brainpower in the use of the powers of good

so i consider myself to have a great memory. i remember names, conversations, subjects and facts. granted - i dont have a picture perfect memory. if i remember the lyric of a song, it is probably not the exact words but generally the overall meaning. if i remember something i read in a textbook, i generally grab the overall meaning of the passage rather than the exact terminology. (this tendency does not work for me in subjects that call for blatant memorization like molecular biology, but it works wonders in history, politics and those fields.) in medicine - the thing i am not looking forward to is the blatant memorization needed. i know that i can talk to anybody, exude confidence and deal with emergent situations very quickly. but being able to exactly cite the dose, side effects or other minutiae is going to suck. now, most doctors do not memorize that crap either. they walk into the room after the looking at the chart already filled out by the nurse, do their assessment, then walk out of the room and look up in their PDA or textbooks or even google search it to find out treatments. now sure - i like this - i dont think it is possible or safe for one person to try and recollect everything from their memory. however, the really scary thing is that many of the residents i see have to do this for simple stuff. my example of this is this man with uncontrolled a-fibb - a very readily recognized cardiac dysrhytmia that needs to be treated quickly. the attending has diagnosed it, called for the drugs and is waiting for it. then this resident (off service - Internal Medicine i think) walks in sees that it is a cool case, takes the 12 lead and proceeds to break out his calipers (a measuring tool that is very useles in the ER and really is useless even upstairs unless you are a cardiologist and you have to do all your diagnosing by a 12 lead) and a book on rhythm interpretation and tries to make the argument that this might be something else. to which the attending laughed.

i bring up my memory to highlight one of my strongest skills. i am an encyclopedia of pop culture/entertainment information. you know that game you play where someone names a movie, the next person must name an actor in that movie, followed by another person naming another movie that actor was thus creating a string of movie, actor, movie, actor till someone gets stumped. i am very good at that game. in fact, the times when i play it - while on camping trips, i often get so frustrated with the other participants and start playing by myself. i do not know how i become such a repository of information for when i first played this game on my frosh orientation camping trip, i did not half the actors. but i guess it was through the magic of the internet and easily downloaded movies that i have been able to really see a lot. now having a blockbuster membership for 3 movies at a time doesnt hurt either. currently i have Patton, Freeway, and Taxi Driver out.

i also have a freakish knowledge of pop culture. i may not know a lot of the old stuff such as music of the 60s and 70s, but i know way too much of current people. i am in no way a magazine reader and stay as far away from the tabloids as possible, but i retain information about what movies people are in, what movies are coming out, what came out and how it was rated and what i thought about it very readily.

and yet i can come across as a very serious person. or at least i think i do to some people.