In my first semester of 200 Level Dentistry, some of our seniors from CMDA came to give us an orientation on medical school, academics, and how to handle our studies.
Most of the speakers were distinction students.
One had a distinction in Anatomy.
Another had distinctions in Physiology and Biochemistry.
One after another, they stood before us and gave advice on how to succeed in medical school. They told us what worked for them. Read hard. Read at night. Eat before reading. Stay consistent. Follow a timetable. They shared the things they believed had contributed to their distinctions and academic success.
The advice was good.
But after the orientation, a question kept bothering me.
How many students in that 400 Level class actually got distinctions in their last MB examination?
The answer was simple.
Not up to ten.
Then I asked another question.
How many students were in the class?
Over four hundred.
And that made me wonder.
Why are only ten people allowed to speak about the experience of medical school?
Why do we keep selecting only the outliers to tell the story?
Why don't we hear from the majority?
Because no matter what happens, if only ten out of four hundred students are graduating with distinctions, then their experience is not the typical medical school experience. Their experience is valid, but it is not the only experience.
That, to me, is one of the fundamental problems with many medical school orientations.
Orientations should not consist only of distinction students speaking.
There should be distinction students.
There should also be average students who passed.
Because that is what most medical students will become.
There should be students who received resits.
Because many medical students will receive resits at some point.
There should be students who repeated a class or stepped down.
Because some medical students will experience that reality too.
The truth is simple.
The smallest percentage of students will graduate with distinctions.
A much larger percentage will graduate with passes.
Others will experience resits.
Others will repeat classes.
Others will struggle through medical school before eventually succeeding.
Yet these are often the stories we never hear.
The events of resits.
The events of repeats.
The events of academic setbacks.
These are the experiences that quietly shape a huge number of medical students, yet they are rarely discussed openly.
Students walk into these situations completely unprepared because nobody told them what those experiences looked like.
The people who have lived through those experiences are usually not invited to speak.
The younger students never get to learn from them.
So many people end up facing those challenges alone.
These are the stories in medical school that we do not hear.
Then we return to the distinction students and begin collecting formulas.
Don't eat before reading.
Read at night.
Take supplements.
Take energy drinks.
Use this method.
Use that method.
But many students in medical school come from completely different backgrounds.
For you to be an outlier, you are already an extraordinary case.
Some students do not have enough money to eat comfortably.
Some have to choose between feeding and transportation.
Some leave home early in the morning and spend the entire day in classes before returning late in the evening.
Some cannot afford textbooks and rely entirely on PDFs.
Some do not have stable electricity and study with candles.
Some do not have access to quiet environments.
Some are dealing with financial, family, and personal problems that many people around them never see.
Following another person's formula when your life circumstances are completely different can become a problem.
Many junior medical students spend too much time looking for formulas.
They are looking for the exact routine.
The exact timetable.
The exact study method.
The exact habit.
The exact secret.