I'm currently dumbfounded/partially annoyed by my friend's lack of understanding regarding medicine courses in Australia, or rather, his attitude towards them. I spent 90% of the last lesson of the day trying to convince him with my rudimentary knowledge of medicine in Australia that graduate university entry to medicine isn't some kind of catchment area in which people who 'aren't good enough' for undergraduate medicine fall into, and are not for some reason 'inferior' to undergrads.
As far as I can tell, whilst he *likes* medicine, his passion isn't to 'become a doctor so I can help people', but rather, 'become an undergraduate medicine student at the University of WA (university with the highest pre-req entrance scores in the state, generally) so I can become a doctor and have it as a status symbol -> help people whilst simultaneously proving to my father that I'm not second-best.'
And rooting from his daddy issues is this perception which his father/both parents hold that undergraduate medicine is 'first' with graduate medicine 'second'. My perception is that he's close to the embodiment of the stereotypical undergrad medicine student (or rather, one that prevails in Australian private schools); someone who wants to get in moreso for the sake of saying 'I got into undergraduate medicine and the other ten-thousand people didn't'.
ARGH.
* Dilmah G destresses.
