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”.