Interviews...

I am in the midst of preparing for a medical school interview. God knows, I almost never thought I’d actually be here. I’m actually almost at a lost for words and that is an almost impossible feat. I’m anxious and nervous and worried that I won’t find the right words, or worst, the right examples to substantiate the qualities in the stories I’m supposed to recant for the interview panel. At this point, I’m wondering what was scarier, my DEP audition or this interview? Will I sound convincing enough? Enthusiastic enough? Confident enough? Calm enough? Intelligent enough? Will I go into game face and become emotionless and keep too detached a tone? Will I over do it?

I guess in doing everything for the first time, there is that element of fear of the unknown, of failing, that grips you. Practice always helps, but practice is always in a controlled environment, and when you’re in the field, anything and everything can go wrong. That’s Murphy’s Law. Once you clear that initial attempt, everything becomes easier. That fear of failing diminishes significantly. It will never completely disappear, but then it becomes minimal and recedes to the back of the mind.

I think the biggest question that grips me is not so much illustrating what a qualities a good doctor must possess or whether I can demonstrate a distinct sense of moral clarity. I think my biggest question is the perennial one: Why do you want to be a doctor?

There is certainly no end to the variations of answers that could be given for this question. There are a myriad of patterns that can be observed from the various reasons I’ve heard over the years, yet each one is individual and personal and never simple. One doesn’t simply sign up to spend the next decade in extensive and tedious training without first knowing what one is getting into.

On my part, it is essentially a combination of three factors: growing up in a family of doctors, my great love of science and interest in medical science and my equally great desire to help people.

I am from a family that has produced three generations of doctors. My parents are both doctors, as were my grandparents and my great grandfather as well (his wife was a nurse). Being from a family of doctors, I have, from day one, been submerged into the world of medicine. From being taken along to clinics or to the hospital while my parents tended to patients or went on rounds to watching my grandfather leave the house at all hours to deliver babies to enjoying the privilege of having very patient relatives would are willing to explain all my curious questions about medicine, biology, disease and drugs. As a result, I am fully aware of the both the positive and negatives sides of the career. I truly believe that despite the difficult life of being on call or the long long years of study and necessity of being the perpetual student, the chance to help a sick person get better and to make a difference in their lives is fully rewarding and that the ability to do this with science makes it even more so.

I also have a great love of science, particularly medical science. Being a naturally curious boy, I was always interested in learning how things worked and looking for explanations for naturally occurring phenomena. I loved learning science in primary school and when I had the opportunity in secondary school I jumped at the opportunity to obtain higher level material. I was reading and understanding O level sciences at the age of fourteen. Biology was of particular interest to me and I loved finding out how living things worked. Living things were always a mystery compared to machines, with all their parts that were specifically put there by the genius engineers, which is still fascinating, however, living things have that random factor. Machines can’t suddenly grow cancer or react to different environments, they work the way they are supposed to, unlike living things.

The more I learned about biology, the more I devoured it, and as I started to learn about the human body I was ensorcelled and entranced. The way everything worked is amazing. For example, I amazed at how in pregnancy, from the point of conception whereby a single cell is formed from the fusion of the gametes divides and grows in a sack within the uterus of a mother over a period of nine months to produce a full baby. At every step, the development is just precious and mindboggling. How the mother’s immune system doesn’t destroy what is now a foreign cell and how every system gets affected. Or the various stages of skin repair, the inflammatory to the proliferative to the epitheliation to maturation. I’m just fascinated. I love to learn and be challenged in new ways.

With regards to helping people, I was brought up from young to always help those who are in need and as I grew up, I realize that it is something I honestly enjoy doing. Medicine is the only field that I can think of that will allow me to help people on a daily basis and have the opportunity to see the effects of my work. My grandmother always used to quote the anonymous physician who said that doctors should ‘cure sometimes, relief often and comfort always.’ And that is sometime I have seen on every attachment that I have been on, the majority of patients leave the doctor’s room with a look of relief and comfort on their faces. And this, to me, is very rewarding.

Hence, the opportunity to daily combine these two great interests of mine as a career is most appealing and I am enthusiastically hoping to explore this. Furthermore, the long training and intellectual rigour of medicine provide an ideal platform to challenge and push myself further. It’s a like a large and very long puzzle and I enjoy putting the pieces together.