Are you really giving back? Or do you only care about yourself?

Just a few things to say, here, everybody.

Not all of my friends know this, but I volunteer at a local free clinic every other Saturday or so.  It is an extra dose of responsibility that essentially takes away my Friday nights, but it's absolutely worth it to me.  I enjoy doing my job and doing it RIGHT.

And that is what I'm going to start with--doing jobs and doing them CORRECTLY.  Or perhaps being a part of an efficient team, I don't know.  I'm just going to rant like I usually do.  Here we go.



I used to come in at 8 AM, but after a while it legitimately burned me out.  The coordinator kindly moved my shift to 10 AM, and I usually stay for 3 hours.  Once it's around 12:30, there is very little to do and I am usually left with one other person in the entire clinic.  Usually by then, everything that was supposed to be done by then is done and put away.  As you may have guessed, that was not the case today.

Everyone just decided to leave at 11 ... and that's okay if you have to leave at that time, go right ahead.  But if you are in the middle of doing something and you literally just get up and walk away from it, then you are going to piss me off.  The other volunteer who was left with me was super confused when she couldn't find half of the paperwork or charts she needed.  OF course I find a stack of unfinished paperwork.  A STACK.  And the clinic is closed and I'm supposed to be able to leave now.

I had to stay behind an extra hour to finish everything with just one other person to help me, instead of the team of five people who had been here before doing their own job while I was attending to my completely separate one.  I'm not whining about the extra hour.  What upsets me the most is that the laziness.  I feel like as a volunteer, you have already decided to dedicate your time to help out.  Why are you going to duck out like that?  Is it THAT difficult for you to finish your job, or at the very least, make sure it will get done instead of neglecting it?  That is sloppy and inconsiderate, and it just creates more work for the rest of us who actually care about what we do.  What your actions show me is that you don't really care about the clinic, but just about how it looks on paper ... and for some of these people, I wouldn't be surprised--most of them are pre-meds who are too preoccupied with the way their applications look anyway.  And before EVERYONE starts jumping down my throat, I AM NOT PERSONALLY ATTACKING ANYONE.  I am just pointing out what I noticed and how irritating it is that people don't do their jobs.  I always stay past when most people (including the Clinic Coordinator) leave ... but I have never had to deal with as much of a mess as I did today.

Perhaps I'm looking too far into it, but I have a feeling that I'm not.  This isn't true about everyone, but people are more selfish (and definitely competitive) than they seem ... and I really hope my cohorts in med school are not hyper-competitive d!cks.