i was having a perfectly fine day gaming and doing yet another useless report where i try to generate 3 pages worth of font 12 words so that i at least dun get a nice fat zero… when…

i read this comment at the end of a well-written (and entertaining) article by a yr 5 in the SMA. here

“WHILE SOME OF THE IDEAS IN THIS ARTICLE ARE REASONABLE AND RELEVANT,
THE ARTICLE SUGGESTS THAT SINGAPORE MEDICAL STUDENTS ARE UNABLE TO ENJOY THE THRILL OF DISCOVERING FACTS FOR THEMSELVES AND STILL NEED TO BE SPOON-FED. PERHAPS WE HAVE TO WAIT FOR THE GRADUATE MEDICAL SCHOOL TO GET STUDENTS WHO ARE EXCITED ABOUT LEARNING NOT FOR THE SAKE OF EXAMS BUT FOR KNOWLEDGE, SO THAT THEY CAN BE BETTER DOCTORS FOR THEIR PATIENTS.”
SMA News reviewer, a senior medical educationist
and Associate Professor, NUS Faculty of Medicine

this is a very useless yet telling comment. it’s the useless standard reply to all our feedback year in year out. they’re even running out of variations to it… and this person doesn’t even dare to leave a name? oh, and it’s telling cuz… they’re doing the ’shifting the responsibility’ thing they’re so good at again! -> ‘perhaps we have to wait for the graduate medical school to get …..’ anyway, it sounds so lame… and sarcastic as well. heh. but then… after these few years in med school, who doesn’t know that doctors can be some of the most sarcastic creatures around? (a thought: how do we expect empathy from pple capable of such sarcasm? unless… it’s all just a wayang?)
and i wanna say: learning knowledge without the appropriate GUIDANCE (not spoon-feeding) does not make us good doctors. it makes us good at sitting for exams, and all that theoretical stuff. if learning knowledge were all that we needed to become good doctors, and if the guidance that we want is considered spoon-feeding, then what is the medical education coming to?
lastly, how can we be excited about gaining knowledge for the sake of knowledge when day-in-day-out what we get from our lecturers, tutors and professors (not all are like this) is: ultimately, you’re here to pass your exams.