Disclaimer: With all due respect, I always did want to go to medical school but didn't have the stamina to go to school for 18 years. Blog not intended for audiences under 25 or over 31. Parental guidance is not recommended because they'll scoff in horror. and to all my med school/resident friends...I applaud your plight, your 200K in loans and that fact that you actually want to do some good for humanity...but make sure auntie and uncle aren't doing this kind of flighty career-math at your expense either. Much Love.
Oh...you will not BELIEVE this...well actually, if you're desi, you just might. So I wake up and do my morning gmail-check for real estate, Gtech, friends, etc..and of course...the un-named site that sends me depressing emails each day sends me this message:
"DrAnon,Compatible,working asResident inRadiology(MCPS)CPSPinKHI ,Preparing USMLE,goUSA,2join Residency,08.WeR serious,2 marry himApril,08inKHI,2livewith wife inUSA .Dr.G.Mujtabali ,Atlanta is relative,9Drs in familyReply Soon nSend 2-3Pics nCell#-DAD"
Is this not so so, so so so, sooooooo wrong? Count how many things are wrong with this message. Then count the commas. Then count how many times he's mentioned doctors. Then count how many doctors are in your family and email me ASAP. No please don't. Now, I love Grey's Anatomy as much as the next person, I've spent the last 3 months in the hospital with my family but really...what is wrong with people these days?! Furthermore, it makes it sounds as if there are no other respectable professions out there! I mean, doesn't this family of 9 doctors ever need a real estate agent? A lawn guy? A banker? Who does their nails? But the sad part is, its not their fault. Its our society of value-confused, mediocrity-fearing, priority-mixing desi families who've proven that if they up the quota of medical professional contacts, then their family stock improves consequentially thereby making it ok for this dad to go so far as to email me the wedding date too! Lord, where did I go wrong? Now, the saddest part of this (no not the abominable grammer, although that too is disheartening) is that people like this are everywhere. And who knows if they really have 9 doctors in their family or if they just have people in the medical-related "field?" And since they are desi, they probably counted a family member who has a friend who works at store next door to a hospital scrubs/uniform shop in some outlet center too. And from my experience in the past 5 years, can someone please tell me when did chiropractors, nurse practitioners, lab assistants, hospital social workers, medical equiptment salesman, physical therapists, pharmacists, blue cross blue sheild reps, and Glaxo-Smith-Klein sales personnel all become doctors?
My extremely humble suggestion for the father of DrAnon and others who share their life theory is to A) stop making nurses and pharmacists and Glaxo-Smith-Klein reps feel like they aren't fulfilling their life's destiny B) stop insulting my moral fiber by thinking I will actually glance twice at a message if you try to lure me into sea of (termed used loosely) "doctors"..(who by the way are people too so quit acting like their personalities are devoid of the "I am a jerk" gene) and C) do your son a favor and find him a doctor-wife too so you can call it an even 10.
9 comments:
Pretty funny! I have even better stories... like once, when my parents still tried to hook me up, my dad turned down some girl who was a doctor cause he was like "what would she want with him, he's just a lawyer" and this was in front of me. There's a reason why I had my parents stop picking anything for me after 5th grade!
yikes! that is crazy, parents...now..you realize this all depends on what kind of law you practice. =)
Wow, really, I didn't know it depended on that! Too bad I don't practice law. Dang, my parents might as well only take offers from mole women. Well, here's another story... On my graduation day from law school, my mom jokingly said that I can now go to community college to become an EKG tech so she can tell people that I work in a hospital! That's just wrong. I should sue my parents or something!
Hey what happened to your comment... Anyways, my parents gave up a while ago, I was kidding about the mole women! At this point, it's just go with flow... your search is pretty entertaining though. Recently my bro and I found out that in my dad's village, a guy with a 2nd grade education got a 100,000 rupee dowry so we were thinking "damn, what can we get?!?!" :)
Right on lady! I can't seem to get any of my nephews/nieces to take up the profession either. They all do the same math as you do and ask me what I got to show for all of my years of hard work. I say, if I was going to be a technician then might as well be one for the human machine.
Take heart and look at the bright side behind the hype. After 18 years and 200K in debt, if they don't have a little bragging rights, we will have all the left overs joining the profession. Alas, we may get sick one day; and the prospect of all the deshis ( including myself) taking care of us is frightening. Most of us are struggling to make the cut from being a technician to a healer. To my MD brothers: Healing and bragging are mutually exclusive thoughts. Sorry, but Dalai Lama may even put PRIDE under bragging category. I better shut-up before I get too much over my head.
P.S. Keep up with your fresh thoughts. Though, may not win you a mighty husband.
Preach on. We need more free-thinking independent girls like you around. I've seen too many desi communities (mine included) with tons of un-married girls that refuse to even consider anything less than a doctor. It makes me want to reach out and smack all the parents upside the head for inundating their sons and daughters with this foolishness. Why do they all think that they won't be well off unless they 1. Become doctors or 2. Marry doctors. Sigh..how to fix this disease that has affected our people?
I didn't know husbands were "prizes" I needed to win and inshAllah people who read my thoughts will also realize that I have a lot of respect for doctors, just not the irrational silo from parents that their daughters must marry one or else they'll be deemed as "settling."
This is DrAnon, still waiting4ur cellphone #. Iam gud person,very athletic, play cricket everyday,shahid afridi my favorite.I amVery loving person, love animals2.
btw, funny post. I think the magic number is 3..if you can find a family with 3 or more doctors, please for the love of Allah, go for it..and yea, meri baat suno, no matter what happens, don't "settle" ;)
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