Alone

 

When you step into med school you are excited, not only for the joy of learning medical science that awaits you but also for the joy of enjoying college life as a whole. Especially when you are a batch of medicos who have been stuck at home for most of the first year of college due to a pandemic situation, the prospect of actually visiting your college feels like a much sought-after forbidden pleasure. You dream of being free of the rules and regulations that kept you bound at school, dream of finding friends who you can actually vibe with, and you dream of having the time of your lives together.

For a while after coming to college things seem to go according to plan as everyday offers a new experience and you seem to meet new, lovely people every day. But this phase is short lasting especially at med school where the burden of academics grows heavier every year and the level of competition increases manifold. The people you started out with either go far ahead or are left far behind in the race of academics- both ways they just leave your side. Then you end up forming a new group again for another short period, till that falls apart too. Life feels like a book of short stories- where each time you are a new person in a new setting but every time your character is doomed to have an unsatisfactory ending before moving on to the next page which is yet another different story. Sometimes even when you don’t want to leave one story or the characters, you just have to, because the greatest author of all says, “It’s climax time!”

When you read about people choosing extreme ways out of their problems dropping out of the course or even ending their own lives, you are forced to wonder, “Was there no other way? He could have at least talked to someone or given himself another chance.” And it is then that you realize that in this race of MBBS most people have to run the entire distance alone. Even when surrounded by friends, professors, seniors or juniors, the worst battles one fights are internal and the ones no one else knows about. These are the battles that test even the best of us. Some make it till the end while some, though equally brave, just can’t.

P.C-Shuvojyoti Rakshit

“What should I do then?” you ask yourself. The answer to this question, you know, is complex. While an untimely exit should not be an option, continuing this journey also seems to be difficult. These are the days that one needs to remember that though the career path ahead looks solitary, there is life outside med school as well. Bits and pieces of the life you left behind to be here, still exist outside the college. So, pick up the phone and make that call to your weirdo school friend who earned the nickname “Horse” for her love of standing, or that shy, crazy seat mate you had back at middle school who just stared apologetically at you even after you slapped him for destroying your pot painting. After gossiping with them for hours (which unfortunately seem like minutes) and getting the load of academics and college stress off your head you realize that probably, even if you are fighting the battle of MBBS alone, you still have fellow comrades left in the battle of life.