Sunday, November 07, 2004
Vexation on friendship
A dear friend recently passed her exam after numerous attempts. Hurrah!Hurrrah!
This is by no means an attempt to humiliate anyone, just a fruitful scribble, as I was jogging my thoughts away about friends and acquaintances at 13:37 on a gloomy Sunday afternoon, listening to Sahri- Memori Bahgia.
Trust me the exam itself is bloody difficult, it should come with health hazard warnings posted left right and center. She looked pretty much under the weather everytime I saw her during the period building up to the exam. Poor thing was having enough.
After her third attempt, and failing it yet again, I found her almost everynight in my room, not really looking for anything in particular, but I knew she had so many questions she desperately wanting answers to . Most of them were whys.
She painted a bleak outlook for herself, ruminating that this is it for her, that she's going to quit medicine altogether and succumb to the pressure of her parents fixing her up with a hairy 30- something- year old Pakistani accountant from London. Who'd probably have to ask permission from his dear mother even to piss, let alone choosing which yogurt for the curry. We normally get quite 'critical' about Pakistani men after a handful or maruku. I called it bitching but she'd always disagree.
The conversations always careened towards relationships and exams. To both of us these were the two denominators for happiness and success. We sat down and examined what could have gone wrong. We established that we are both crap at sorting out the relationship part of the equation so we did a post mortem on her exam technique. Anyone who got this far in his/her career would have no problems in getting through a medical book, I told her, and we both agreed on that.
I have kept my tone suggestive but never derogatory. I wanted her to have a look at how she had answered the questions not what or how much she knows, as I know the much we know might vary from one person to the other but, the state of mind at which you enter the exam hall and the method at which you revise and question yourself in order to prepare for the big day is probably of more importance.
We go to exam to regurgitate what we know, so why in preparing for it we do boring things like reading? Shouldn't we be doing more fun things like short quizzes? Given you answer correctly, the motivation to learn more will get fuelled and you will inevitably read more. I know it's still reading, but let reading be a tool to revisions, not a sole objective to actually open a book thinking you will pass an exam. Yes geeky indeed. I was most chaffed at my newfound ability to consult on a serious matter like exams.
After sorting out Plan A for her, I told her how grateful I was for having her around in the apartment, the cooking when I wasn't feeling well, little things like picking up the posts from the main hall, still putting away things for me in the kitchen after nagging me about the pots and plates overflowing the strainer and me forgetting about it all over again. ( nagging never does me any good). Most importantly her moving up from London to come up to Yorkshire to work in the same hospital as me.
I was also reminding her on how some of the things I always thought were too complicated and tiresome to do during the ward rounds were actually the things that speeded it up. Methodically and meticulously was how she did it. I am yet to see somebody who can do as good a job as that. She is one true gem and I made a point to let her know.
2 weeks ago she was on cloud 9 when told that she had finally passed. What striked me was that she thought the Plan A may have worked to her advantage and partly contributed to her passing but my words on her very attributes were to her the very thing that made her believed in herself again.
Nothing so fortifies a friendship as a belief on the part of one friend that she/he is superior to others. It is in my opinion, the best gift a friend could ever give to a friend to keep the dynamics of a friendship going, positive and strong. Well done girl, you deserve it.
This is by no means an attempt to humiliate anyone, just a fruitful scribble, as I was jogging my thoughts away about friends and acquaintances at 13:37 on a gloomy Sunday afternoon, listening to Sahri- Memori Bahgia.
Trust me the exam itself is bloody difficult, it should come with health hazard warnings posted left right and center. She looked pretty much under the weather everytime I saw her during the period building up to the exam. Poor thing was having enough.
After her third attempt, and failing it yet again, I found her almost everynight in my room, not really looking for anything in particular, but I knew she had so many questions she desperately wanting answers to . Most of them were whys.
She painted a bleak outlook for herself, ruminating that this is it for her, that she's going to quit medicine altogether and succumb to the pressure of her parents fixing her up with a hairy 30- something- year old Pakistani accountant from London. Who'd probably have to ask permission from his dear mother even to piss, let alone choosing which yogurt for the curry. We normally get quite 'critical' about Pakistani men after a handful or maruku. I called it bitching but she'd always disagree.
The conversations always careened towards relationships and exams. To both of us these were the two denominators for happiness and success. We sat down and examined what could have gone wrong. We established that we are both crap at sorting out the relationship part of the equation so we did a post mortem on her exam technique. Anyone who got this far in his/her career would have no problems in getting through a medical book, I told her, and we both agreed on that.
I have kept my tone suggestive but never derogatory. I wanted her to have a look at how she had answered the questions not what or how much she knows, as I know the much we know might vary from one person to the other but, the state of mind at which you enter the exam hall and the method at which you revise and question yourself in order to prepare for the big day is probably of more importance.
We go to exam to regurgitate what we know, so why in preparing for it we do boring things like reading? Shouldn't we be doing more fun things like short quizzes? Given you answer correctly, the motivation to learn more will get fuelled and you will inevitably read more. I know it's still reading, but let reading be a tool to revisions, not a sole objective to actually open a book thinking you will pass an exam. Yes geeky indeed. I was most chaffed at my newfound ability to consult on a serious matter like exams.
After sorting out Plan A for her, I told her how grateful I was for having her around in the apartment, the cooking when I wasn't feeling well, little things like picking up the posts from the main hall, still putting away things for me in the kitchen after nagging me about the pots and plates overflowing the strainer and me forgetting about it all over again. ( nagging never does me any good). Most importantly her moving up from London to come up to Yorkshire to work in the same hospital as me.
I was also reminding her on how some of the things I always thought were too complicated and tiresome to do during the ward rounds were actually the things that speeded it up. Methodically and meticulously was how she did it. I am yet to see somebody who can do as good a job as that. She is one true gem and I made a point to let her know.
2 weeks ago she was on cloud 9 when told that she had finally passed. What striked me was that she thought the Plan A may have worked to her advantage and partly contributed to her passing but my words on her very attributes were to her the very thing that made her believed in herself again.
Nothing so fortifies a friendship as a belief on the part of one friend that she/he is superior to others. It is in my opinion, the best gift a friend could ever give to a friend to keep the dynamics of a friendship going, positive and strong. Well done girl, you deserve it.
