Six Years a Med
Student. Part One
This time in
1981, I was rubbing my hands with glee in anticipation of signing the
matriculation document that exam success at the hands of JAMB brings. Six years
later at about the same time I passed my final exams and had become a Doctor.
This year marks
thirty years in the oldest profession on the planet second to farming. Since 1987, it has always been patients on my
mind so much so that I have mistakenly called other fans at the stadia I have
been in “patients” accidentally when referring to the fans.
Few can boast of
being in the same profession for thirty years in these days of rapid change.
Very few boxers, footballers and pop music artists last this long and we all
know that the average career span of a drug dealer is five years. It is not
that I am plugging medicine as a career for the stereotypical young black and
gifted but no one ever got shot drug dealing for AstraZeneca or Pfizer. I am filled with gratitude as I look back at
my ‘upandan’ career. We are still standing ba?
Fellow
classmates of a bygone era would no doubt be bringing out the wine to celebrate
the big 3-0 as I do or perhaps as we do. I want to look back and thank my lucky
stars that life, the patients or all the sundries of cabals did not kill us.
Since the mood
is good and one’s head is in a giddy place I will take a trip down my
hippocampus and regurgitate the musical backdrop that formed the canvas on
which my experiences were painted during my time in the University of Benin.
Alhaji Shehu
Shagari was President of Nigeria when I attended to do my Registration in September
1981. Soon after, ASUU went on strike for a few weeks. Endless
love was Number 1 in the US featuring the melodious harmonies of Diana Ross
and Lionel Ritchie. By the time we returned
in November to restart our education, The Rolling Stones were No. 2 in the US
with Start Me Up. Boy, did they start us up! We students were being fed a diet of Physics,
Chemistry and Biology in what looked at the time to be giant lecture theatres. One felt bombarded with an endless barrage of
facts and figures.
The exciting
campus life was powered by subsidised meals at 50 Kobo per meal ticket. However, no matter the academic work load
there was a release valve with Earth Wind and Fire’s Lets Groove. It shot up the US charts peaking at No. 3 but
as far as Uniben went it was No 1 for almost a year.
Just as we were
about to get up from all the ‘get down’ that the Earth Wind and fire heralded
in, we young students were confronted with a question from across the Atlantic.
One that was rhetorical, mischievous and
seductive.
Kool and the
Gang interrogating through their leading counsel JT asked, ‘What cha wanna do?’
For your medical
students in the science course (preliminary studies) who had been warned by senior
medical students that our names had been written in pencil in the Medical
students’ list and there was an eraser hovering and eager to wipe us away, we
had but one answer.
‘Work out our
salvation with fear and trembling’. Well, not in those exact words, but we had
our next six years mapped out and we all wanted to see it to the end;
§ Final
examinations for the pre-lim year June 1982
§ 2nd
MB Examination June 1983
§ Pharmacology
June 1984
§ Pathology
June 1985
§ Community
Health & Psychiatry exams September 1986
§ Paediatric
and Obstetrics and Gynaecology finals February 1987
§ Medicine
and Surgery Finals September 1987
§ Oath
taking Ceremony October 1987
JT ignored our laid -out plans and
continued to his next question which was a leading one.
‘Do ya wanna get
down?’
Before the young
students could muster up contrary compelling arguments the whole band broke
into song and the world was a beautiful place.
Get down on it
Get down on it
We even had a
dance for the song that mimicked a Giraffe with torticollis about to get an upgrade
to tetanus.
We danced and
forgot the long-term plan while proud parents back home told anyone within ear
shot that their child was ‘reading’ medicine. Parents had not bargained for ‘dancing and
rocking’ medicine. Christmas and the new
year was a first return home from campus and you instantly became the neighbourhood
star. You had stories that made people
vow to study and pass JAMB too.
January 1982 saw
us back where we had left off. Let’s Groove and Get down on it continued. By
March 1982, almost in a parental voice kind of way, Imagination hit the UK Charts at No 12 with, Just an Illusion
but we no gree. This notion that the
campus was a place of fun was the biggest illusion ever to afflict our
young minds.
By May 1982, the
heat was on. The UK band Central line had a song, Sunshine which we grooved to. The lyrics fantasised about getting
away from it all and enjoying a welcome break. Ideal for the UK but for us it was hotter than
July in the tropics and we were approaching a war. At this stage, some started having nightmares
of President Shagari frowning down at them for partying on a subsidised
education paid for by his hard -earned petrodollars.
By the almighty
June 1982 Denice Williams was No. 9 in the US with, Its Gonna Take a Miracle. Not just a miracle but loads of
coffee, kolanuts and hand-outs for us in Ugbowo campus. Having enjoyed that heady first year as a University
Student where every single experience was a first time one (from the rag day,
to the fashion shows, beauty contests, student union elections and Christian
union Christmas Carol Service all rolled in), it was payback time.
This uprising (for
that was what it was; a battle against failure), brought out the beast in us;
we read like maniacs.
Dazz band had, Let it Whip at No. 11 in the US and boy,
did we let it whip and rip. I passed all my exams and settled to a summer
holiday of domestic chores only for a friend to visit from campus to tell of
all the groove I was missing.
I had thought
the re-sit season was a mournful experience. My friend told me that even people without
re-sits came to groove on campus. By the
way, he was off to London for holidays having completed his re-sits. Ha!!! Not
fair.
To be continued.
Dr Wilson Orhiunu
GP
Birmingham UK
