The ‘Real’ Boston Med: Gunning for Harvard Medical School

For Vietnamese students and their parents, entrance into the noble field of medicine marks a pivotal life-changing moment.  It marks the entrance into a celebrated career of service and social status.  And for the parents, it is the defining moment to gain face – to walk proudly amongst other parents for they have given birth to a … doctor.   But for a few lucky parents whose children walk the halls of Ivy League medical schools, they shall forever receive the decorated letters requesting donations to support the dreams of many students to come.

But it is known to all that only a select few obtain a coveted seat in the nation’s best medical school – Harvard Medical.  The journey to Boston is not an easy one, but the reward is immense.  While the stories of glory are often told, the real hard labor and life-changing decisions students make are sometimes less mentioned.  It is our goal today to share a poignant story written by Jack Varon, a Harvard Medical Student and staff writer for the HMS literary magazine Third Space.

The story of ‘Yankel the Gunner’ is a universal story of the trials and tribulations of what it takes to be the best medical student.  Be it Yankel or Minh, Nghia, or Trang, any medical student can use this to help guide his/her life towards success.  Please enjoy.

“Yankel the Gunner” by Jack Varon

No gunner was more famous than Yankel the gunner. In many ways Yankel Kalishnikov was the ideal medical school applicant. He had graduated third in his class at a prestigious northeastern university, and then spent no fewer than seventeen months in a small, impoverished African country, practicing a low-cost method of delivering babies using a clean pair of flip-flops and an iced-tea pitcher. He had published several papers (three of which listed him as first author) describing the effects of microwaves on various cheeses when placed within the mouse gut. One such paper had yielded him a patent on a very successful brand of mousetrap.

Yankel loved racquetball, a pursuit to which his Marfan-induced flexibility and length made him well adapted. Set on becoming a surgeon, Yankel had also taken up sewing, as he was sure it would be useful preparation. He had majored in German literature, feeling that it would set him apart from what he predicted would be a very competitive applicant pool. Of course, Yankel had been admitted easily to medical school. His 59 on the MCAT was a new record, a feat he’d achieved by exploiting an obscure loophole that allowed him to take the physics section twice.

Few pursuits were more delightful to Yankel than studying in the middle of the night, especially if a test was very far away. He loved being absolutely assured that no one else in his class was studying, and that the chasm between his knowledge and theirs was widening. Every night, from 3 am to 5 am, he would wake up, study for two hours, and return to sleep. Every morning in the lecture hall, he would triumphantly proclaim, “I cannot believe how little I studied! Surely I am the least responsible student in our class!” This perennial proclamation was always met with groans from those sitting near Yankel, as it was clear from his questions in class (they were often accompanied by a bibliography) that this was a lie.

Yankel was a gunner, and the worst kind. He not only wanted to do well; he wanted to do better than everyone else. He would surreptitiously flip the power switch on the surge protector in the computer lab, but only if he was sure someone hadn’t hit the save button in a few pages. He e-mailed out his summary notes, with tiny errors peppered throughout. Yankel’s notes were very popular, as studying them thoroughly always netted the same grade, a 93. This was always exactly 7 points lower than Yankel’s grade.

Once, and only once, Yankel was spotted on his nightly journey to study. Matilda Schmilda, his classmate, was also awake, no doubt fretting about how her ridiculous name made it impossible for her to be taken seriously. It was obvious that Yankel was planning on studying in the dead of night. In a panic, Yankel began to cry, and begged Matilda not to tell the rest of the students. Confused and frightened, Matilda assured Yankel that his secret was safe and that she did not care how he spent his night.

Yankel could not trust Matilda. As far as he was concerned, everyone was as competitive as him, and Matilda was eager to tear him down. So Yankel devised a plot to get Matilda to drop out of medical school. First, he circulated in his famous notes that a rare genetic disease, called Moranis Syndrome, caused one’s arms and torso to shorten in response to tiny amounts of inhaled formalin. Eventually, the collapsing upper body would crush the respiratory system, and the fictitious disease would prove fatal.

At the start of anatomy block, Yankel would sneak into Matilda Shmilda’s room. Using his superior knowledge of sewing, Yankel would quickly lengthen the sleeves of all of Matilda’s shirts by half an inch every other day. At first Matilda thought her sleeves were getting longer in the laundry, though Matilda would later admit that this didn’t really make sense. When she asked her friends if they thought she had Moranis Syndrome, they not so cleverly responded, “Don’t you mean Moranis Shmoranis Syndrome?”

Matilda continued to be alarmed at her apparently shortening arms. Yankel watched with delight as she rolled up her sleeves a little more each week. His delight quickly turned to frustration, as it seemed apparent that Matilda had no intention of leaving medical school. After two months, Matilda’s bunched sleeves were so voluminous that she could no longer rest her arms against her sides; she was beginning to resemble a child in a snowsuit. Every day, Yankel grew more and more anxious that Matilda would expose his obnoxious study habits.

Conflicted about what to do next, Yankel went to one of his mentors, Isaac. All gunners accumulate mentors so as to have every possible advantage in any possible situation. Isaac was just one of many mentors that Yankel had collected, but Isaac was his favorite. Isaac was an anesthesiologist, but not by choice; he had wanted to be a surgeon, but his fingers were too thick to manipulate the instruments. So Isaac accepted as a consolation that he could at least, as an anesthesiologist, tell surgeons what to do, which was the next best thing.

Yankel never met Isaac in his office, but rather, would scrub in on surgeries so that Isaac didn’t have to waste any time. During one such surgery, Yankel confronted Isaac with his dilemma. “Is she hot?” asked Isaac, only half-joking. “Take me seriously!” Yankel whined. “If she tells anyone that I study in the middle of the night, I don’t know what I’ll do.” While Isaac was busy calming Yankel, neither of them had time to notice that Matilda Schmilda was shadowing the same surgery and had heard their entire conversation.

While one might think she would be angry that Yankel had convinced her she was dying just because he didn’t trust her, years of teasing about her name had made Matilda very meek. Relieved that her sleeves had indeed been getting longer, and not her arms getting shorter, she decided that she would find Yankel at his study spot at night and explain to him that he had nothing to worry about, and that he shouldn’t waste his time lengthening her sleeves.

So that night, at 3:07 am, Matilda found Yankel, hunched over a desk while he pored over a notebook. She was wearing jeans and a green turtleneck with sleeves that trailed on the ground. The moment she opened her mouth to whisper “Yankel,” he jumped up with a start, panicked, and hurled a computer monitor in her direction. Computer monitors are much more resilient than movies and television would have one believe, and it fell, unscathed to the ground. Matilda, though, was not so lucky. The monitor had crushed her chest and killed her instantly. Yankel hastily picked up the monitor and placed it back on the desk, and ran from the room.

The next morning, Matilda’s body was found, and it was apparent to everyone that she had finally succumbed to her Moranis syndrome…

Whatever happened to Yankel?  To continue reading the rest of the story, please visit here.
Please don’t forget to comment below.  We’d love to hear what you got from the story. 🙂