The high-yield appeal
The High-Yield Appeal
By: Thomas Huisman
In medical school, everything revolves around being high yield. We chase high-yield videos, high-yield question banks, high-yield facts, high-yield topics, etc. All this, in pursuit of mastering an impossible amount of material in a finite amount of time. “High yield” has become our guiding principle, our North Star, and our collective shorthand for efficiency and value.
But medicine didn’t start this trend. Agriculture did.
Most families are only a generation or two removed from farming, when crop yield was a matter of survival, not just success. The same phrase that defines our study strategies once described how well the earth repaid a season’s worth of labor and risk. And while less than 2% of the U.S. workforce is made of farmers, many of us know friends or family who suddenly raised a flock of chickens or took up gardening during the COVID-19 pandemic. Homesteading surged as people rediscovered the simple satisfaction of growing something real. A truly original high yield hobby.
As preprofessional students, we’ve all chased yield before. Everyone remembers the growing pains of chemistry lab, where we struggled to reach the ever-elusive theoretical yield. Some of us may have even kept our thumbs on the scale as we measured our precious product. I certainly don’t miss those days.
But the point remains the same. Yield is ubiquitous. Food service workers and warehouse operators measure their yield in time, space and effort, finding ways to stretch resources and energy to make a shift run smoother. Even the premier financial market of the Midwest, the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT), revolves around yield. Consider this: CBOT’s trade volume is at least $100 trillion in raw commodities annually.
This massive network of farmers, traders and transporters all work to produce the wheat, soybeans, corn, metals and oil that eventually become the food we eat, the cars we drive and yes, even the meds we prescribe.
As physicians, we are part of the very fabric and foundation of our communities. But so, too, are service workers. As it turns out, we’re not all that different. We all want our work to matter. We all want to make something of the effort we invest, whether it’s crops, compounds, calories or competencies, the farmer in the field, the line cook at the grill and the med student in the library are all bound by the same quiet hope that their work will amount to something worthwhile.
So, the next time we reach into our bag of “high yield study strategies,” maybe it’s worth remembering that we’re part of a much larger story. We, too, are laborers trying to make something grow. It turns out yield isn’t just about output. It’s about what grows from the effort. And in that sense, providers and patients alike are all working the same soil.
Thomas Huisman is a first-year RMED student who dreams of being a doctor, writer, and farmer… in that order… most days.
huisman2@uic.edu