Saturday, July 24, 2004
Crossroads Two, the Sequel
Well, bugger it, I'm now officially unemployed. Or, at any rate, will be soon. Better rush those locum applications in quick.
I hate the way they always tell you that you were the next but one candidate, ie if there were two places, well you did so, so well, you interviewed perfectly, and I personally really really wanted to appoint you, but you came third, and...
I'm either really unlucky, or they say that to everyone who doesn't get the job. I mean, come on, four times in a row can't be coincidence can it?
One can't help but notice either that there're always the perfect number of internal candidates to fill the vacancies. hmm.
Today didn't really start out very well. For one, I realised that the job I was interviewing for wasn't the job I'd been sent the specs for. I should have smelled a rat when I discovered Rochdale, while in Manchester, was really in "Greater Manchester".
Manchester's sort of like a mini London (It looks almost identical to it) complete with its miles and miles of suburbs lying haphazardly about the city proper.
Forty minutes by train away from Manchester and I began to wonder... why on earth are they interviewing for a manchester hospital so far out from it?
A chance comment from another candidate made me snatch his job specs (he was the only one of the 19 candidates vying for 2 places who'd thought to ask for the specs) away from him in a frenzy.
Well, suffice to say that all the candidates were, with the exception of myself, from mainland india, desperate for a job, and prepared to work at those rates.
But dang it, so was I. My one and only interview in this six month block (err are You trying to tell me something?), even if it was at a crumbly little hospital with a dismal payscale was still an interview. Job security. 2 years of not applying for new posts (even if another 6 mths A&E. shrug) It's the question of a known evil vs a dark uncertainty.
I didn't put a foot wrong in that interview, and as a seasoned SHO found all their silly questions about audit, clinical governance and basic postop complications insanely easy. And they knew it too.
And I still didn't get the job. Moan. The A&E consultant who'd been assigned the forsaken task of breaking the bad news mano-a-mano had the decency to at least not look me in the eye as he said that I had interviewed perfectly, and that if it was up to him I'd have the job, blahblahblah, but there were only two spaces... and...
(They really should invest in thicker walls. Okay, so I really did come third, after the whittling down process. Funnily enough, their two internal candidates came first, and second...)
So I'm back to square one now. Jobless in a big city.
Where do I go from here?
1) stay and locum, get paid exorbitant registrar rates, and earn a big black hole on my CV. And surely my application for MRCS I should have been acknowledged??? I put a huge cheque in the mail dammit. And it was on time. Where's my letter of confirmation?!?
have nearly infinite time to myself. Learn to play the flute. Fence. Join medicine sans frontiers. God knows.
2) go home to my mum and dad. Become a stranger in a strange land. Learn how to practise hospital medicine in mandarin (eh??) and maybe even hokkien (but pea sized brain will probably overload). Hmm. Probably receive subtle hints from the mother every day about procreating with some vetinary science graduate or summat. Shudder.
Prostitute myself to the national team so they can turn their noses up at me for a while. ? break out that nimbus 2000 and, maybe not play quidditch but mebbe hit someone onna head wi' it.
I wish there was an option :
3) wander the world, at leisure. Backpack. See things. Watch sunsets. Maybe locum in interesting places around the world. Or mebbe just in australia.
But that's what really, really sucks about medicine. We can't. We can't take time out and find ourselves. There's always this phenomenal pressure to work, work, work. Otherwise you get black marked by this hole on your CV. You'll potentially forget things, and be an unsafe doctor when you return to work 6 months later.
Sigh.
*****
Watching the world fly by from the vantage point of my comfortable armchair on a Virgin train (all of 8 hours ofa beautifully sunny and warm day wasted) I realised that England is very, very ugly.
Concrete is left grey and unfinished, and unpainted. The garguntum nuclear reactor that the train glides by, grey and forbidding.
Train lines run starkly and unaesthetically.
Garbage litters the train tracks.
But for all that, it's also very beautiful. In it's haphazard urban ugliness - it is charming, and endlessly interesting. Litter and all. And even beyond that, in its countryside that looks like it's stayed the same for eons. Cows grazing alongside sheep; distant mounds dot the skyline - clearly manmade, but so old now that tall trees stand upon them as if since time immemorial.
Should I decide to go, I will, bizzarly enough, miss it.
The thought makes me feel a little bit breathless. It's scary, all so scary to me. To think about leaving this place that HAS somehow become my home. To build a new home in a country where language and accent may pose a problem. To have to pack all my stuff up (and tidy my flat one last time!) into boxes to fly home. Where will it all go anyhow. I guess it could all easily fit into my room... my flat isn't so big and most of what I have are books. Putting the flat up for sale...
sigh. Scary stuff.
I hate the way they always tell you that you were the next but one candidate, ie if there were two places, well you did so, so well, you interviewed perfectly, and I personally really really wanted to appoint you, but you came third, and...
I'm either really unlucky, or they say that to everyone who doesn't get the job. I mean, come on, four times in a row can't be coincidence can it?
One can't help but notice either that there're always the perfect number of internal candidates to fill the vacancies. hmm.
Today didn't really start out very well. For one, I realised that the job I was interviewing for wasn't the job I'd been sent the specs for. I should have smelled a rat when I discovered Rochdale, while in Manchester, was really in "Greater Manchester".
Manchester's sort of like a mini London (It looks almost identical to it) complete with its miles and miles of suburbs lying haphazardly about the city proper.
Forty minutes by train away from Manchester and I began to wonder... why on earth are they interviewing for a manchester hospital so far out from it?
A chance comment from another candidate made me snatch his job specs (he was the only one of the 19 candidates vying for 2 places who'd thought to ask for the specs) away from him in a frenzy.
Well, suffice to say that all the candidates were, with the exception of myself, from mainland india, desperate for a job, and prepared to work at those rates.
But dang it, so was I. My one and only interview in this six month block (err are You trying to tell me something?), even if it was at a crumbly little hospital with a dismal payscale was still an interview. Job security. 2 years of not applying for new posts (even if another 6 mths A&E. shrug) It's the question of a known evil vs a dark uncertainty.
I didn't put a foot wrong in that interview, and as a seasoned SHO found all their silly questions about audit, clinical governance and basic postop complications insanely easy. And they knew it too.
And I still didn't get the job. Moan. The A&E consultant who'd been assigned the forsaken task of breaking the bad news mano-a-mano had the decency to at least not look me in the eye as he said that I had interviewed perfectly, and that if it was up to him I'd have the job, blahblahblah, but there were only two spaces... and...
(They really should invest in thicker walls. Okay, so I really did come third, after the whittling down process. Funnily enough, their two internal candidates came first, and second...)
So I'm back to square one now. Jobless in a big city.
Where do I go from here?
1) stay and locum, get paid exorbitant registrar rates, and earn a big black hole on my CV. And surely my application for MRCS I should have been acknowledged??? I put a huge cheque in the mail dammit. And it was on time. Where's my letter of confirmation?!?
have nearly infinite time to myself. Learn to play the flute. Fence. Join medicine sans frontiers. God knows.
2) go home to my mum and dad. Become a stranger in a strange land. Learn how to practise hospital medicine in mandarin (eh??) and maybe even hokkien (but pea sized brain will probably overload). Hmm. Probably receive subtle hints from the mother every day about procreating with some vetinary science graduate or summat. Shudder.
Prostitute myself to the national team so they can turn their noses up at me for a while. ? break out that nimbus 2000 and, maybe not play quidditch but mebbe hit someone onna head wi' it.
I wish there was an option :
3) wander the world, at leisure. Backpack. See things. Watch sunsets. Maybe locum in interesting places around the world. Or mebbe just in australia.
But that's what really, really sucks about medicine. We can't. We can't take time out and find ourselves. There's always this phenomenal pressure to work, work, work. Otherwise you get black marked by this hole on your CV. You'll potentially forget things, and be an unsafe doctor when you return to work 6 months later.
Sigh.
*****
Watching the world fly by from the vantage point of my comfortable armchair on a Virgin train (all of 8 hours ofa beautifully sunny and warm day wasted) I realised that England is very, very ugly.
Concrete is left grey and unfinished, and unpainted. The garguntum nuclear reactor that the train glides by, grey and forbidding.
Train lines run starkly and unaesthetically.
Garbage litters the train tracks.
But for all that, it's also very beautiful. In it's haphazard urban ugliness - it is charming, and endlessly interesting. Litter and all. And even beyond that, in its countryside that looks like it's stayed the same for eons. Cows grazing alongside sheep; distant mounds dot the skyline - clearly manmade, but so old now that tall trees stand upon them as if since time immemorial.
Should I decide to go, I will, bizzarly enough, miss it.
The thought makes me feel a little bit breathless. It's scary, all so scary to me. To think about leaving this place that HAS somehow become my home. To build a new home in a country where language and accent may pose a problem. To have to pack all my stuff up (and tidy my flat one last time!) into boxes to fly home. Where will it all go anyhow. I guess it could all easily fit into my room... my flat isn't so big and most of what I have are books. Putting the flat up for sale...
sigh. Scary stuff.
