Five Lessons I’ve Learnt In Med School

By now I expect that its no news that I’m in my final year in medical school right? Yes! So I’ve been meaning to blog about some of the lessons I’ve learnt on my med school journey but i haven’t been able to make them into well formed sentences so I called on my alobam, classmate, sometimes photographer, fellow blog owner and all round great guy Ayomide Samuel a.k.a “Saga Christos” to help me out.
Here are five lessons he has learnt in med school.

Truth is, there are a myriad of lessons about life i’ve learnt in med school, right from the moment I stepped in till now, such that choosing which five to share in this post now looks harder than I previously imagined but I have tried my best to trim them down to just five.

1. Don’t take life too serious :

This has got to be one of my biggest and best lessons so far and for obvious reasons, to those that know me  I’m the kinda guy that has this I-can’t-kill-myself attitude to almost everything and truth is,I really can’t kill myself *munches popcorn*. And thankfully so far so good,my results have testified to the goodness of God despite my not 100% serious ways. Hallaluyah! Funny enough, while I was going through the year book of the graduating class just above mine,I noticed that one thing quite a number of them said they would have loved to do differently while in school, was to have had a bit more fun. I think I can rest my case now.

 2. Life isn’t always objective : Med school exams can be summarized into two categories: The Objective and the Subjective. The difference between the two is majorly that while the former is based totally on what you know,the latter is based mainly on what the examiner feels about you. Meaning,an examiner can choose to fail you just because the pink socks you wore causes him to itch and gag uncontrollably and therefore, that qualifies you as an bad student and a candidate for failure. Maybe I’m exaggerating but I hope you get the point. Life isn’t always gonna be fair to you or objective. You won’t always get what you deserve. Deal with it.

 3. All that glitters isn’t gold :

 If you ask ten students in med school if they’ll come to med school again in another life, I can bet my second nut that at least seven out of them will give you a resounding NO,with ten exclamation marks ‘!!!!!!!!!!’. (I’ll be one of them of course). And to think it’s this same Medicine some people became JAMB ambassadors for. I guess what I’m saying basically is that not everything that looks good on the outside tastes so good when you get inside.

4. Never give up–

One thing that characterizes medical exams is the opportunity to have a resit when you fail and subsequently repeat the class if you fail again(sadly,both are very common in med school). Now,for some it’s usually a very traumatising experience at first but then when you’ve passed every single exam with a resit,it becomes nothing more than just another shot at success which is how I believe we all should see it. I’ve seen people fail and pass resit,I’ve seen others repeat and pass afterwards while a few brave ones have even been withdrawn only to start over and go back to do medicine again.(Them real niggas I tell you) I’m sure most of us know the story of Abraham Lincoln and his numerous failures before finally becoming President of the US of A. Wait! You don’t? Then you’re the reason Google exists, oya…Google it!

5. Just do You –

Like my good friend Solomon said in 984BC,the race is indeed not to the swift. I’ve seen people who attend classes and copy notes like their breathing depended on it go on to fail woefully while some who only attend classes when it’s time for exams pass ‘without any stress’. Another thing is, both those that get Distinctions at a point and those who had resits in every class, will have same certificate. Yup! No 1st-class or stuff like that, y’all are equally doctors. Truth is, looking at these seemingly “super students” will just give gyou unnecessary tachycardia and hypertension. Therefore, my conclusion is this, just find happiness in all you do and find your own pace and all will be well with you.

Check out his blog : www.sagachristos.wordpress.com

Cassandra Ikegbune
xoxo