Sep 16, 2012

Watches

Since early last year I've been dying to get a watch. I do not know why I associate professionalism with watches, but let me speculate:

1. Pulling out a phone to check the time is "disrespectful" (your older professors will assume you're getting a quick round of "words-with-friends" in).
2. Being successful but also professional means having functional bling. If I get a doctor's bag, it's going to be the most abstract Vera Bradley pattern I can find. If I have an excuse to have a watch, it will be like a crazy beautiful watch. It won't be like I'm "dressing" up (which would be unprofessional) because I actually need a timepiece (... well I mean technically. I think I can make the argument that I need a time piece).
3. It just feels like a doctorly thing to have. I want to be standing over a patient, taking their blood pressure, their heart and respiration rates, and instead of staring at a wall, I want to be looking somewhat at the patient so I don't seem distant. I also feel like there are a lot of portraits of doctors looking at their watches while assessing a patient's vitals.
4. Also, most obvious: being late is unprofessional. You can lose "professionalism points" from our clinical reasoning course by being late to lab. So yea, punctuality is professional.

Consequently, I've been obsessed with finding a watch. Stylistically, I'm pretty "out there," so the challenge is to try and find something that expresses my personality but doesn't force my personality onto others (or worse, offends people). I also don't want to drop much more than $100, so I went to overstock.com because it's really difficult to find cool watches for women. I guess time is more of like a "dude thing." I don't know and I didn't really care, until, after scrolling through about 500 watches I see this atrocity:


Not only is this thing disgusting, it also asks a very important question: why isn't there a "whimsical women's doctor theme white leather watch"? I do not think I want to put on an air of "whimsicality" when I begin rotations next year, but dammit, I want a doctor's watch made for my womenly wrists!

Well, I have since searched overstock.com for a doctor's watch, and they don't have any. I tried searching for "professional" watches, and of the 40 results I got, 39 of them were men's watches. The one female watch was for "professional divers." Which I guess is cool and stuff because hey! I would've never thought women could descend to the same depths as men due to their whimsical womenly constitution's and other almost-trivial-but-still-obnoxious sexist b***s***. 



Anyway, rant over. If you're curious, I bought the above two watches. The one on the right is transparent, which means I've finally gotten something that's actually my skin tone.... which is another thing I could complain about. But I won't. Since like, I'm in medical school and am like, totally busy and schizz.

4 comments:

  1. Vera bradley is for little girls and is sooo not profesional.

    Also, if you have to wash your hands a lot--which I hope you do--you should get a waterproof watch with a metal watch band wet leather is gross.

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  2. Ah yes, the one on the left is waterproof.

    And I said the most ABSTRACT vera bradley pattern available, because the material is very forgiving and the quality of most of their pieces is actually quite high.

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  3. now *I* want a vera bradly doctors bag. I mean - I need something to carry my stethescope around in!

    also - I am hoping to get away with my cheap watch from amazon in clinics next year. its not "professional" per-se but it is extremely practical and I knew a doctor at University of Chicago that used one just like it - perhaps that it me being "whimsical" :) - http://www.amazon.com/Timex-Womens-T5K020-Ironman-Traditional/dp/B000P0VEH8/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1347820537&sr=8-2&keywords=timex+women

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  4. I do have a soft spot for Timex watches! But I don't think I could pull off that pink and teal combination. I suppose time will tell when I eventually have to buy a timex watch because everything else breaks too easily.

    (and you should totally buy a vera bradley bag! they are surprisingly sturdy and most models have a ton of little pockets for all the more obscure doctoring tools ECR lab requires us to have...)

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