THE CHALK BOARD

A little while ago, a joke that I had shared with my students flickered through my mind. Yes, my students! As tradition would have it; my work place has recently been flooded by students on clinical attachment. I have become a tutor hence. I find the picture of young eager minds, dressed in white overalls hoarding behind me at work very funny itself. Perhaps this reality check has finally woken up that the naivety if my undergraduate days are past.


I have always been inclined to carrying people along while on the job but teaching students is a new ball game. As a medical intern, most of my rotations were through non-students units and I enjoyed it because work was straight to the point. I have no qualms with students though. I am one. In fact, I have found this whole new experience fascinating enough that my imaginations have run wide.

Also, I have found myself taking the pain of carrying out every detailed step in the execution of my duties – my students are watching, asking questions and learning. The approach to tutelage of certain teachers I admired back then have been brought to the fore; even leading me to assert my position on popular schisms. We are truly a creation of all the people we have interacted with in life. And with out a pre-contemplation, I seem a natural in a career on the chalk board!

In the midst of all these, I have reflected on the tons of information that I was fed with as a student but which has no practical bearing in the world I now live in. It may be argued that all that load of needless stuff contributes to one’s knowledge base, after all how would I have been able to relate with the fact that Bennie Mac died of sarcoidosis or that Venus Williams suffers from Sjogren’s syndrome. Most of what daily living is of little significance in life anyways. A teacher should guide his student to filter what is relevant from everything else.

If I eventually pick up a chalk, I know I would teach broad but stay focused; say the obvious but stimulate the unfamiliar; carry myself in a disengaged manner but be very involved. Humour is always a good teacher; I would also be serious but funny. To every new set of students I would always say my favourite quotable as an intern “whatever one does not know, one can always learn; whatever one learns is one’s”.

MUSES

As this blog is about my thoughts, concrete and fleeting, I have decided to stream some of my random thoughts from the past week. Indeed it’s been a few days of many things; a trip, missed directions, deadlines and the busyness that work can become.


It was during these past few days that I picked up one those eco-driven watches. Looking back, I just wonder if we all wore eco-friendly wrist watches; would it really bore any significance in climate change? Only recently, a few folks took a trip to the magnetic north pole by rowing, a feat unimaginable just 10 years ago because of the ice that capped the region. I do not think wrist watches are the solution to global warming. The concept of such gadgets appeals to me though but it is not very different from the appeal of my ultimate personal toy: a chopper with complete full military specs!

I also stumbled into the movie “Before Sunrise”. I have always thought it as one of my all time top ten, although, often my memory is always short of remembering it whenever I am required to mention a favourite movie. Before I am taken as someone with an obsession for lists, one is just obligated to have pass words for the many online transactions, e-journals, club memberships, etc. Often password security includes such things as colour of first car, favourite movie and the like. Thanks to these securities, I have been held back from joining a possibly anonymous group of people who can not match certain log-ins with the right password (there is an organised community for every thing these days you know).

Before I stray tangentially, the movie is an average budget production with a cast of 2 major characters in a spontaneous but engaging conversation. I have always loved a good conversation – spontaneous, rich, engaging and deep. In the company of others, I am most alienated when someone is incapable of expressing him/herself. Rarely am I an impersonal friend. I love the use of words. Perhaps the latter is my own vice especially when I am in a verbose mood, but it was in my efforts to check the duration of my monologues that I have come to respect and value time; man’s most precious commodity.

My mind’s rant is the most expressed of my senses. Random as they may seem, they are a coordinated stream of what I have seen, heard and felt. But like everything else, must be contained within the space that time imposes. As it turned out, the past few days have been crowned by some really busy and bloody demands at work; a restriction of my free unedited thoughts, a containment of time. Our life is indeed tied to time.