So as my vacation began to wind down I asked myself how all the overpriced coffee shops, dive bars posing as pubs and tiny bookstores with the selection you would expect from any the shelf of an eighth grader with a C average stay in business during the other 11 months and two weeks when I never deviate from the from the well-worn path between the apartment and the hospital.  The answer of course is hipsters.

So what is a hipster? A hipster is a self-righteous individual well into adulthood who rationalizes living off an income they do not generate while contributing nothing to society.  The individuals are plagued by an almost crippling insecurity and the need to validate their existence by constantly talking about their own achievements real, exaggerated or imagined.  Hipsters tend to be very selectively judgmental, priding themselves on their ability to adhere to a personal code of ethics based upon a celebration of their own appetites and a condemnation of others who prefer different vices.  They are also self-absorbed. Facebook.  Twitter. Myspace.  Need I say more?

Is it possible for a student debtor to be a hipster? Am I…a hipster? Read on to find out

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I know I am going to regret this post as soon as it is published.  But I took an extra week of vacation and I wanted to drop a few posts before it was back to the grindstone.  First a confession: sometimes when I don’t want to write a post I just antagonize Alpha Man.  We used to date and I know how to get him riled so a few of those posts where he’s extra crazy…that might be my bad. 

So this is also for Alpha Man.  I am writing about Soul Doctors.  I am writing about Dorothy I. Height the matriarch of the Civil Rights movement.  Simply put, I owe everything to her and the thousands of African-American women of her era who were and are known only to their immediate friends and family.  These women healed the soul of a nation.

So what does that mean for us in debtor’s prison? Read on to find out

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I ran into one of my boyfriend’s buddies at a Medical outing at the Philadelphia Art Museum. He’s an interesting fellow, a collector of Medieval Weaponry. He asked how I was doing and I told him I was doing my residency locally and that I was pretty jaded right now. I expected the usual response, something along the lines of reinforcing the prestige of the medical profession and saying other programs were foolish for not taking me.

That’s not what happened. He simply chuckled and when pressed admitted that Simon had predicted this entire sequence of events…15 months ago. Exaspirated I asked why Simon didn’t tell me.

Read on to find out why.

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Jefferson Hospital.  I will be a resident at Jefferson Hospital starting sometime in…oh who cares.  Jefferson is in Philly and I don’t have to move.  That’s what it comes down to.  I just don’t want to move.  That’s about 20% boyfriend, 30% laziness (I get a two week vacation where everyone else has to go find a new place to live in their new city) and 50% savings.  Since my boyfriend pays the rent those savings are significant and since I have debt, they are also extremely necessary.

Remember your senior year of high school? How just didn’t care about anything? Remember your friends telling you how you passed your senior year in college in a drunken stupor and stating you don’t remember any of it because you somehow evolved past not caring? Med students hit that a little late.  See, when we were in high school and college we were on a mission, a treasure hunt for the fabled M.D.  Now we have it and we’re all thinking…this is it?

I know. I know.  You’re all thinking I’d be singing a different tune if I got a more prestigious residency.  Read on so I can tell you to go

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I don’t read much anymore but recently I read a book called Half the Sky.  Lying safe in bed waiting for my boyfriend to come home I read about girls and women who are ritualistically raped as part of a marriage proposal. I read about clinics where women routinely seek two things: abortions and AIDS treatment. In the doctor’s tool kit are 1) a crude hook and 2) what can only be described as magic charms.  I don’t see patients like that. I spend my days doing what any other pair of scrubs would have done in my place. Am I really helping anyone? And if not is it because I am in debt?

The conclusion I came to is a difficult one.

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It is natural to hate people whom you believe have been given more than they deserve. I will be the first to admit that I take comfort in the fact that my loans at least shield me from the stigma that my achievements must be due to Affirmative Action. I get to join the student loan club, a race neutral organization and it endears me to my own people who associate a large part of their identity with struggle. Lonely indeed are the members of the darker nation who know no indebtedness for they are almost universally despised. And that’s a shame.

Recently I received a number of posted and unposted comments from medical types who are getting their tuition bill footed by the family. One of them, rather than being overly defensive simply wrote that it was done for him so that he could do it for his own kids one day and that there was no sense in paying all of that exorbitant interest. I found that to be an interesting notion.  Are we as Americans an extended family?

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Moonlighting. Fourth year med students have an opportunity to pick up a little extra cash by picking up a shift here or there. I myself chose to work everyday. There is a certain high to seeing your bank account swell with non-loan money. So when a classmate asked if I wanted to go to Haiti and volunteer my services I said no and didn’t think twice.

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We’ve all heard the old joke “MD stands for ‘My Decision’ “ usually told by a young doctor at the end of a long day.  Older doctors know better than to let gems like that slip unless they are only around their own kind.  There is even a lame lawyer equivalent “JD stands for ‘Just Do it’” usually told by a not so young lawyer after a doctor tells the first joke within ear shot.  Then sleeves roll up to reveal watches.  Car keys come out.  Then credit cards.   And the pissing contest begins.

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I have always felt superior to lawyers.  I say lawyers not law students because truth be told every medical student, heck every pre-med student with a decent shot at the prize, thinks of themselves as a doctor.  Recently though, as I’ve seen lawyers working in bars, shuffling medical paperwork and fighting with neighborhood kids for the opportunity to shovel driveways for $20, the feeling dissipated.  It’s like a rivalry where the other team has stank for a long, long time.  One of the reasons lawyers have been sucking it up lately is because it’s easier to open a law school than it is a daycare.  Now people are looking to do the same with medical schools [http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/15/education/15medschools.html]

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I shouldn’t have agreed to head up what is supposed to be a regular column but as the only member in a functional relationship (Mike you don’t count) I sort of got volunteered. Now as I am sure Mike will point out, I don’t even know what my boyfriend does…but there I would disagree. I know what he does. He pays bills and he pays when we go out. What I don’t know is his occupation. I can live with that. Here’s why.

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