I realized a few days ago that all my posts on this blog have recently been always related to medicine and medical life. They have been more of a guidance and philosophical posts which thankfully many readers have appreciated. Even then I feel I need to take up some different topics.
I feel proud to tell you that I have been requested by a friend of mine to also contribute to her blog called Medicowesome and I am indeed honored to have been given this opportunity to write actual academic explanations on the basis of my meager and limited medical knowledge and understanding. However I believe that the concept of this blog is really amazing since it is a perspective of us LEARNERS about the intriguing field of medicine.
So I request you to check out Medicowesome for epic mnemonics, memorable doodles and easy to remember tricks for our common medical exam questions. You can request for specific topics and concept explanations if you would like to be cleared on the blog too.
Happy studying! :)
"Why always win?"
"Why ever lose?"
"But not winning isn't equivalent to losing!"
"How different is it anyway?"
This was the conversation I had with Yash and Bhargavi one late night while working on the medical symposium team 2 years ago. We were talking about the potential of our topic and the possibilities of us out-rightly dominating the other teams. I JUST WANTED to win. They were fine if we didn't really win because the learning opportunity with the project itself was so huge and worth all the efforts. Now I am not saying they didn't care. But I remember that I literally cried when they declared AFMC as the winner that year while we didn't even stand third. On the contrary, when LTMMC won last year, I danced like a school kid, jumping around in the INHS Asvini campus with the navy officials and renowned doctors around us, with the entire team, in spite of me actually not being the official team member. I think I am a sore loser. Perhaps that's what makes me a desperate winner.
I was watching Jack Canfield's videos online few days ago, where he was talking about the Power of Dreams and the importance of telling your dreams to others. He said, telling someone about what you really want to do with your life or achieve in life makes you accountable to yourself, because now cannot go back from the 'oh-so-impossible' dream that you thought of, to something miniscule and mediocre. This article is about me telling you about my dreams. I am not sure if you'll find it arrogant, boastful, inspiring or simply ridiculous, but I want to write because this is what I believe. Truly. This is what gives me strength.
I am currently giving my practical examinations of third minor year of MBBS. I am pretty confident today and I believe in my preparation for the subjects this year. I am editing this draft while I should be reading Dhingra, my ENT book. But I know that I know. I know that now reading Dhingra for about 11th time isn't going to teach me a lot more than what I already know about ENT from the book. Yes, I'll understand the deeper intricacies better but I am pretty sure that I will give my best shot at the viva anyway without it. The reason I am writing this article today is because I see myself being calm and not panicking like last year when I wasn't so strong with my concepts. At the same time, I see many of my friends probably ten times better prepared than me and still scurrying about something the 15th time and still not being confident about it. I am not saying that its a bad thing, in fact I sincerely respect that kind of preparation, but I frankly believe that there is a fine line between underestimating your potential and the desire to learn more while being confident and strongly grounded. And a similar thin line exists between being unaware of your deficiencies, lack of preparation, ignorant and being calm, cool and confident about what you know.
My Baba tell this to me many times - 90% of the people out there are underestimating themselves or overestimating themselves. The remaining 10% who manage to know exactly where they stand and what they need to do to get better are the real winners and happy about their life. Now I don't know in which group I lie, but I bet that everybody would want to be in that 10% group.
Baba also tells me that you don't someday randomly become a winner by just being OK about not being a winner throughout. Its a daily habit, a process, an addiction of not settling for anything less than winning. This was my answer to Yash's question, "Why always win?" I know it sounds arrogant, but it makes me desperate to do anything to win. I can't rejoice that I scored above 70% in the finals, I will regret that I didn't study enough to beat someone who secured the first rank. I won't be happy with just getting a rank in my college, but I will keep sulking about the fact that someone in JJ got the Gold Medal in the subject that I considered as my forte. I am foolish enough to keep thinking similarly even when I frankly know that my preparation is not up to the mark. I probably belong to that group of overestimating non successful people. But I know that it is because of this belief that I managed to go for my Microbiology practical even without having read the entire book once and still got a distinction in it, where I knew I didn't deserve it. The most hilarious thing being that instead of being thankful for a really good result I managed to sulk for not scoring first rank that year and being second instead.
And that formed the basis of my study and work ethic this year. Which grew to dreaming about a Gold Medal in ENT. There. I finally told you what I secretly wish for. I know that probably I am going to be made fun of and criticized for being apparently so over confident. But it is this dream that gives me strength to read a topic like Glomus tumour or Proptosis at 4 am in the morning, on the night prior to exam when I am feeling dead sleepy, something that is rarely asked in the papers! The dream doesn't let you be fine with just passing this year and promising yourself how, "agle saal mein pehlese Harrison paddhunga" or being ok about at least getting 2 marks by, "kuchh toh likh denge re, anyway rare question hai." I desperately want 9 on 9 even on that odd question of Optic Neuritis because I had read it only once many days ago, but I had then taken the efforts to search what Marcus Gunn pupil looks like and why it is so common with Multiple Sclerosis. Oh, the joy of watching Dr. Foreman telling Dr. HOUSE why he thinks that the blindness could be because of optic neuritis and why he thinks the patient has MS! You drink to get high? I get high this way! The satisfaction of knowing, and the belief that I know!
In fact, if you are reading this you are also most likely a winner. I bet you must've been a topper in your school or junior college or probably till last year. Just ask yourself, when did you give up about "pehla number" thinking that getting it always was impossible and convincing yourself that there are better people than you out there? 'I am hardworking, but XYZ is so talented they don't even need hard work' or 'I can remember things by reading just once but ABC has read this 10 times already.' Somewhere, someday you 'grew up' to tell yourself that you can no more run back to your mom and dad with a report card in your hand, telling them how you got full in all subjects. Somewhere along the way you lost the taste for addictive winning!
Now I am not saying that its possible to stay pumped with adrenaline every day and going all in about everything you do. Yash still makes fun of me about the way I was explaining to him my concept of life - If you chart your happiness, satisfaction and achievement of life time across the age axis, you will see that it more or less resembles a sine wave. You do the right thing, you succeed, you're happy. And you just procrastinate, give up on something majorly important, fail temporarily and decide to do better the next time. This is completely normal. There are going to be crests AS WELL AS the troughs. It is just impossible to have only a rising linear line. What decides where we eventually go is what we do when we are on that trough. Most of the times we DECIDE to do something about it, which we know is the ideal way and the sure shot path to success, but there are times that we fail to EXECUTE what we decided. The things to be done and efforts to be taken to put yourself on the crest again sometimes seem impossible and we eventually convince ourself that, "hey, just staying here isn't so bad either!" The problem is that this trough becomes your new crest which you will soon strive to maintain because you became fine with not taking efforts and soon a deeper trough will follow. Eventually it becomes a 'Positive Feedback Cycle' which Guyton had so beautifully explained. This is where I wanted to talk about doing the 'Right' thing.
We are blessed to be born in the Indian society which is full of values and morals, where we have been guided properly about the wrong and the right by our parents and learnt about it from every medium. Few years ago I wrote an article called 'The Better You' where I wrote how we always know deep down what is right but choose to ignore it. Eventually it becomes a positive feedback cycle. In my second year I did too many extra curricular activities which helped me a lot towards building a wholesome, multi faceted personality, yes, but I was very under-prepared academically and there was a point where I would check the mark list to see whether I had passed the subject. Soon, it came down to studying only the 'markings' and only studying 'Bhalani Question Sets" where I had rattofied perfect answers to be written but would be jittery when it came to vivas and always scared, what if they ask 'Cancer drugs' SAQ in Pharmac final? I was scared of Pathology because I hadn't read entire Robbins. Many juniors from all around the country would write to me and request for "Guide to Second MBBS: The DOs and the DON'Ts." But frankly I hadn't read even Robbins completely to be advising on the chapters to be specifically read from Boyd's pathology. Hence I would reply back to them saying that now that they are in MBBS they shall carve out their own way to study everything in coming years. I didn't believe that I was anywhere good enough to write anything, hence such a long leave from the blog. I think that at this point I was in a NEGATIVE 'Positive Feedback Cycle'. I wasn't doing what I should've been doing, failing at everything and justifying how it was no more necessary to read books cover to cover since I could still score decent with just the 'markings'. It just goes on aggravating, accelerating until one point where you look back, get anguished and say, "Enough! I can be better than this!" It is this point where you break away from that NEGATIVE cycle to do something RIGHT which now puts you in a POSITIVE 'Positive Feedback Cycle.' Soon things aren't so difficult and impossible to achieve and soon you start regaining the confidence in your capabilities. I started gymming, talking more often to my parents, reading non 'markings' questions even 2 days before an upcoming exam, telling myself that it doesn't matter how much I score in these internals but I should have a holistic view of this subject and complete knowledge about it. I stopped talking about other people's lives, gossiping, gave up the urge to be talking to everybody always and the constant desire to be noticeable, switched off my WhatsApp notifications permanently and developed a habit to not touch my phone for entire day. I started chanting Gayatri Mantra whenever distressed and doing Sashtaang Namaskar everyday to our caretaker here. I don't know what helped and when it did. But it for sure helped me grow more mature and understanding, while also helping me identify my dreams and pursue them better. This was the Power of 'Right.'
I think I have again managed to write yet another philosophical, irrelevant and a long boring article but I am happy about this, since today I am feeling very satisfied about this entire academic year.
Jack Canfield asks what do you see yourself doing in your perfect world? I don't know which specialty I would be doing Post Graduation in. I love Medicine and OBGY both equally. I want to be the honorary lecturer and a guest lecturer at the major international conferences. If I become a Physician, I want to see my name as the author of some article in Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine.
"Recent Advances - by Dr. Sujay Sanjay Nigudkar"
