I feel like such a naive fool with this med school stuff.

Gold Humanism emails were sent out soliciting "nominations", and a few of my classmates approached me and said they'd nominated me for several of the nomination categories. I thanked them, and trusted that the process would find the most qualified, whether that was me or someone else; trusted that beyond nominations there'd be some sort of faculty input or an actual election.

Nope. I felt like such a pollyanna when I opened my email to find membership had already been awarded, and moreso when I saw that many of the winners were from the same club and had clearly nominated each other, and later learned that another winner had sent out an email saying studying had taken all their time in med school, but pointing out all the humanitarian work they did in undergrad and asking for votes. On the plus side one of the people I nominated was is a great human who emotionally and academically needed help and she ended up getting an award as well, so I'm very happy that in at least one case it worked out as it should, but it was shocking to see some of the other winners.