Bored out of my mind!

[spacedout]

What is it with this low tolerance for boredom? This may sound like a stupid question for one reason or another, but do you guys also have a low tolerance of boredom?

I am in med school on my Neurology rotation, something generally seen by most students as painfully boring. But for me, being in neuro is like absolute hell.

I feel kind of depressed. At first I went crazy and was hyperactive, running around and pacing and stuff after leaving for the day. Now I'm just apathetic. Nothing interests me and I can't get started doing anything, not because i can't decide what to do, but because I have absolutely no motivation. I'm just so bored.

Why does boredom depress me so? Does it have anything to do with ADHD? I feel like I constantly need to be interested in the main focus of my life, otherwise everything suffers. It seems like other people can have a boring day and it won't affect their whole life.

What do you guys think?

[Whut?]

What is boring about Neurology rotation? Do you have to wait around a lot? Do you have to talk to people that you don't want to? Is it less fast paced than ER work? Do other students think poorly of it?

There is a moment between when a film starts and the previews are over, the screen is silent and all you can hear is the sound of munching popcorn, I become board, wonder why I wanted to see the film. I hang on because I know that this feeling is comming up and gut it out for the next 40 seconds or so, and become distracted by how good the film is.

[spacedout]

thanks for asking Whut?. It's boring for all of the above reasons. There is an inordinate amount of waiting around, doing nothing. Then when we are doing something, it's mainly talking about things that don't interest me so much. In neurology, more than other medical specialties, there is a lot of guess work and pondering before a diagnosis can be made. Once a diagnosis is made, most of the time there is not much they can do for the patients anyway. A lot of diagnoses can only be definitively made on autopsy! I'm so tired of looking at autopsy pictures of people's brains. What the hell? Why do I care what the d*mn diagnosis is if you can only figure it out when they're dead?!?! That's not helping the patient much.

I feel like we're all wasting our time pondering useless questions when regardless of what we do that person is still going to have the same outcome.

I did psychiatry and obstetrics before this, and with both of those specialties the emphasis was on making people better, not sitting around and enjoying thinking about sh*t that doesn't matter in the end anyway.

Maybe one day they'll have a way to cure alzheimer's or whatever and then this branch of medicine will be more interesting to people like me. Until then, not so much.

I realize that this post above is not relevant to most of you guys, but I just felt like ranting, and I appreciated that someone asked me why I was bored.

[At Heart]

Hi Spacedout,

I think that some people are simply wired to crave excitement. I have worked in the ER for a while, as well as in ICU, and I can tell you that when I have 5 patients with an assortment of ailments, from abdominal pain, to a migraine, that when the trauma patient comes in, or the patient with a real cardiac event (not simply a r/o MI, that my adrenalin starts pumping and the feeling is incredible, like a high. Of course I wouldn't know what being high feels like...

I understand boredom perfectly (reviewing charts is a living hell). I think there can be some really interesting neuro cases (neuro surgery is fascinating if you ask me), though then can be tedious. As for the difinitive diagnosis in neurology only coming from autopsy - well there are a few diseases that are that way that aren't in the neuro field. Being able to accurately know the difference to diagnose someone with Bells Palsey instead of a CVA is invaluable in the ED. Anyhow, I can commiserate, but wonder if it isn't the subject material that is boring, just the lack of adrenalin. I remember a guy through our ED with a number of nails drove into his head with a power nail gun - he ended up being just fine (don't ask me how), but that was certainly one fascinating neuro case.

Good luck in med school, and I hope you find a way to make neurology more interesting, because in almost any specialty, the majority of patients you have are elderly, and many with neurological afflictions.

At Heart

[Kimmy]

I don't think I completely know what youre doing, not a med student . Think of it as still helping people, the dead person's family, right? During the wait time, do you have to be professional or are you on your own just chilling forever? I keep a Nintendo DS in my purse and my crochet project just in case for moments like this.

[meadd823]

It seems like other people can have a boring day and it won't affect their whole life.

What do you guys think?

Personally I think this