Evil Email

When you go to visit a medical school, especially one with pass/fail pre-clinical years, you inevitably hear a lot about how collaborative the students are. How they all want to help each other and work together because ultimately, medicine is a team discipline.

Reality check: Type A's don't change their spots overnight.

Exhibit 1: An email from A--- to our entire class:

Subject: I'm tired of people wearing jeans to MDC's

Text: [insert classmate's name]. Done.

Exhibit 2: 20 minutes later a second email from A--- to the whole class:

Subject: Re: I'm tired of people wearing jeans to MDC's

Text: And now sleeping during the MDC. Not cool. Way to be respectful.

You might think this kind of behavior is limited to students.

Reality check: Once a gunner, always a gunner.

Exhibit 3: Last night the entire class (!!) was accidently cc'd (do people really not notice when they hit reply all?) on this email from a pathology faculty member to a senior administrator:

Subject: GI handout

Text: Are you serious? A synopsis of Robbins textbook? Are medical students now incapable of reading, even reading stuff that may be wrong?

Exhibit 4: And then we were CC'd on the reply (apparently no one over the age of 30 can tell the difference between reply and reply-all):

Subject: Re: GI handout

Text: As a faculty member we/I cannot control what he does -that is why I sent the e-mail - he does it on his own - not a team player or collegial - he will be retired in August - just a heads up

Despite these outliers, most people are actually very friendly and collaborative. And drama-prone. Does high school ever really end?