Medical school has been a rollercoaster ride, and not exactly the fun type. It has, for the most part, been a cycle of growing anxiety as you prepare for one exam, and a renewal of the anxiety as you anticipate the results. There are, of course, little pockets of glee every now and then that punctuate the usually nerve-wracking experience that is medical school, but they are often obscured by the several challenges that medical school presents.
I started medical school as an enthusiastic teenager, one ready to take on whatever was thrown at him and to preserve a streak of excellence that I had upheld from primary school through secondary education simply by doing the barest minimum. The first few weeks in medical school were plain. It was the same monotonous routine of lectures, practical sessions, and a desperate attempt at committing to memory the volume of information I was being exposed to. I had judged my efforts satisfactory, and although my first exam experience was not the best, I was hopeful that I would hit a high score, perhaps a distinction.
The CBD/IBS results were released, and it was the first time I failed at anything. I felt everything, and I felt nothing at the same instant. I began to replay the examination in my head. Surely, there was a mistake somewhere. That could not have been my score.
Failing an exam is painful enough, but having to inform your parents of the results is a different kind of agony. Of course, I could spare myself the trouble by saying the results were not out, or by lying that I passed, but I decided to do the right thing, or what I thought was the right thing. I informed them of my poor performance.
For parents like mine who were used to their wards turning in a report card with straight As even after playing around all term, it was hard for them to wrap their heads around the possibility that I had failed. For them, it took more effort for me to fail at anything than to succeed. They believed that I had failed intentionally, and this added an extra layer to my grief.
I was upset, filled with rage, and reclusive. Upset because I had failed. I shouldn’t be failing at anything at all, but most of all, at academics. Who was I if I weren’t the smart kid on the block? I was enraged at the system. I began to see all the more clearly the faults in the system. I became more conscious of the impracticality of the academic calendar, to how long it took results to be released, to the subtle yet frequent insinuations that students who had failed like me served as living reminders to those who hadn’t to keep up their efforts lest they suffer the same fate. All these angered me. Then I felt out of place, like a fish placed on land. I lost my confidence and kept to myself. It seemed to me that when people looked at me, they saw that kid who had performed poorly in his examinations. I felt like a misfit in a group of scholars. The days that followed the release of the results were dark, often collapsing into one another, such that I would often mistake what day of the week it was.
Then lockdown happened and afforded me some time to gain clarity. I resumed after the pandemic to write another exam. This time, I had made peace with the possibility of failure even while I prepared for it.
It has been a few years, but that experience still colours my worldview. Failure is not only possible, it’s imminent, and to make peace with its likelihood is often a safe thing to do. This is perhaps the strongest impact medical school has had on me. I don’t know if it is pessimism or realism, and I am quite frankly, not too keen to find out, but after that release of our first results, I am not as enthusiastic as I was. I live with the constant reminder that failure is at arm’s length, and it can creep up on you in an instant.
As narrated by: Igbagbe Elijah (Ilorin, Nigeria).
This snippet is published as part of the series, Surviving Medical School.
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