A physician recently remarked that he was puzzled because few of his colleagues seemed willing to acknowledge that they enjoyed their work, while he, on the other hand, relished it. He said that hospital cafeteria conversations between physicians more frequently focused on the shortcomings rather than the satisfactions of medical practice. He concluded that since medicine was a prized and noble vocation, many physicians obviously did enjoy it, but for some reason they were reluctant to admit it.
Perhaps some of the answers to his puzzlement lie in the personality types attracted to medicine, those selected by entrance committees, or the educational process by which students are transformed into physicians. Part of this change is outlined in a book with the ambiguous title, Making It in Medical School. This book with chapters and subheadings from fairy tales is written not by a medical student as might be expected (perhaps they