Pre-Med
Students' Weapons for the Survival of the Fittest
A
group of friends were sitting together filling out their applications for
entering AUB. Ahmed was applying for
business. Rima wanted to do civil
engineering. Antoine was thinking of
computer science. Leila wanted to do
biology. But there was one difference
between Leila and her friends. A
significant difference. A difference
which would teach her to think differently.
It would make her change the ways she defined friendship. A difference which would make her resort to
her animal instincts. It would be
Darwins survival of the fittest.
Why? Because she was to do pre-medicine. Of course, she didn’t know then that her
major would force her to act differently from students majoring in history or
business or political studies or English. Her friends would never quite be able
to understand what she would go through.
Leila was about to engage in a battle where only the strong survive and
where the more weapons you have, the better your chances of survival. I’d like now to proceed to define weapons. In pre-med terms, weapons mean any one of
the following past quizzes, notes from the guy with the 96% average, colored
diagrams, old lab reports, lab quizzes, and so on and on and on and on.
Leila
would soon discover that about 250 aggressive, intelligent students would enter
one of the sciences (biology, chemistry, physics) as pre-medical students and
that 70 would be accepted into Medical School after the three years of
war. A problem instantly arises. You might ask, “What about the other 180
students? Well, the answer is, “That’s
their problem.” Then you might
ask, “OK, it doesn’t sound that bad, at
least they’ll have the biology degree.
What can they do with that?”
Well,
with a degree in biology, you can do one of three main things: You can become a
high school teacher, which, though a respectable position, does not measure up
to the standard you had set for yourself when you entered university. You could also do a master s and then a PhD
and go on to teach at the university level, but a doctorate would take about
six years, almost as long as it takes to finish an MD degree. Then, also, as a university professor you
have to do research for another 15 years before you can qualify for a full
professorship. Or you could do a
masters (two years) and work in industry, but such jobs are limited in Lebanon
and budgeting for research, even in America, is beginning to decrease,
resulting in cutbacks by companies, and the last thing you want, is to be out
of work.
Our
friend Leila will probably begin to realize the above facts in her first couple
of weeks at AUB and definitely before Quiz 1.
This knowledge and her drive to become a medical doctor will begin to
trigger thoughts and ideas which she never thought she was capable of.
Soon
she will begin to be more careful when speaking about how much she studied
before an exam and will start lying about her grades. Only a select few, extremely dear friends, will get copies of
exams or lab reports which she has managed to obtain from old students. Occasionally she will trade weapons with
other students. If a relationship
becomes really profitable, a free
trade-zone is opened. Embargoes are
even enforced by students on others who are caught hiding weapons.
Some
students choose to follow a different path.
They decide to hold on to their principles and morals and to give
weapons freely to their fellow students, not asking for anything in
return. As wonderful and idealistic as
such generosity may sound, these students usually end up losing the race. In movies and cartoons we always cheer for
the good guys, and they usually win even though the bad guys are using every
nasty trick in the book. But this isn’t
a movie. It’s pre-med.
All
250 or so initial students don’t survive till the end. A filtration process is used. Half the students usually end up falling
through the filter paper and changing their majors. Everyone participates in this effort to lower the number of
applicants. The professors even play a
major role. You might get a 65 in a
course and then watch your grade soar to a 76 via the class raise. Now, after this discovery, do you think you
earned the 76? No, more than that, do
you think your father is going to think you earned that 76? Why couldn’t the professor simply have made
the exams a little easier so that she wouldn’t have to give a raise? Ill tell
you why. It’s all a strategy to make
you feel that you’re not up to the challenge of medicine so that you can slip
through the filter paper. OK. As you’ve probably guessed, yes, I am an
angry, resentful, biology major
The
other day, my friends and I were sitting in the library doing the usual
beginning-of-semester gathering of weapons when one of them told us about an
interesting observation he had made. He
said that more weapons were coming out of hiding now in our senior year. In fact, yes, there was a lot more trading
and, dare I say it, GIVING of weapons.
But we all quickly realized why.
The reason was clear, as senior biology majors, we only have one more
pre-med course left and so, as a result, biology majors were being less picky
and secretive about their weapon stocks.
Leila
was changed. After entering the world
of pre-med, she would never be the same again.
This is the sad reality. But in
the words of Alanis, You live you learn.
You have to think positively, though. In a world which rotates around
competition, being a pre-med student will definitely prepare you well for the
real world.
By
Mohamad Elfakhani