On Learning to Scare-Lose

Kiasu-ism. No you won't be able to find that word in your Oxford Dictionary, in any case there's anyone who doesn't still know about it. It's a habit a lot of the Chinese pick up because... I don't know, they just are. It's like a mix of greed and selfishness and wanting to win all the time. True enough we need to be like that, maybe not in all aspect of life, but definitely when it comes to preparing for the exam. Final exams, I mean.

With just merely 2 months to go before the ultimate exams of what everyone in the batch dread of, I'm seeing more and more people coming up with study groups. Fine. Forming study groups isn't going to be hard, since I'll most prolly join the girls and study together if they're going to form one. Or not.

But when you have study groups who go to the ward and clerk your patients despite not being posted in your ward, I thought that's a bit over the limit of kiasu-ism, don't you think?

I told the girls that I've been hearing plans of some of these kiasu people wanting to have personal private ward rounds with the consultants from the hospital. As in their personal initiative of approaching them doctors and ask them to guide and teach. It's indeed a very wise method of learning. But don't you think it's a bit too kiasu?

Put it in another shoes. Say you are the doctor in the ward. Bearing in mind you have nothing to do with teaching the medical students posted to your ward. But you have been partially hired and paid to take the students for a few rounds the two months they're here. And you've always been struggling to make free time to take them. So on top of your work covering and ensuring the patients are cured and discharged and making sure your nurses or hosuemans are in order plus the group of students you're asked to take, you have now got another group of students asking if you'd like to teach them on your free time.

Okay, maybe if you're a true academician or super uber passionate about your work and are 100% supportive of the future doctors, maybe you would.

But how many of you would? You have a night off and you want to go out with your friends. Or well, just take the night off and chill out at home.

So yeah, looking at it in another perspective, I thought it's a bit TOO kiasu if you ask me to persuade the doctor in the hospital to teach. I mean, they've got no obligations to teach you. They're full time clinicians. They're not like your lecturers who are part time clinician and part time academician. So yeah...

That's just a two cents worth. And a personal feeling. Am pretty annoyed at their kiasuness so to speak. But I know I need to be like one of them. Stat.

So if the girls are doing that, then I'll definitely follow. Wakakakaka.

Damn surgery posting is giving me lotsa headaches and hypertension.