You know what they call the person who graduates last in his or her medical/dental school class?

[PCIntern]

Doctor.

All 'jokes' aside, anyone wanna see my grades? No? I don't blame you BUT I'll tell you this: I got two B's in Organic Chemistry...not bad, not great of course, except that the courses were taught in my Univeristy by two of the biggest pricks one could meet in a lifetime, one more horrendous than the next, who hated pre-medical/pre-dental students with passions, who despised being in front of them and did everything they could to make our lives beyond miserable. The mean grades on the tests were less than 50 and the necessary curves were very conservative: it would be easy to wind up with a "D"...almost happened first semester.

So context of grading is important...and does not show up on the transcript. If in fact Obama had a few grades less than, say A+, which is apparently the least he can do for the RWers, then I for one am willing to give him a break for 'context'...

He shouldn't release anything of the sort, please allow me to add...screw them. Let them stew...they hate his intellect and his brilliance.

[Donnachaidh]

1. In my county's case -- it's Congressman

Both Tom Price and Phil Gingrey are *doctors*. IIRC Gingrey is a pediatrician who has voted to kill services to pregnant women.

[yardwork]

2. Nobody cares about Obama's grades. Nobody. This is the biggest non-issue in the world.

There is not one single person in the entire world who cares what Obama's grades were in college. Not one. Obama himself probably can't remember and certainly no longer cares.

The birther movement and all its little spin-offs is based on racism, pure and simple. They can't fathom the fact that a black man is president.

[hobbit709]

4. He's guilty of "presidenting while black"

[BrklynLiberal]

8. BINGO!!!!!!!!!

[Brigid]

15. You win the second-ever Brigid DUzy Award.

Congratulations on this great accomplishment. It's highly coveted, you know. ;)

[hobbit709]

16. Not my line-it belongs to The Rude Pundit.

[Uben]

3. Sure, they can look at Obama's grades

.....you'll find them right next to George W. Bush's military records! Find one, you've found them both! What? You don't care about Bush's military records? Guess what?

[irisblue]

5. and....

for the record, no one but your momma cares about your ACT/SAT scores....and she could be jivin too..
those people are so peeved that american education system worked so well that a second single moms' son could grow up and thwart (some of) twice their sorry ass plans

[Bonobo]

6. Yeah and do you know what other doctors think of them?

My father, prick that he was, was the Head of Oral/Maxillofacial Surgery at a large university medical school.

He used to cringe at the idea that anyone that ever graduated in the bottom 50% of Dental School would work on his teeth or the teeth of anyone in the family.

He knew thousands upon thousands of dental students in his career and he knew that many of them did not deserve to be given the same level of confidence of the others that really worked hard.

So no, not all "doctors" are created alike.

[BrklynLiberal]

7. I have often said that I would prefer they hang their transcript on the wall, rather than their

diplomas.


PS: How many public figures would be willing to show off their college transcript..IF they went to college at all, that is?
A good example would be pres shit-for-brains(43). That idiot would not have even graduated high school without help from Mom and Dad.
He majored in drinking, bullshit, pranks and cheerleading.

[JoePhilly]

21. I have to ask, "why?"

I have a BA, an MA, and a PhD.

The only school that wanted to see my undergraduate grades and GPA were the folks considering me for their graduate programs. And their decision was not only made based on the actual grades. It was also made based on the strength of your recommendations, and also how you handle the associated phone and/or in-person interviews.

The notion that one's "B" in "class X" 10 or 20 years ago, is somehow good or bad now, or even relevant so many years later, is silly.

Folks who have advanced degrees don't stop learning after graduate school. They continue to study AFTER obtaining their advanced degrees because EVERY field EVOLVES over time anyway. If you don't keep up, you won't be able to hide it for long.

With those degrees "in hand", no potential employer, in over 20 years, has EVER asked to see my undergraduate or graduate grades, or GPA, not one. Probably because they know that the "A" or "B" I obtained 20 years ago is irrelevant today. The field has advanced.

So the degrees might get you the interview. But you still need to show up and prove that you have continued to advance your knowledge, and also that you have obtained real results in some other setting.

[BrklynLiberal]

23. I would like to know my doctors' grades in all classes, undergrad and post grad, that are

relevant to the reason that I am seeing him. Life and death matters, as in medicine, are not the same as a job in a corporation.

I would not mind seeing some "recommendations" from teachers and other mentors that the doctor dealt with during his education, hanging on his wall as well.

Being in the top 10% of one's class in Medical school is a better recommendation and predictor of competency than being in the bottom 10%

[HughBeaumont]

9. You know what right-wingers call our Harvard-educated American citizen president?

Exactly.

[elleng]

10. Can't say it in polite society.

:(

[elleng]

11. dupe

[msongs]

12. why are college profs grading on a curve? talk about grade inflation lol nt

[Taitertots]

25. Because the material is so complex and difficult that the percentage answered doesn't reflect....

how well the material is understood. Getting 50% of the answers correct on a long complex test may demonstrate an understanding of the material deserving a passing grade.

[Historic NY]

13. A birther......

see

[MuseRider]

14. :-)

I graduated from Nursing school, not at the top of my class but close and spent my time in the ICU and was a good nurse who could handle everything that came my way.

I had a chemistry teacher like the teachers you mention. Little dude opened up our basic chemistry class by asking who was there to get into nursing school. About 10 of us raised our hands and he said that we may as well go home, he hated nursing students and we were going to fail. He started our class with Quantum Mechanics! He gave us the material and proceeded to come to every class with a large tumbler of coffee and stand at the chalk board and draw repetitively tiny periodic tables. That was it, we were tested every few weeks. We all got tutors, we all studied together, our tests were all marked F without comment. One day my mailman knocked on my apartment door and with a chuckle handed me a postcard with a large letter marked in thick red marker, Chemistry 101 F. Asshole. *I took it again with a different teacher and the best I could do was a C but it was good enough to get into Nursing School.

It happens, it happened to all of us and one of the students actually understood what he was asking us to learn by ourselves. I would wager that there are many stories like this and many accomplished people out there to tell them.

[PCIntern]

17. There was a similar story at one of the southern dental schools when I was in school during the

Bronze Age:

A professor told a student that he was going to fail him out of school "because". The student went to the professor's home, met him in the driveway and told him calmly, but in no uncertain terms, that he'd worked his entire life to become a dentist, that if he failed arbitrarily he would have no reason to live, and that he would take the professor and his family with him. The guy passed the course with a B. No further mention was made of the incident. This story may or may not be an urban legend, but in fact, anytime any professor ever got out of line, someone would yell "University of Mississippi" or "University of Alabama" from the back of the room...then the prof would concede the point or change the exam date. It was 'interesting'.

[yardwork]

22. Same thing happened to a woman I know. In the 1970s she was studying Physics.

Professor said that he'd be grading the "girls" in the class on a different scale because he didn't want any of them getting into graduate school, where they would take the place of a man "and just get married and have children and never be professors anyway."

Sadly, the woman I know is not married and never had children (she wanted these things but it didn't work out). She would have made a hell of a Physics professor.

Assholes.

[hunter]

18. If you can't survive a sadistic professor's o-chem class...

... you won't survive med school.

I wasn't pre-med, but I was a biology major and many of my professors considered it their sacred duty to thin out the pre-med class.

Anyone who got an "A" "A-" or even a grudging "B+" was in the top ten percent, and half the class got a "C" or worse.

I can understand the theory that it's better for a kid's unrealistic dreams (or their family's unrealistic expectations) of being a doctor to be derailed sooner rather than later, but it's a cruel system.

[PCIntern]

19. Yeah and that's a lot of academic Horse-shit...

as one who survived, let me tell you that it was not an appropriately adminstered 'screening ground'...it was arbitrary and needless. Kids who did poorly at Cell Bio, Evolution, Inorganic, and Physics all together were/should be dissuaded...deliberate obfuscation of simple organic chemistry which many of the graduate PhD candidate Teaching Assistants could not follow or answer the questions on the test correctly is grotesquely inappropriate. Many many students who did well at other sciences and did mediocre/poorly at organic wound up as very fine clinicians and/or researchers. Believe me, professional school is mostly spitback - I used to tutor Anatomy and Histology to Medical and Dental students AS A STUDENT, and there was little or no creativity - you had to learn to memorize a vast knowledge base.

These organic professors were hateful SOB's whose presence was antithetical to education, to knowledge, and to decent teaching. Outrageous beyond comprehension. their "sacred duty", as you termed it, was devilish indeed. Fuck them and their memories.

[hunter]

20. I flunked organic chemistry once...

... mostly because I was :crazy:

I graduated in spite of that. I'm proud of the "B+" and "A-" grades I got in upper division science classes, but I also learned how to take a "C+" in classes that didn't gel with me.

Fortunately I never wanted to be a doctor.

[david13]

24. Actually, the term is 'slacker'. dc