Ayche's 12 Step Program to Gunning - Step 12

Step 12 - Don't Actually Be a Gunner

Every student should do his or her best to learn the material, but actual "gunning" takes the emphasis off of patient care and puts it squarely on the ego of Hot-Shot Med Student. I attend a medical school that has switched to a Pass/Fail system. It seems many schools are switching to a non-grade grading scale to encourage cooperative learning. I do not know how successful these are at other schools, but at my school they still dole out "Honors" for the top 10% and keep GPAs so students can qualify for AOA (the medical honor society). It makes me wonder, what's the point?

We are all in this together, right? While there is nothing wrong with being a good student, it is at least as important to do what you can to help out your classmates. This view is antithetical to true gunning. I have much more respect for a classmate with average grades who sends the class a brief email concerning an important piece of information the professor remembered when asked a question after lecture, compared to a 4.0 student who in the same situation would keep the information to himself. If my class were a venn diagram, the circles of "knows the most" and "shares knowledge" only slightly overlap. Why? Gunning.