Day Eighteen: The AIC Factor

One of my greatest fears about being a medical student is that I will slowly morph into something that I do not want to be. Not that I will wake-up one day and be a money-grubbing plastic surgeon or something of the like, but that being a student for so long will force me into a class of people that with whom I do not want to associate. The anal-ness of my peers is not something I like, but I can deal with it. What I could not deal with, would be if I were to become an AIC.

The AIC is an interesting breed of person who is habitually located near the front row of classrooms across the universities of this country and likely abroad as well. Regardless of the lecturers state of speech (mid-sentence, pause, mid-word, prayerful meditation) they take no exception to peppering them with irrelevant and unnecessary questions. An introductory psychology professor may be glossing over the various school’s of psychological thought and the AIC will ask a question along the lines of, “Do you feel that Maslow’s hierarchy sufficiently accounts for the depravity of man expressed in modern Hegelian philosophy?” The professor is puzzled, not only by the complexity of a question, nor the timing when it is asked, but by the absolutely uninformed content of the question. The AIC isn’t fazed by being asked to “talk to me after class.” In fact, they prize the designation and view the distinction as an opportunity to further there quixotic intellectual questioning.

I am fearful, not of the AIC any longer, but of becoming the AIC. The Adult in Class, or AIC, as the name implies, is an adult student. I am on the cusp of becoming twenty-four (ridiculous I know) and wonder if I am slowly changing into an AIC without knowing it. I fear I will wake-up one day and not be able to keep my hand-down at inappropriate times in lecture and I will construct ill-phrased questions in hopes that the professors will think I am intelligent and not precocious. I can already see some of my peers succumbing to the urge, and I feel that medical students, by their inherent arrogance, are far more susceptible than other groups to fall prey to the AIC mentality. In sum, I am doing everything I can to fight off becoming an AIC. I sit far away from the front row, I avoid professors in between class times, keep my hands at my sides in all times in lecture, and most importantly vehemently attempt to keep from taking myself too seriously. This blog excluded of course.