I’m spending a lot of time in the hospital now that my clinical rotations have started, which is leaving less time and energy for other things like blogging, and I decided to simplify my life by just not doing anything that I’m not finding necessary or fun, hence the paucity of posts. I am very much liking the rotations though. The first month I was on outpatient medicine, which is supposed to be kind of a vacation but actually turned out to be half inpatient medicine and quite the challenge, but I loved the work. For the past five weeks I’ve been on inpatient medicine, first general internal medicine and now cardiology. I really like this too; taking care of patients is interesting and fulfilling. So that’s good.
Other good stuff (some a bit belated since my internet surfing has been curtailed):
Why blogs should provide full-text RSS feeds: it’s good for business. You’re not going to keep people from using RSS readers (especially the high-volume readers who, really, are who you most want reading your blog), and providing partial text is more likely to just make them stop reading than click over every day. There are some great blogs that I used to read before I made the RSS switch, but their crappy feed quality means I haven’t really kept up - there is so much else out there. And there’s more than one blog where I’m not interested in all the posts, but I am interested in many of discussions in the comments, so I usually do click over if there are interesting posts, even once I’ve already read the whole text.
The Pantsuit Paradox: “How do women signal power at the boys’ club?” It’s an excellent article about a real dilemma: women have no equivalent of the suit and tie, an outfit that projects professionalism and authority and nothing else. We have to worry about whether we look too girly or not feminine enough, too sexy or too matronly, too trendy or too stodgy-librarian. (I do think there’s an excellent role for the businesslike pantsuit well-cut for the female shape; I am not sure why female politicians don’t seem to use them more, but then the viewpoint that for women, dressing up = skirt is still definitely out there.) Luckily a white coat and stethoscope go a long way toward projecting professionalism and authority, so I don’t have to worry too much about this anymore. Although I did see in one of the dress codes that women are supposed to wear T-shirts under scrubs; no word about men. I guess risking a hint of cleavage is much more unprofessional than letting all your chest hair hang out.