Comments on: True Tales of Medical School: The Gunner

By: SLU Med Student

SLU Med Student — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 03:30:51 +0000

Great to read these comments from someone who also went to SLU. It’s actually really different now that the first two years are pass/fail. We don’t really have the infamous gunner anymore…though I’m sure that will change once the clinical years come along.

Love your reviews about House. They’re a great study break and really help me learn. Thank you!

By: Arc

Arc — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 16:04:18 +0000

In our med.school(somewhere in India) we have about 10-12 gunners in a batch of 150.Except about 2 ,rest of them have poor clinical acumen & lack basic skills…but the primitive exam methods used in our university exams benefit these gunners.
In fact I saw one of these ‘gunners’ literally crying during Paeds.pract exam & demanding that she be given a case(X) that she wants & not the one she got(Y)(the Y case she didn’t want to present was not that hard either…but I guessed she had mugged up the X case at home ).Not surprisingly none of us was allowed to change cases…I tried it personally as a ‘test’ to see whether the invigilator was really kind-hearted or a biased hippocrite.i was rebuked…’how dare you…I’ll report it to the Head of Dept’.My test was succesful…the gunner was all smiles…crocodile tears gone.

@Ben…how much you might hate Indians…i know I can’t change your views regarding this but please don’t use abusive language to vent your feelings.If such kind of hostility is faced in US by Indian immigrant(gunners or non-gunners)…I am afraid the situation is worse in Oz..I sincerely hope our other American collegues in medical profession hold better view regarding Indians, whether or not they are reading this blog.I might have overreacted…but its time we stand up to this kind of racism(gunners or non-gunners).

By: Advent

Advent — Sun, 06 Feb 2011 03:41:30 +0000

I’m a medical student and i have a gunner friend..
She is really smart and perfectionist. But all i know about her is she does it because high marks so meaningfull for her. Her marks= her pride…
Fortunatelly, she is a nice person, she can explain to me the subject i can’t understand with easy way.

By: Advent

Advent — Sun, 06 Feb 2011 03:41:12 +0000

I’m a medical student and i have a gunner friend..
She is really smart and perfectionist. But all i know about her is she do it because high marks so meaningfull for her. Her marks= her pride…
Fortunatelly, she is a nice person, she can explain to me the subject i can’t understand with easy way.

By: kevinc

kevinc — Sat, 08 May 2010 22:02:30 +0000

i am not a med student… but i am a perfectionist … my opinion… if someone wants to do their very best and that makes others look bad then tough for the others. and when it comes to learning medicine i HOPE TO GOD it the tests are some of the very hardest ones to pass. thats just my opinion, take it or leave it. either way… i LOVE your site Scott (my middle name, btw)

By: DNA Girl

DNA Girl — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:13:12 +0000

Have to admit – I’m a gunner. Not nearly as bad as her though, at the end of the day easy questions only help in me getting a high score so you won’t get any complaints out of me!

By: Will Power

Will Power — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 12:46:42 +0000

My wife is a med student and I’m a law student. Comparing our experiences, med school gunners are more arrogant (criticizing the prof’s methods) while law school gunners are more devious. At my law school, gunners will blatantly capitalize on other students’ mistakes during in-class Socratic dialogue and sabotage people’s efforts. I caught one gunner scratching a student’s name off the prof’s office hour sign-up sheet and another gunner ripping pages out of library books.

Thankfully at most schools the gunners are shunned, so they have to without the support of classmates, which is what law school depends on.

By: EL

EL — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 02:45:24 +0000

Interesting. I never had a true gunner in my vet class at MSU (I wonder if it was the same MSU as Maura’s), but ran into several at the University of Chicago among the pre-meds there and the pre-law students. One actually checked out material on reserve and kept it out past the due date (way past the due date) so that other students couldn’t read it. One of my friends went into the biochemistry class during their first exam and after about 45 minutes jumped up screaming “I can’t take it anymore!!!” and ran from the classroom.

By: WW

WW — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 02:25:18 +0000

You have to wonder?

By: Stephens

Stephens — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 05:14:19 +0000

I wondered whether House was a gunner when he went to MS.