Cramming

ON A recent trip abroad, I had to fill up the immigration card which asks what the passenger’s occupation is. I couldn’t write “student” anymore. After years of formal schooling (three years of pre-school, 10 years of elementary and high school, four years of college, and five years of medical school, including one year of internship), I was officially done being a student. I couldn’t write down “self-employed” either, because while my name is listed as one of the owners of our family business, it was never really mine to begin with. Using the word “physician” or “doctor” was definitely out of the question as I haven’t taken (and passed) the board examinations yet. I decided to write “unemployed.”

After spending several years in school, I am now one of the millions of fresh graduates who are eager to be a part of the work force. However, unlike many other graduates, I don’t need to prepare a comprehensive resumé yet. I don’t need to rush through the morning traffic to get to my interview on time. I don’t need to look at classified ads every day looking for a company that might want to hire fresh graduates like me. Instead, I wake up in the morning, exercise, eat, take a bath and study for the board examinations until the next meal time rolls by, eat, study, eat, study and sleep.

Since I finished my internship, every day has been like that. Of course, there are the occasional meet-ups with friends and school activities that are not to be missed, such as graduation. But every day for the past two months or so has seen me hitting the books (with the occasional sleep in between reading chapters). My life has been a bum’s dream come true.

But the pressure is intense, as many of my batchmates will attest. There seems to be a lot of time in my hands but in reality, cramming five years of learning (or supposed learning) in medical school into three months of study is not easy. Especially since my time has been spent mostly on going online (Facebook!), watching TV or the latest movie, and doing hobbies I used to do before medical school, such as cooking and writing.

My schedule would probably look easy to many who are already working. Most of my friends who did not take up medicine would rather go back to studying when life (and getting an allowance) was easier. I am sure many of my friends who are now doctors would want to return to their lives before they started practicing their profession. But really, who would want to sit on a desk for six to eight hours a day (and sometime even 12 hours) just to cram in knowledge I should have acquired (or at least our teachers think we should have known) by now?

But I have already gone this far. What started as a childhood dream is almost becoming a reality. I would never have imagined that I could get through all the countless duties and the many sleepless nights not so long ago. And now there’s another thing to hurdle to fulfill the dream: the board examinations.

The focus of most fresh medical graduates is cramming for the board exams. Everyone wants to pass or even top the exams. But passing should be easy compared to the countless decisions a physician has to make to save a patient’s life. So during these three months, I will just focus on the board examinations. I have no intention of writing the word “unemployed” again as an occupation. I want to write “physician.”

Korina Ada D. Tanyu, 25, is a graduate of the University of the Philippines College of Medicine Batch 2011.