OH!

Wax on, wax off

The last two weeks of lessons at the medical school have been interesting.  In the first semester, I taught my classes OPQRST which is one of several memory devices to help doctors remember what they need to ask a patient who presents with a chief complaint with pain and has since been expanded to other complaints and symptoms.   I even included it on the quiz covering that lesson the following week.  However, this is not in the textbook and differed from what other classes were quizzed on so my students complained to the office.  As a result, I was banned from adding information not in the textbook and from having my students perform any tasks not in the textbook.

I also ignored the poorly written and released too late syllabus and used the first day of the course with various activities to prepare them for activities that would come later instead of jumping right in to the textbook on day one as it called for.  The main one acts as my introduction.  Instead of me introducing myself, they have to ask me questions.  The first step is to determine what information is typically given during an introduction and then I elicited how they would ask for it in English, correcting as required.  It being different from what the other classes did, they complained about this too.

Not allowed to do any tasks that are not specifically provided by the textbook, it is amazing how fast we covered the last half of it without any pre and post activity tasks.  This gave me two full class periods prior to the test to fill….with nothing.  As I have been instructed to test them orally but denied the ability to provide oral practice besides the simple, unbalance and factually incorrect dialogues in the textbook, I decided to use these two empty class periods to practice for the oral exam.  Last week, task one was to determine what information is necessary for a doctor to get out of the patient to diagnose 5 of the conditions covered in the book and then to figure out what questions to ask to get it, just like my introductory activity on the first day.  Several students’ eyes went cartoon character wide as their heads and shoulders flew back in their chairs immediately after I said, “Just like my introductory activity on the first day.”.   The same was again observed when I told them that OPQRST would be helpful as they considered what needed to be asked.

Today I asked if any had seen the movie “Karate Kid”.  While two had, they did not recall “wax on/ wax off”.  So I showed it to them.  Wide eyed stared back and forth with their classmates.  Do they now understand?  Or, have I just given them another thing to complain about?  I have no idea, hard to read facial expressions through masks.

One student asked about the vocabulary portion of the test.  I replied that I had not written it yet as I do not know if the school is going to change things again, so I am waiting until the last moment to write it.  However I write it, it will be in one of common forms for a vocab test.  Another asked if there were any changes in what I told them the week before about the test.  I replied, “Not that I am aware of.”.  “Will there be?”, another asked.  “I have no idea but if there is, there’ll be another big fight.  Oh well.”, at which point they exchanged what appeared to be knowing glances with one another.

Both classes are obsessed over everything being the same among all the classes.  One student said that she asked those in classes of other teachers and found that they have different oral questions to prepare for.  “Of course they do.  Where did your questions come from?  In class last week you came up with them and I wrote them on the board.  How could any two classes have the exact same questions.” Lots of movement and whispering at that point, they did not seem to like it.  I added that as I have been a simulated patient and tested 4th year med students on their medical interviewing skills in English, I have them start the medical interview by introducing themselves and verifying the patient’s name and DOB as omitting these are hard fails later when they test on this.  As I do not know the other teachers experience, I do not know if they are including this in the oral exams for their students.  More murmuring and glances shot across the room.

Have they realized, too late, that their complaints were unfounded or have I just given them more to complain about?   Do I even care any more?  Should I?

On the subject of the now required pension payments I recently posted on.  As I figure it, I owe ¥2,445,120 to get caught up.  You can run the exchange rate but that does not take in to account that I am paid and yen and the fact that the yen is currently weak does in now way lesson the burden of paying.  To me, it remains $24,000.  More if inflation is considered.  That is I think 80% of my before tax income last year.  Close to that at least. This is in addition to the, as I undersand, $600 a month for the health care scheme I am to pay and the either $360,000 or merely $60,000 (IF found to be an unwilling noncomplier, much much more if found to be a willing noncomplier) FBAR fines for not spying on my wife’s finances for the US Treasury Dept.. Yippee!