Iceberg

The iceberg has some wonderful peculiarities. The most important one is obviously its shape. What you see is the tip and there is a whole huge world of ice underneath. Final year is that world of ice. It all starts way back in first year when you are a starry-eyed kid, fresh out of junior college. You arrive at the gates of this strange place. You have lots of exciting hopes and dreams. More importantly, you have some really, really exciting preconceived ideas about how your new life is going to be. A week into college however, those ideas changes pretty dramatically.

You already fall behind your said timetable…the textbooks become hard to understand…the teachers and their English even harder…you wonder why there are so many new words you have to learn…and at some point of time, you ask yourself why you wanted this. Of course, the answer usually revolves around some ancient childhood dream (yours or your parents’), or the fact that you love Biology or (in my case) the fact that you know you couldn’t have gone through with the other option (Engg).

The problems that hit you the hardest don’t come in your first year. They aren’t even related to your first year subjects. And they involve people concerned with the administration of your college (especially if it’s a Government one), and people who are senior to you (beyond undergraduates). These problems are concerned with some subjects that nag you from the start of college to the end of college, namely PSM, Medicine, Surgery, ObGy, Paediatrics. And there is just one word that describes these problems completely.

JOURNALS

Yes, Journals. Nobody tells you in your first year that you should complete your PSM journal at that time or they are going to trouble you in Third year. No. You make that mistake and pay for it for half of you Third Minor. Similarly, there are 4 postings of each of the next 4 subjects I’ve mentioned above. Nobody bothers to tell you to write cases in that journal when you go for your first ever posting. In fact, if its Surgery in our college, you convince your Unit that a termend  examination is not necessary. You manage to live happily until reality strikes you in your final year.

Now instead of studying hard, you get down to completing journals. Journals of three previous terms. Then you get down to hunting the concerned people down. But, oops. Its been three years you know. The Chief Resident has started his own private consulting and is no longer concerned with your college. The Lecturer of that time has done his required duty and moved onto better things. And the Junior Resident (who you’d called an idiot and many other things for marking you absent on some ancient day) is now the Chief Resident. Yikes. It is going to be difficult to explain how you’ve managed to get so late :-p

We’ve been lucky enough to get Units who either pushed us into completing our journals in the concerned posting itself, or have at least decent people who don’t create a ruckus when it comes to signing journals for 2 years ago. But, there are certain people who do create some problems. Like our first Surgery Unit. They took a term-end examination before giving us signs on our journals for our 2^nd year posting.

Well, Medicine is tough. The day you enter that Medical College with those twinkling eyes, your training starts. And Journals and their completion are the best tools to teach perseverance, determination and patience. You also end up learning the origin of the famous proverbs “Try Try till you Succeed” and “Try Try, Don’t Cry” . Yup, definitely Med School!!