The beginning of the first year of medical school is not just about finding your place in a new social group or figuring how much studying is necessary. It is politics. Now that we have completed elections for the MD class, which was a decent enough balance between a popularity contest (do I even know and like this person?) and competency (do I trust them to do their job and promote our agenda), the MSTP class is in government mode.
Something that characterizes this program is that students are given some rules and then left on their own to figure things out. While this allows for a great deal of independence, it also requires a great deal of the same. To help figure things out, four of the people in our year (including myself) felt the need to call for a lunch meeting to facilitate discussion.
As a group, we worked out several concerns and changes together. These included things such as having more opportunity to talk with upper PhD and MD year MSTP students, better interview/recruitment day events, more inter-MSTP casual outings, and some kind of list for knowing the graduate/research related list-serves available here. I thought that it was overall pretty productive. And importantly, it helped to gauge the level of interest the other people in our class had in participating and/or organizing these changes.
However, as time drew to a close, the motion was put forth to elect a class chair. I don't know how much everyone else cared, but I know that this made me and another one of the core organizers nervous. Some of my issues were that the title of chair implies a degree of autonomous power that may or may not represent the class consensus, and this is NOT an established position, so there are no set power limits. In addition, I was worried that the person who is the best person for this position is someone who is swayed by the fourth member, who is quite headstrong with personal opinions.
The initial fight has blown over, but it has uncovered clear points of conflict among the group (to me, at least). It is useful to be aware of these issues as I navigate forward in taking charge of student recruitment during interviews and revisit this year.
Something that characterizes this program is that students are given some rules and then left on their own to figure things out. While this allows for a great deal of independence, it also requires a great deal of the same. To help figure things out, four of the people in our year (including myself) felt the need to call for a lunch meeting to facilitate discussion.
As a group, we worked out several concerns and changes together. These included things such as having more opportunity to talk with upper PhD and MD year MSTP students, better interview/recruitment day events, more inter-MSTP casual outings, and some kind of list for knowing the graduate/research related list-serves available here. I thought that it was overall pretty productive. And importantly, it helped to gauge the level of interest the other people in our class had in participating and/or organizing these changes.
However, as time drew to a close, the motion was put forth to elect a class chair. I don't know how much everyone else cared, but I know that this made me and another one of the core organizers nervous. Some of my issues were that the title of chair implies a degree of autonomous power that may or may not represent the class consensus, and this is NOT an established position, so there are no set power limits. In addition, I was worried that the person who is the best person for this position is someone who is swayed by the fourth member, who is quite headstrong with personal opinions.
The initial fight has blown over, but it has uncovered clear points of conflict among the group (to me, at least). It is useful to be aware of these issues as I navigate forward in taking charge of student recruitment during interviews and revisit this year.
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