Sir
Sitting aloof in this wilderness, far from the madding crowd that is my home state nowadays, it seems surreal, almost dissociative, to receive this from you: that some medical students, of a prestigious medical college, have been caught cheating in exams.
Of other things, it reinstates my lax sense of belonging to a system that I despise, yet which has bestowed me with the best years of my life: my medical school, and the machinery running the juggernaut of medical education in my home. As I squint over the first page (albeit rare) headline generated by a medical college, on matters as trivial as an annual exam, I can not help but prod my not so distant memory: sitting through the same tests, walking those same corridors, and cramming my brain with the same rote that my predecessors have since eons.
I never wanted to be a doctor. And thank heavens, I have not become one. I slept through medical school, crammed up before tests, devoured midnight oil for practicals, and talked my way out of exams. I possess only a working class memory, plebian intelligence, but sterling capacity for rote. As regards empathy, I would variably be classified as insensitive, to the degree of even being pachydermatous. My respect for human life is no more than an average working class no-damn-giving individual; in fact, I resent antibiotics because of my respect for unicellular life. In spite of all these shortomings, I managed to squeeze and wiggle out of medical school, somehow survive internship, and get myself a medical degree. Never, in my years since medical school, I have noticed myself transform into the mythical, almost Godlike creature, the proverbial `Doctor'.
From day one in medical school, it was hammered into my subconscious, that I belong to a special class of Doctors, the `cream of society'. As if being recruited into some secret society, I walked through all the rites of passage, listened to stories of great physicians and their instantaneous diagnoses, memorised catchy `Medical quotes' (look it up in Google, there's a world of wit out there!), and as if by deliberation, committed myself to rote.
Now, like any self respecting rote learner, I am aware that logic, critical thinking and imagination are key to the process of education; but I found these skills increasingly unnecessary, to the point of being an impediment, in medical school. The premises are astrew with `made easy' notes, usually handed over from the senior class (ad infinitum), to redeem us poor souls from the inferno of exams. And I asked myself, if these few pages of a condensed down `note' can get me a medical degree, then why bother my brain over such trivialities?
And so it went. I went berserk on my rote learning spree, enrolled myself in a few `private tuitions' (yes, there are coaching classes for doctors too!), chewed on whatever was thrown at me, developed a good sense of what to expect in exams, and one fine morning I was quietly handed over a shiny new medical degree by the clerk. He even put a stamp on it before continuing with his mid-morning lunch.
My freshly minted fellow doctors went all hoopla about it and arranged a `Felicitation (whom? ourselves?) and Oath Taking (Yes! THAT oath you know all about) Ceremony'. I was overwhelmed by the gravity of the oath that they had sworn on that day, and I am sure that they are living up to it. But I could not bring myself to say `I consecrate my life to the service of humanity'. I am not even sure what the entire gamut of `humanity' entails, let alone devoting myself to its service.
Never have I cheated in an exam, or I should rather say, been caught cheating. I have not carried a book under my bench, never eavesdropped into the whisper going on in the next row; I have seldom excused myself from the exam hall for a bladder break. No. My methods were more unconventional. I committed everything to my memory. I copied stuff from my head onto the answer sheet. Stuff that I don't comprehend till this day. Which makes me no less a doctor (rote learning has got me an MD! I am a `specialist' now! Yay!), but places me next to these hapless bunch of students found `cheating' in an exam.
Its such a welcome feeling to know that I belong to the majority. Don't you agree?
