being, well I’d like to say better than average at the practical side of things. I don’t know (or for that matter give even the faintest hint of a flying f**k) who the third son of the nineteenth century surgeon after whom Mikulicz’s syndrome is named was married to, but I do know the initial treatment of a heart attack, I can take an arterial blood gas, and I can give a ring block and suture a basic wound. As such when we got to talking about basic life support stuff the other day in a tutorial I inadvertently reverted to know-it-all-ism simply because all the “brainy” med students who seemed to have crowded out the room didn’t seem to have the first faintest clue about it, and as the tutorial wound on and moved into the realm of trauma management it just got worse, as I came to realise that on that topic not only did the students not have a clue, the tutor was equally ill prepared and was basically telling us absolute shit (he was an anaesthetics reg after all, and trauma management is not in any way a facet of his usual job), and while that may sound a little arrogant coming from a mere med student, I was in the possibly unusual position of not only knowing the material thanks to an interest in the area and with 2 specific courses training me in that very area under my belt, I could also go home to my fiance, who does surgical trauma assessment and management as a job, and confirm that I was indeed right (which I was).
I doubt I made any friends in the process, but the tutor was a prat, and if I managed to lodge the correct information which may help save a human life in my fellow med students’ heads it will have been worth the effort. It’s just a pity that the other member of my group who is likeminded on these matters was away for that tutorial, because together I’m pretty sure we would have had a great time together telling everyone they were wrong.