Self-Belief is Uncommon

My UG And PG colleges were polar opposites. Our humble UG college only came into existence in 2006. By the time I had joined in 2012, only a couple of batches had passed out. We didn't have many seniors to look up to. 

When I had joined MBBS, the general feeling I got from many of the faculty were that we were losers for not joining somewhere better. Many of them had long careers elsewhere in the government sector and only came here after retirement. Perhaps they felt the entire institution was beneath them. And it probably was to some extent if one is to be brutally honest. 

But what that meant was batch after batch, students developed an inferiority complex. We were not meant for big things. Most wished to simply pass and see how far they can go in a small clinic setup. We were made to feel like losers and eventually we began to believe that we we'll always be like that. 

Students from other colleges seemed to be better than us by default. We felt it was inevitable that we'll always be behind them. 

Serendipity

It was the middle of final year MBBS, a few weeks after my mother lost her battle to cancer after 6 long years. The house felt emptier, lonelier. I needed some change from the usual routine. 

I was the class representative of the batch. Which basically meant getting abused by both faculty and your batchmates on a near daily basis. A very pleasant job indeed. 

One day I was called by a person who had graduated from AIIMS Delhi (my number was being freely distributed everywhere - perks of being class rep). They were making a course for learning internal medicine conceptually which was not for cracking any exam in particular. The idea seemed different. He sold it well. I was interested. 

I managed to convince exactly 0 of my peers to join. What's the point of a course if it's not for an exam? The average Indian student cannot fathom the concept of learning without having an exam as the goal behind it all.  And it was also never done before in Trivandrum and nobody had heard of it. 

I still decided to join. Partly because I didn't want to stay in the house that much. And partly because I was always the kind of person who didn't follow the herd if I didn't think it was right. The first class had about 3 people total. At that point, I wasn't hopeful that it'd turn out to be anything special. That would change over the next 6 months. 

The classes were on the weekend, after our college classes would end. They were not anywhere near as extensive as the Marrow of today's world but those classes were where I had learnt the fundamental concepts of medicine - valvular heart disease, localisation of a stroke etc. Concepts that I remember to this day. 

But what actually made the course memorable were the things discussed in between the classes, during breaks. 

I'd always imagined AIIMS Delhi doctors to be this superhuman breed of hyper-intelligent beings. It turned out they were much more human. They'd bunk classes, get into trouble just llike we would. They were also honest about the times they made mistakes. 

They were also brief discussions on the more philosophical aspects of the profession. 

"How do you find happiness beyond the profession?"

"How to make enough money to actually consider yourself rich". 

Nobody wrote these things down but I still remember those talks as if they happened yesterday. 

And it was then that I decided I wanted to do PG in AIIMS Delhi. Over a matter of months, I started to believe I was capable of much better things than I was lead to believe in the previous 4 years. 

I always consider my decision to join this course as the turning point in my career. If I hadn't joined then, I would have never joined AIIMS Delhi later on. Because I'd have never believed in myself.