Welcome to med school, thanks for the money, here, have a checkmark

Do you know the really irritating old guy that does the last 3 minutes of the 60 Minutes show? He goes on these crazy rants that nobody really cares about, but people listen to him anyway because he is talking and they are really just waiting to watch their show that comes on after 60 Minutes. I decided, for no particular reason, to pick a random aspect of medical school and do a 60 Minutes type rant on my blog. It is only good if you imagine the voice of the grumpy/irritating 60 Minutes guy reading the entry.

Last week I did a really nice job on my histology lab. I spent several hours drawing pictures and looking up every detail I wasn't sure about in my textbook, atlas and Wikipedia. I was sure that the professor was going to be impressed of my work. However, today we got our lab homework back, there was only a little checkmark in the upper right hand corner. A quick discussion after class showed that this is the feedback everyone had received.

A visual illustration of the checkmark at the top of my Histology homework. The penny is a size reference for the checkmark. There wasn't a 'good job' or 'nice work' or 'good coloring' or even a 'try to do better next time,' 'needs improvement' or a 'you don't deserve to be in medical school' comment. Just a checkmark.

I realized that the checkmark had become the new standard grading protocol since anatomy finished - not just in histology. In biochem we have weekly small group sections where we read 3 scientific journal articles and then answer questions about them. In this section we also receive just a single checkmark without any comments. In my AIDS: A multidisciplinary approach class we read a scientific journal article (or two) for every class and write a one page paper answering questions about it. For this class we also receive a simple checkmark with no comments.

Here is a paper from my AIDS class with the checkmark. Again, the penny is used to indicate scale. In this paper I developed some very interesting theories about the possible reasons for the trends of HIV and AIDS prevalence rates in King county. What did the teacher think about them? I have no idea. However, I have decided I like the checkmarks from the AIDS class best because they are bigger. If a checkmark is the only feedback we are going to get, it might as well be a big one.

Just to be fair, although I am (jokingly) complaining about it, I don't blame the professors for the checkmark-only grading style. With over 100 students in the class it would be very hard to give personalized feedback to everyone. Likewise, personalized feedback ("Great Job!" on one paper and, "I guess I will you credit for this substandard work" on another) might encourage competition among the students which is the absolute last thing in the world this medical school class needs.

I will also say that in our ICM (Introduction to Clinical Medicine) course we get thoughtful, thorough and personalized feedback on our write ups about patient interviews. Also, in anatomy, we got a lot of personal attention and feedback during class on our presentations. In addition, during histology lab sessions our professors and TAs are very good at answering our questions and giving us immediate feedback.