Select a Candidate (or reject them all)

So I found an interesting tool on the internet that asks you to fill out a political questionnaire and then compares your views to the candidates. In some ways this strikes me as informative since it takes out the factor of popularity and personality and just looks at issues.

Click here to take the questionnaire

The problem is that this told me what I already knew: not a single candidate in either party can even come close to representing my politics. I had only 25% agreement with any candidate at all, and my top two candidates with which I even slightly agreed appear to be Sam Brownback and Dennis Kucinich two people on exact opposite sides of the spectrum, both without a snowball's chance in hell of winning. The major candidates of either party faired dismally against my positions.

Am I such an odd person? Or are the national political parties so inbreed with group-think that sets of values that don't fit nicely into Right/Left politics end up ignored all together? Perhaps my own vanity would make me more likely to say the second, but I think I'm not alone in being annoyed with my Republican and Democrat choices. I really don't want any of these people to be president.

It is such miserable list of choices that forced me to vote for Bush twice. (The sad thing is that despite his rather pitiful presidency, he was actually the best choice given the options both years.)

I am seriously thinking about voting for third parties this round. I don't think it would be a wasted vote. It may not win anything this election, but I think that breaking the stranglehold of Republicans and Democrats on this country is in the long run the best way to improve the quagmire of American politics.

In the ER

So I'm writing right now from the Emergency Department. Typically not much down time here, but I have a moment to post. Quite an exciting job to have. It is quite a change of pace since I have previously worked mostly in large hospitals that had lots of doctors and everything one could need. Here I am the lone doc for 24 hours --lots can happen, but it is rarely dull.

I'm still procrastinating about choosing a long-term job. I'm trying to figure out what to do with myself now that I have this medical license. I suppose I'm fluctuating between the concern I'll do nothing worthwhile with it and the fear I'll do too much with it and never see my family and friends.

I'll keep you updated.

Doctoring

So it is interesting that I spent the last decade preparing to be a doctor, and now that I am finally practicing medicine as a licensed MD I have this strange sense of let down. I still like my job and my patients, but I have this constant feeling that it "isn't what I expected," although I'm not exactly sure what it was I expected.

I suppose this isn't uncommon for romantic notions when they collide with reality. I have a great permanent job that has been offered to me. I'm still thinking it over. I wonder if I'm really just stalling because of my hesitancy about practicing medicine in general.

I'm sure this is just a phase I'm going through right now and pretty soon I'll be loving doctoring as much as ever. It is interesting though to realize how phantasmal one's dreams actually are.

Standoff at Covenant

Update on Covenant College Censorship concerns:

The editors of the Bagpipe have chosen to shut it down rather than run a censored student newspaper. You can read about it here. Hats off to the brave editors!

Call or write Covenant and let them know you oppose censorship of student publications.