Why not?

It was the year 1975 and we started to struggle for the admission in a medical college. It was so simple a procedure during those days; you obtain enough marks and you would find a place in the merit list. And those enough were quite unlike what we notice at present times. 75% aggregate got First Class first position in premedical section in that year whereas one of my patient’s daughter with 76% seems to have no hope for getting even to the gate in the present era. This remark isn’t meant to offend those hardworking students, as one very senior person sitting at the Dow University Of Health Sciences administration once informed me that they did not even give a second look at marksheet below 80% aggregate. And look at how right he was; a van driver’s daughter with 84% couldn’t get admission -- the only option offered to her father was to accept the self finance seat, which the poor fellow could not afford even in his dreams.

Anyway, we submitted the admission form with documents, which included the most crucial and most important domicile certificate, which had the column requiring me to fill in the place from which my father migrated!

As we all remember clearly, the days we used to go to DMC and afterwards, following the events each day. The first floor canteen -- just as we entered the college gate, the samosa and that tasty, warm doodh patti and the shor sharaba of youth (now I somehow hate loud noises).

Then came the controversy of 20 free marks of NCC, making it tougher for some students to get into medical college as their merit would go down but that anti-NCC campaign paid off! And NCC marks were scrapped.

But I just cannot recall why a meeting attended by admission-seeking students was addressed by one young, political leader sort… and somehow his statement "... give us control on Karachi, we will build roads so shiny like glass.” I wonder why that statement got stuck in my memory.

It was such a thrill, the day of interview. Straight away, I can’t remember how many days elapsed between submission of form and interview. Names were called according to merit and just the original documents were checked and we got into professional career.

Yes, it will get quite long but it is worth writing, as I took the challenge of professional education in a much better way than few of the other classmates. First prof.: the best! And believe me, the basics we did were excellent; the three D's of Anatomy: discussion, dissection, and diagrams --the pillars of Anatomy. I'm lucky to have met my friend, Kasim (HR) and Owais and we formed own (study) group.

Make A Choice

Life has adopted a great change in how it takes issues in their perspective. What was important has become of secondary significance. Earlier, education, health and family were the utmost part of ones life. Now career, job and making money has taken over a major chunk. A child gets sick and parents are more worried about the test the next day rather than seeing him get well soon. As early as 3 years, a toddler looks tense watching faces of both parents sitting with him at physician’s chamber, the physician himself observes the younger one with grave concern of what is to become of him/her in the coming years. Nothing can change what ideology the parents are carrying in upbringing their child. Most of the time it is fixed and locked. It doesn’t matter how much the physician tries to reason with parents to the approach with which they are handling their offspring at this early age is going to have damaging effects on his intelligence as well as confidence level.

Like a tired horse, or heated auto engine which needs rest, a human being when sick, should rest to regain strength, and time of cooling at all cost. But the hindrance in following such an advise is the level of competition prevailing. We can live and run our lives with better achievements if we draw a line. A child should be dealt like one. He/she must live free of all worries, study, play and sleep as they please. And when not well, healthwise rest in bed; no exam, no test!
In most of the cases, you don’t get a positive response from the parents to let go and ease out a bit on a child who has just started to make assessment of what is going on around him -- good, the bad and the ugly -- rather, they put him to stressful test and an exam forced upon him. As research has proved just recently that early childhood self-learning has tremendous results and that anything new that has access to the brain of a child will be everlasting. So its quite clear that teaching done under stress or coercion will not get the required results from a child. An adult can handle any stress but a young child cannot! Let them fall a few times, they will learn to stand... on much firmer grounds.
For the much older group of children, when sick there can one of several ways to give the child the physical rest he needs and maintaining his academic activities all the while. This can easily be achieved with the co-ordinated link between parents and the school management. One of two simplest ways to attain this can either be a continuous contact between classmates or the affected child and teachers. The benefits of such an action will be two-fold: it will allow the child stipulated rest advised by pediatrician, yet keep him abreast of educational activities at school hence removing all the stress.
The parents hold the key role in making the right choice.