I’m Not a Doctor

I hereby decree…

I am not a doctor!

And God help us all if I were one!

Sadly, some people seem to think I am or am at least equivalent to one.

“OMG! She has a biology degree! Cure my AIDS PLZ!!!!”

🙄 😆

Nah, seriously, I get quite a few people actually asking me for medical advice because of this. Hell, even before I graduated, I got asked. Not by anyone at school, of course. They knew better. Just the people that think because I know what a ribosome is, I must know why their arms have been hurting for three months.

Do you people put any thought into this? I got my Bachelor of Science in biology after, oh, four years of undergraduate college education keeping my GPA above 2.0. If I were an MD, I’d have those four years of undergrad with no lower than a 3.9 GPA, taken the six hour MCAT, spent four grueling years at medical school, then several more years of residency and internships, depending on concentration. Big difference there. Not to mention that to have all that training by right now, I’d have had to go to college at age 8.

Okay, maybe you expect me not to be licensed to fiddle with your interior organs with a trusty scalpel. That’s a point for you. Still, I don’t know what you people think I learned in college that gives me some magical ability to either have some encyclopedic knowledge of any malady you ask me about or to be able to diagnose something you may have based on such vague information that even Dr. House couldn’t come up with anything.

What did I learn, you ask? Let’s go over that. Here’s a few of my college courses.

Principles of Biology I & II
What I Learned: What lipids, carbohydrates, proteins, and nucleotides are; the stages of mitosis and meiosis; cell respiration; photosynthesis; aquatic microorganisms; Mendelian genetics; some other crap.
What I Didn’t Learn: Why your hands might be numb.

Ecology
What I Learned: ecosystem stuff; eutrophication; something about trees and marshes; populations; et cetera.
What I Didn’t Learn: How to treat a bladder infection.

Cell Biology
What I Learned: organelle functions; enzyme kinetics; processes on and through the phospholipid bilayer; uh, more on enzymes.
What I Didn’t Learn: Why your tongue is that weird color.

Vertebrate Physiology
What I Learned: Nerve cells; muscle cells; kidneys.
What I Didn’t Learn: How to tell what is wrong with YOUR nerves, muscles, or kidneys.

Comparative Anatomy
What I Learned: The structure of animals through evolution.
What I Didn’t Learn: Why you’re having trouble walking (you can’t walk, but you’re of a species that has evolved that ability, stumped right there! LOL)

Biology of Fishes
What I Learned: Stuff about all kinds of fish!
What I Didn’t Learn: If you have a yeast infection.

Biology Research
What I Learned: How to grow T27A murine leukemia cells in culture.
What I Didn’t Learn: What that rash on your knee is.

I hope you get the picture. Quit bugging me with this crap. Also, quit acting like I must not have learned much if I can’t answer your stupid question. College biology courses teach you basic operations of things and how to know your way around a lab so you can move on to grad school or get a job in the industry. It’s not fucking medical training. We didn’t sit around all day memorizing medical journals. We didn’t study up the symptoms and treatments to every disease known to mankind. No. We learned to make educated observations in nature, to culture cells, to use pipettes, and what skeletal structure tells us about natural history.

Got a problem, go ask an actual doctor, genius. Or, hell, go to Wikipedia or WebMD or something.

But, now that I think about it, maybe I’ll take advantage of this. Next time some assjob asks me for medical advice, I’m charging five dollars a minute. And it’ll be whatever I just make up off the top of my head. If it kills you, that’s your own fault, buttface.