Of all the random pictures floating about the internet that I’ve run into in the past few weeks, this is the one that really got me:
Here’s the text:
A 23-year old medical student makes lists of all the tasks that he must accomplish each day. He spends hours studying and refuses to go out with his colleagues even when there are no tests on the immediate horizon, preferring to spend his time looking at specimens in the laboratory. He keeps meticulous notes during all his classes and prefers to attend every lecture, not trusting his colleagues to take notes for him. He is doing well in school and has a girlfriend who is also a medical student. Which of the following disorders does this student most likely have?
A. OCD
B. Obsessive-compulsive personality disorder
C. Obsessive-compulsive traits
D. Schizoid personality disorder
E. Paranoid personality disorder[and written in] F. Fuck you, that sounds totally normal. Asshole.
Even I, Mr. Bon Vivant, have turned down outings to do the computer programming equivalent of “looking at specimens in the laboratory”, and you know what? It paid off in spades.
The medical student in this essay question doesn’t have obsessive-compulsive disorder, it’s just that in the age of slackerdom and ADD, diligence and focus looks like OCD. The question is also a sign of the greatly mistaken notion of the primacy of talent. Yes, talent is important and can give you an edge, but a whole body of studies shows (as does centuries of observation from pundits of all stripes) that in the long run, effort trumps talent. As I should say more often, “The harder I work, the luckier I get.”
If you’d like to read more about how effort trumps talent, take a look at Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, K. Anderson Ericsson’s The Making of an Expert and Jeff Sexton’s nice, brief summary of Keith Bell’s Winning Isn’t Normal.
As for making lists and preferring to take your own notes, I think they’re the best way to stay organized and to learn.
Finally, the medical student in the question is at least sociable enough to have a girlfriend. The fact that she’s also in med school shouldn’t be a surprise: in university, you’re quite likely to date someone who’s in the same field of study as you.
So bravo, unknown psych student with a blue pen. The authors of that textbook may think you have the wrong answer, but you just passed the only test that matters. I salute you with a filet mignon on a flaming sword!
This article also appears in The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century.
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I understand the process of diagnosis and have never taken the GRE, but have seen many examples. I guess I can’t explain what I’m saying any better and I disagree that it is an injustice. We’ll just have to leave it at that. I appreciate what you’re saying. Thank you for intelligently responding to me.
I have to agree with the student with the blue point pen. Sounds like going to university and being a good student! The media may publise the idiots who go out and get drunk every weekend (or every opportunity) but it is the students who actually work hard that make their own luck and magically get the decent jobs!
Answer is C. Alot of med students do have some OCD traits.
Slackerdom and ADD lumped together? Really? (Somehow, I’m not surprised.)
I have ADD and I spend a good amount of my time making lists, taking notes, and working my ass off to get head in spite of what misfires may be in my brain. Putting a learning disability with simple laziness? About as unfair as labeling hard work as OCD.
Having graduated from medical school, I feel reasonably qualified when I state that this individual’s behavior is (sadly) entirely normal within the community of medical students. However, I’d be curious to know what fictitious medical school this individual attended where exams were NOT always on the immediate horizon….
they student in question is normal. The “f” option certainly is correct but let’s assume that the medical student says “ok, this is what i do all day, but i have no idea why and i want to change “; in that case, we treat his mental process and behavior as a disorder.
i suppose thats what the author had in mind before asking the question.
You haven’t drawn attention to the tendentious use of the word “disorder”.
Loaded language like that is typical of doctor-speak.
Oh, and the tendentious use by the answerer of the word “normal”.
This is typical of humans.
Do you realise the question asks which disorder the student MOST likely has!!! Maybe you should actually read the question!
I agree 100% with LT. I have ADHD and am truly offended by comments where “ADD” are equated to being lazy. This is how the misconceptions get spread. People who don’t know what they’re talking about make comments like that and it reaffirms people’s beliefs or spreads this idea to other people. Walk a day in my shoes, I promise you won’t call anyone with ADD or ADHD lazy again. It’s even harder for people with learning disabilities to be successful than those with out, we deserve respect, not insulted or getting eye-rolls every time we have to explain the disease to the next ignorant person.
Here is a fact for you, B and C students tend to make more money than A students. Why is this? Because we live in a social world where relationships matter. The night he missed going out with his friends could have also been the night he met the person who’s parents had a connection that could get him the job he always wanted. I am entering the job market and with economic conditions the way they are today I wish I had studied less and met more. Most of the interviews I have gotten have been due to the people I know not necessarily what is on my resume. And just because I have ADD doesn’t mean I am a slacker. I struggled greatly with school for 18 years because people like you who think it is some made up disorder for slackers. During those years I worked harder than ever just to get by. Once I got to college I took things into my own hands and found treatment for it. Without treatment I really don’t know if I would have been able to graduate from college. I just graduated with a double major and a 3.02 from the University of Georgia.
I never equated ADD/ADHD with laziness. What I meant was that in a time where we’re recognizing ADD and ADHD and often mistaking it for laziness, it’s all too easy to do the same with industriousness and confuse it with OCD.
My apologies for any offense caused. It was not my intent to paint people with ADD and ADHD as slackers.
This is more for the comments made about “ignorant” people.
“The more you learn, the more you realize how little you know…”
without the gf he would be schizoid. spending NO time with friends even when u have free time. My brother finished medical school, and yes he studied and did amazing- but every time he could*( not very often) he would go out with friends b/c the stress/ pressure could kill you. Schizoids just choose to be alone over people.. to an extreme.
but this guy has a gf… strange
Tots: Maybe you should learn how to spell realize.
Yep, sounds about normal, especially if the med student is planning to go into surgery.
If you don’t have OCD, you’ve got ADD. But don’t worry. We have drugs for both.
Danielle,
It might do you some good to realise that Tots could be writing from the UK, where the z-spelling is not preferred and the s-spelling is. Maybe you should learn about such differences in spelling.
DB, a 3.02 gpa is an absolutely abysmal gpa, especially for someone who professed to study more. Getting a “B” grade after supposedly putting forth effort is just awful. It is completely untrue that people need to “socialize” for networking by failing to study. To say otherwise is clearly just enabling self-negating behavior.
@Danielle: That’s the British spelling of “realize”. Maybe you should “realise” that.
The answer is actually B. o_O Who said C?
The correct answer is actually F. It’s called self-discipline. Sounds to me like the “disorder” that he MOST likely “suffers” from is an “obsession” to do the best he can in med school and is “compulsive” in his approach to achieve success.
Read the question before getting pissy, people. It’s not insulting the guy. It really only is asking “which does he most likely have?” and not “This is you, which disorder do you have?”
@DB your GPA is crap.
Hello all,
I would like to start by saying that this was, in all aspects of the word, a fascinating read. I have been intrigued by psychology since I was young, but as I have had the misfortune of experiencing, good psychologists and intelligent people are difficult to come by, so I must profess my deepest respect for Dr. David Andrews, Dan Farfan and Mel Semble.
As all of you have mentioned, the standardized tests of today are woefully lacking in reasoning and comprehension/application of knowledge. I completely agree that this is exactly why there are so many “quack doctors” and “experts” in almost every field. It was a refreshing breath of air to hear from a few truly educated and intelligent professionals.
From my own past experiences, there are way too many partially educated pretenders out there that try to puff themselves up with false superiority, who in the end, manage to break more than they fix. I, myself, being one of the many who were broken through a “specialist’s” misguided assessment of a supposed disorder. See, I grew up in the beginning of the era of “ADD Specialists”, when any quack with a certificate could “diagnose” someone with ADD and convince the parents that the child should be medicated.
I have a mild case of ADD, without the physical hyperactivity. It isn’t my body, but my brain that can’t slow down. It is aggravated by also having an anxiety disorder with insomnia and chronic depression. It doesn’t take much imagination to picture how the supposed “specialist” my parents sent me to saw it.
I was understandably nervous, well, close to an anxiety attack would be a better description, when I went for my “evaluation”. So I fidgeted. I bounced my leg and had a lot of trouble focusing on the questions he was asking me. I repeatedly stood up and paced the room while he was writing. He proceeded to “diagnose” me as ADHD, with hyperactivity and convinced my parents that I needed to be on Ritalin, the new magic drug to help kids focus…
Fortunately, I realized that the proverbial “little voice in the back of my head” that made me want to die wasn’t my own, and I stopped taking that nasty little invention for human control. I also started seeing an actual psychiatrist who was observant enough to correctly diagnose my problems and assist me in managing them to my best ability.
This psychiatrist also suggested that I research the different alternative treatments to medication, research the side effects of the common medications on the market associated with my disorders and make an informed decision on whether or not alternative treatment or medicine would be my course of action. I found it a rather striking in comparison with the majority of even regular doctors I had seen in my life. Most doctors just expect their word to be law without giving any facts or reasoning to back up their claims. This guy was more than willing to empower his patients with the ability to decide the best course of action for themselves.
In my honest opinion, there needs to be more people like him in this world. Aside from the emergency cases where the patient is not capable of making an informed decision, I believe that all doctors, specialists and experts out there should do their best to empower the people they effect and treat. Nowadays, it seems like too many of them are too ready to believe that just because someone else hasn’t gone to college for eight years and earned a degree comparable to their own, that person isn’t capable of making a truly informed decision. The rest of the world isn’t Joe Dirt, but they will definitely continue to seem as such if continued to be treated as such.
Again, my respect to the aforementioned gentlemen for endeavoring to enlighten us and my thanks to the author of this post for his sense of humor and the opportunity for the rest of us to spew our individual founts of knowledge or lack thereof upon this page.
Kat
Like someone else stated. If anything he has traits of OCPD, not OCD. Very very very different disorders.
@LT I wholeheartedly commend your efforts to get head in spite of your ADD. Even people with misfiring going on in their brain deserve oral pleasure.
What’s interesting is:
First: Giving an immature answer to this question is part of the answers to the question above this one, i.e. defense mechanisms of the ego.
Second: Not knowing much about the subject, I would just count:
3 or 4 disorders — disorder
3 personality — personality
2 or 3 obsessive-compulsive — obsessive-compulsive
and end with Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder as the Answer,
avoiding any FU remarks, but then I probably have an OCPD myself :)
This article is awesome. I am diagnosed OCPD and love it. Now that I know I’m “crazy”, I’m totally embracing it. My husband doesn’t mind my meticulously clean house and my professors don’t mind essays turned in weeks ahead of time. Perhaps my awesomeness makes those less driven feel like slackers… but I really don’t see how that’s my problem. Don’t like my lists and one track mind? Suck my 3.92 GPA. And my stress freak-outs? That’ll teach you to leave my shit alone.
Dude its B. All you people here saying its OCD or its traits or whateve.
Actually its OCPD by the way mind you OCPD should not be confused with OCD.
Both are totally different things as in case of OCD the person suffers extreme anxiety,helplessness etc whereas in OCPD a person its totally normal with no problems its just just he misses the big picture or simply ”Gets lost seeing the trees instead of watching the whole wood” BTW just try to studybout it and you will know what I mean.
Akshat… you’re wrong.
To quote the key:
C. Although this student clearly demonstrates some traits of obsessivecompulsive behavior, his social and occupational functioning are both
good, which rules out the personality disorder.
The fact that determined, dedicated students like this in med school are so rare and regarded as being “disordered” is one good reason to avoid and distrust doctors.
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