Do or Die

I remember Hendri making this point when we had a discussion about scholars and employers, and how a scholar would be an obvious choice over the everday fresh grad. It isn't just that these people are intelligent, they also have the aptitude, determination, discipline and mental capacity to rough it through their respective courses, all the while maintaining a consistent GPA under the rigorous demands of the course, their sponsors and family. This stuck with me eversince.

So when my mother exclaimed after entering the warzone, that is my room, "I don't see the point in a near 6 hour exam as a requirement for applying for Graduate Medical School. Testing one's background in science, I understand. But Poetry? Essay writing? I believe that if a person has compassion, 50% of the battle is won already", Hendri's point made even more sense. Yes, part of it was about testing our background in science, our analytical, critical thinking...the usual set of skills, but it IS afterall a 6 hour exam, not 3, not 2. One that is gruelling, challenging and mentally taxing. After frying your brains with question after question of creative literary analysis, you have to write 2 essays on social/political issues, and then! after all that, they make you sit through 3 hours of forces, electric circuits, enthalpy change of reaction, redox reactions, organic chemistry, physiological systems etc.

Now, if one can't survive that and come out on top, tell me, can one really survive a 16 hour shift at the hospital with a slew of patients to care for? Or how bout a surgery that drags on? No, let's be more relavant, can one even survive medical school? You have to be mentally capable, you have to have the aptitude, the strength to deliver under stress, and all with no margin for error. Its all got to be perfect.

I've got to make this perfect.