What's the point?

At the end of October I started my new job. I'm now working 4 days a week in a different department (I was looking for something part-time). It's a long story, but things miraculously worked out just the way I had hoped! Thankfully, I'm still working at the same academic institution, which typically I really enjoy because I get to be involved in giving some lectures and supervising students. However, yesterday was a different story...

Yesterday I spent two hours with some first year medical students. They're in a genetics unit now and had been given some questions to work out on their own. We met to go over the answers but they get the answers the next day anyway. So the real point of us meeting is so that I can not only answer their questions about the problem set, but add some perspective about why this information is useful in a clinical setting. This is really an opportunity for them to learn about the clinical application of these concepts. I mean, these are clinical providers in training, right? One would think they'd be excited to talk and learn from someone who uses these concepts daily in treating and managing patients, right? Unfortunately, it ended up being a complete waste of my time and their time.

The entire time consisted of me pulling teeth to get them to vocalize anything, much less ask me any questions. I left there so aggravated because as much as I tried to throw in clinical relevance on my own, it is not my job to shove it down their throats. I'm there as a FAVOR. My department does not pay me for these activities and I'm really there as an opportunity for THEM. But they were so focused on getting the answers and getting out of there, they totally lost perspective on the point that I was there as a resource for them. It was not only short sighted, but disrespectful to me. So don't think that I didn't shoot off an email to the faculty in charge of organizing the groups as soon as I got back to my office. Thankfully, she was very receptive and agreed that they were totally missing the point. We're doing it again next week with a new problem set, so I guess we'll see how it goes...