Focus
Student Scene
December 25, 2000/January 1, 2001
Connect!: An 'Anti-gunner' Battle Cry
By Tarayn Grizzard
Gunner: (noun) One who "guns" or, in other words, is trying to blow every test out of the water. This derogatory term is reserved for those who try to excel at the expense of others.
—from the Medical Student Dictionary
I had heard the term gunner used maybe twice in my entire life before I came to medical school. As a first-year, however, I now hear—and use—the term daily. It's what we call classmates who seem to have memorized the entire packet of notes by the second week of a block and who insist on displaying every bit of that knowledge by "teaching" their peers in tutorial. It's the term other medical students use when they hear a fellow classmate brag about his or her first-name relationship with most of the library security staff—and it's only the first month of school.
It's not just that gunners study too much—considering the immense amount of medical knowledge vs. the time available, studying is a necessary part of life for everyone in medical school—it's that they tend to dissociate from their peers' feelings and become nearly robotlike information machines. They are seemingly unconscious of how their information-laden spiels and open discussion of their work habits affect others. How else can one explain the way many gunners, who are often friendly, normal people outside of their academic habitat, unknowingly embarrass and discourage their classmates?
A Self-perpetuating Problem
The biggest problem with gunners, however, is not actually the fault of the perpetrators themselves. Gunners, like all medical students, tend to suffer from the same insecurities as the rest of us and can be conditioned with the proper peer pressure; they will eventually give in to the temptation to slack off and watch "The Simpsons." However, many non-gunner medical students are so intimidated by gunners' knowledge of medical and scientific minutiae and their generally aggressive behavior that they begin to doubt their own abilities and study habits and begin to imitate the gunners. Thus begins a cycle of gunners breeding more gunners, and eventually socially inappropriate workaholism insinuates itself into the culture of the class.
No one really recognizes this problem until it's too late, until first and second years have come and gone, and the wards, where being a gunner is necessary for survival (not to mention Honors), are the new order of the day. Years 1 and 2, which were supposed to be one's chance to bond with one's peers, become acquainted with the Boston area, not to mention catch some daytime TV, are gone. Valuable time that could have been dissipated with mostly nonschool concerns has vanished and will probably never be available again.
Students who have made this shocking realization in the middle of third year often end up making medical school a five-year proposition; sure, those students say the fifth year is for research pursuits or travel, but they're probably just making up for lost free time before residency, loan repayment, and hard-core reality set in. All joking aside, it's a shame to waste these years on memorizing unnecessary biochemical intermediates, bacterial reproductive mechanisms, or histology slides. There's probably many a third- or fourth-year who's passed Step 1 of the boards who would love nothing more than to reclaim the free time lost to histology during first year.
Nipping the Noxious Bud
It's best, of course, to stop gunners early on, before their habits begin to change a class's culture. But it can be hard to alter the combined effects of heredity, insecurity, and environmental pressures in some medical students who seem almost destined to be gunners. Sometimes, changes have to be made after destructive behavior has already taken root within a class. To facilitate these changes, one must first realize the problem that seems to be the most likely cause of gunner behavior: social isolation. Gunners' study habits and unconscious insensitivity to their classmates' feelings could very likely stem from a lack of connection with their classmates and the medical community in general. Feeling disconnected from life, they turn to information for solace and self-esteem. Their reliance on information only grows as their work habits begin to negatively affect those around them, and this in turn amplifies their insecurities and their workaholism—a vicious cycle.
A possible way to end the cycle would be to have the gunner student connect with his or her classmates and to try to live in "real human moments," to quote Harvard psychiatrist Ed Hallowell, and not in the world of information. It's not that studying is, in and of itself, a bad thing. It's studying to the exclusion of other things in life, particularly human relationships, that's the real problem. According to Dr. Hallowell, a clinical instructor in psychiatry at Cambridge Hospital, whose studies on disconnection at home and work have made him famous, a lack of connection is detrimental to one's emotional and physical health. In a talk titled "Caring for the Harvard Community" given at HMS on Nov. 3, Dr. Hallowell illustrated the importance of connectedness in physical and emotional health with a study of an at-risk population of youths. The study analyzed 14,000 adolescents, looking for factors that predict the children will stay out of trouble (including violence, crime, and other defined areas). The only two factors that were truly predictive were the children's self-report of feeling "a sense of connection at home" and their self-report of feeling "a sense of connection at school." Clearly, Dr. Hallowell says, these data show how important connectedness is to emotional and physical health.
Harvard, Heal Thyself
The question is, how does this apply to the Harvard medical community? How does a class of gunners foster connectedness within itself in hopes of breaking bad habits? Hallowell makes suggestions in some of the 12 areas of connectedness that he discusses in his books Driven to Distraction and Answers to Distraction. He emphasizes that connecting and maintaining contact with friends, nature, pets, spirituality/God, and family are excellent ways to stay connected to one's community and thus improve one's emotional and physical health.
These connections are particularly important for individuals who are really disconnected—people, he says, who need others to seek them out rather than being expected to "come out of hiding." To promote connectedness, Hallowell says that having routines—like a weekly racquetball game—with one's friends are important, as opposed to simply having many superficial relationships, which can often be disconnecting. Visiting special places in nature is another example of an activity that connects the individual to his or her community and environment, a connection that he says is vital for health.
So hey out there. Feeling the pinch of too many hours in the library? Feeling stressed about your classmates' hardcore study habits and exhibitionist tendencies, and feel halfway inclined to retaliate in a similar fashion? Recuperate instead. Take a solitary walk along the Fens on a clear or partly sunny day. Reach out to your friendly neighborhood gunners and ask them how they're really doing; why not ask them to have a coffee? (Decaf, of course.) Go walk your dog, or talk to your Mom, or God for that matter. If you're not on speaking terms with either, then, hey, maybe it's time to connect.
Connection is the only antidote to the natural gunner-intensive atmosphere of medical school. Find what works for you, what connects you to others in your community. Find your anti-gunner, because, as Hallowell says, pain does not have to be the price of excellence, advancement, and doing business as usual—even at Harvard Med.
Tarayn Grizzard is a first-year student at HMS.