Travails of a young Nigerian medical student

It all started with readers are leaders,
Well,that may be true but our parents should have given exceptions,
They should have helped us developed the other aspects of our lives we didn't know exists,
Instead they cajoled us into this world of lies.

They told us medicine is secured,
Once you graduate immediately you get a job,
So most of us entered medical school for the ego and money,
One is already lost and the other is slowly following suit.

Through Topping classes in secondary school,
Through the rigour of passing WAEC and jamb,
Not leaving out post-utme for those of us that wrote,
We entered medical,the so much hyped medical school.

100level was normal,just like secondary school days,
200level hunted us with Anatomy,
It stung us with physiology,
And competed with mosquitoes in making us sleepless with medical biochemistry.

Could life be any harder,
Anatomy invaded our vocabulary with medial,lateral,superior, inferior just to mention a few,
Physiology proliferated out tongue with -ilia, -penia, syndromes, -esia ,-cytosis and so on,
And of course medical biochemistry wasn't left out,it stuck to our oral cavity with acetylCoA, -glcerates, phosphates and so on.

Classes everyday,
Practicals following closely ending in the evenings,
The only time we have for ourselves being in the night when other students are sleeping,
And amidst all these every time I want to wear my shoe,the number on it reminds me of my test scores,
Most of us haven't failed any exam before,
Most of us have so much confidence in our intelligence,
But the orientation of a Nigerian medical school is different,
In your intelligence You might fail.

The Nigerian medical education system is built in a way to frustrate its students,
To undermine the students efforts,
A lecturer once told us that the lecturer is not happy if any of his students fail,
But yet he'd mark their exam and only 50% would pass,
But yet if the failed students were studying in Germany they'd pass the same exam,
Our exams are harder than that of our colleagues abroad,
Yet their medical system and school is better than ours.

Our social life is reduced to zilch,
Keith Moore hunts us in our dreams,
Guyton is our alarm clock, it wakes us up if we try to sleep longer than normal,
Our phones are so boring only filled with plethora of medical apps and textbooks,
We're in school while other students are having semester and sessional breaks,
Christmas is bae,because that is when we get to see all our friends medical school forcefully took away our closeness.

But in all these,we still strive to be the best,
We still struggle to read every time we imagine ourselves in that white coat,
Amidst all the failed tests and frustration we still persevere,
This might be me being melancholic yes,
But this is the typical story of a young Nigerian medical student.

Horiawlar,
200level BDS Benin.

I no send you go study Medicine o. study music u no gree.


Genius J

Nice piece there.