What Your Lanyard Says About You

What Your Lanyard Says About You¹

Lanyards, eh? They’re everywhere now. When I was a boy it was good enough to just staple your ID badge to your nipple (my family demanded identification at all times), but nowadays we wear all manner of frippery. And I bet you thought that the piece of cloth that connects your ID, watch, pens, keys and depleted uranium to your neck was just for infection control- but far from it! Whilst you’ve been letting your valuables smack into OSCE patient’s faces and doing “medicine”, I’ve been carefully analysing the different types of lanyards according to a complex psychometric algorithm that I developed in my serial-killer-esque bedroom. Needless to say my girlfriend has left me. Anyway, here are the fruits of my labour.

The St. George’s Student Union

The all in black classy number? No. Let’s face it, this is the vanilla option. It says either “I got tangled up in one of these during fresher’s fair and forgot” or “I’m a bland personality-less humanoid who is terrible in bed”. You are the background actor in someone else’s ITV drama. If you’re directly employed by the university then I’ll give you a free pass but otherwise please take this opportunity to choose another lanyard².

The NHS NHS NHS…

Yes! Wear your passport to the people’s Republic of the NHS proudly! This means that whether you believe that the NHS is the Titanic heading towards the iceberg of global capitalism or vice versa, you’ll keep playing your violin till the end. And in honour of this I salute you. And apart from socialist pride, this lanyard is by far the most finely made. The cross-stitched Egyptian cotton prevent friction burns from even the heaviest lanyard.

The St George’s Hospital Foundation Trust

Pretty in pink? Hardly! That pink is the blood of the proletariat. You might as well go full Virgin red. Besides, who do you think you are? An actual doctor!? You have to earn the right to wear a symbol of the inexorable slide towards privatisation. It’s almost as if they don’t understand basic human social cues… I’m not saying that everyone who wears this lanyard is in fact a conglomeration of intelligent and well coordinated hagfish inside a human skin suit, but I’m not saying they aren’t either. That’s for the courts/history to decide.

The Lanyard-Less

You zig when the world zags, and by doing so embody the spirit of the noble otter- independent, stylish and possessing a pheromone virtually toxic to the human nose. In this metaphor that fishy miasma represents the little windup wire thingy that you attach the badge to your belt with. You know this is repellent, the uni equivalent of a hands-free bluetooth headset, yet you do it because it is in some way better than a lanyard. In a world of insanity, maybe the only sane choice is to act insane³.

The Royal Society of Medicine

This is a smart choice. Just the right whiff of the royal college lanyard favoured by consultants but not enough to come across as arrogant. This is the lanyard of the career climber. Be careful around this one though, their glowing CV hides a dark history of doing anything to get what they want. They have killed, and they will kill again. If someone wearing this lanyard asks you to accompany them on a trip to a secluded mountain lodge, abandoned fairground, derelict lighthouse or disused meat factory then politely refuse. This should buy you an hour. You must then burn your phone and identity documents (to be safe just burn down your entire house), withdraw all your money and pick a random flight. Do not contact your friends or family, they will already be dead. Never look back. This is your life now.

The Medical Student

This is available from Amazon at the low low price of £3.49! But be quick, because they’re only six left! This is perfect for the student with early onset dementia, or with a self esteem so low that they need almost constant validation that they are in fact supposed to be here.

The Conferencer

Look, I get it. You went to that conference one time because he/she was going, and you thought it might make your FPAS look less depressing. I know how it goes. It’s super boring but they look into it, so you overdo it a bit on the enthusiastic tweets. Things get a bit weird that night after a few bottles of free conference wine and hotel schnapps, he/she comes back to your room and you kiss. But he/she says it was just a mistake, and he/she just wants to be friends, so you guys watch Spider-Man 3 and awkwardly fall asleep side by side on the single bed. Now they’re with someone else and all you have is the lanyard to remember them by. Like I said, I get it⁴.

The I Have a Life Outside of George’s

It’s nice to do other things. For example, I compete in beetle fighting tournaments at a professional level. But doesn’t it come off a bit braggy to wear the lanyard? Sure, I could wear one of the many glorious lanyards that I have accrued from my beetle fighting career (if I could only wash the beetle juice off them) but that’s not why I got into the beetle fighting game. I do it for the beetles, many of whom have no other route out of beetle poverty. You especially shouldn’t wear the lanyard if what you’ve done is nothing to be proud of- say a show at the Edinburgh Fringe. And so there’s no confusion, I’m directing this at you Jon Kirk⁵. Here’s my review for your autobiographical one man show: Jon Kirk: A Life of Satire and Shame, has no satire, and the only shame is on the part of the audience. It is essentially an incoherent romp through his formative years, but this is no ordinary bildungsroman. There are several quite distressing scenes, including a fifteen minute erotic dream sequence in which he silently acts out Finding Nemo. I assumed the piece was a post-structuralist criticism of pre-communist Czechoslovakia, before realising it was just bad. See this if you want to see a grown man on the edge of tears. Three stars.

The Other Uni

DTF or GTFO.

Please address all complaints to Roop Gill⁶.

Footnotes

1. This is exactly the kind of click-bait title that appeals to the narcissistic core of ‘Generation Me’. And this is exactly the kind of faux-intellectual comment that might get this article picked up by The Medical Student.
2. Of course a majority of non-medical student Georgians will wear this option, but as part of the unilateral “Out of Sight, Out of Mind” anti-non-medical student policy here at the Dragon I can’t mention them, and must in fact actively try to alienate them.
3. This seems profound but is actually nonsense.
4. Here I’ve constructed this narrative, which looks like a depressing anecdote from my own life, to draw attention away from the fact that people ywho go to conferences are in fact actually quite hard working and successful, and therefore better than me. This mutual muck-slinging is a technique I also use in my personal life, and I highly recommend it.
5. This appears to be a self-indulgent in joke. However the man in question does not in fact exist, therefore it was just a waste of the reader’s time.
6. Don’t worry they’ll still reach me! Roop personally reads each criticism to me as I fall asleep, interspersed with deeply personal insults and crotch punches.

Written by: Benji Fricker-Muller

Altruism: A quick thought

Before I begin, I would like to call attention to the fact that I am not a philosopher. I have never studied philosophy or the works of any philosopher. I am a medical student, a man of science and its application. My degree requires me to commit to memory a great deal of strategies, procedures and guidelines without much room for interpretation or free-thought.

As an aspiring healthcare professional, altruism has crossed my mind on more than one occasion. I am frequently asked why I have chosen this career and I frequently answer “to help people” – a response so automatic that it has begun to lose meaning. I believe that a majority of medical students (and the general public) would like to believe that the reason for their choosing to study medicine is care-orientated – they wish to best utilise their skills and knowledge for the aid of humankind. Yet the ambitious and egoistic qualities consistently displayed by my peers and I leads me to question the extent of our selfless motivation.

'Bélisaire demandant l'aumône' (Belisarius begging for alms)
by Jacques-Louis David - 1780

Before I further discuss the role of altruism in healthcare I want to consider its origins. If we strip away human emotion, thoughts and feelings, and consider Darwin’s genetics-based “survival of the fittest” concept, the idea of altruism seems almost to be a hindrance for the continuation of one’s genes, especially if the action is done at one’s own expense. By helping someone in a way that allows their genes to be passed down and flourish would squander energy that could be applied to the furthering of one’s own genes. So why do it?

An argument for altruism, with regards to genetics, could be the hope that any support provided might be returned, allowing for mutual gain and furthering of one’s own genes as well as the genes of others. This brings about the concept of a gene-pool or society. If everybody within a society helps one another out, or “does their bit”, the likelihood of the society surviving is higher and therefore the gene-pool. Perhaps altruism is a tribal concept that has persisted to the modern-day. This may be why people are more benign towards - and inclined to help - somebody from a similar culture/country/race as they are, and shun/fear those of different backgrounds to increase the survival of their own genes, either through themselves or through someone who is likely to share some of their genetic material.

It would be hard to write an article on altruism without mentioning religion. In most organised religions altruism plays a central role. From The Bible’s: ‘Do to others as you would like them to do to you.’ to The Qur’an’s ‘None of you truly believes until he loves for his brother what he loves for himself.’ However, what is the reason for selflessness in the name of religion? If a person helps someone in the hope that they will ascend to heaven or in the fear that they would otherwise go to hell; is the action truly altruistic? It could be argued that such behaviour is spawned from one’s own selfish terrors or desires. A constant “looking over one’s shoulder”: in fear of a higher power. But what if that power came from oneself? The reason for selfless deeds came from a fear of dishonouring or upsetting a code that comes from yourself rather than another source? Then it would be impossible to be egotistical without damaging oneself and therefore impossible to be purely selfish, whilst also having the ability to be purely altruistic.

Altruism is an enigmatic concept. Open to endless interpretations and applicable to infinite thoughts, feelings and actions. As a medical student, it is hard not to get caught up in the idea that what I intend on doing is selfless and that my reasons are pure. But what is of crucial importance, and the crux of my future career as a doctor is not whether or not what I’m doing is selfless but whether why I’m doing it is truly altruistic.

Written by Roop Gill