the so-called actor/actress

A doctor is a one hell of an actor.

This is what i've learnt from one of the teaching lessons during my neuro clinical placement. And believe me, that is so true.

Well, obviously I am not a doctor, yet. So, I will be talking from the medical student point of view. At least from my experience of being a medical student up til now.

Either we realize it or not, we act a lot.

We act as if we are confident, when the hard fact is that we are not. We are always thrown into the spotlight to do things that we are not good at doing yet, but still we pretend as if we have been doing it eversince we are born. "Go and do her bloods" or "You handle the clinic today and present the cases to me after seing each patient" or "Scrub in and help her with the stitches" or the worst case scenario that has ever happened to me is "Assist him for the pleural aspiration" (which is something that i have not been taught about yet. huhu)

The list is endless. But still, despite the desire to shake our head vigorously and say no and run, we found ourselves nodding and heading towards our 'task'. Step by step, we found our feet making its way towards the patient. Only God knows how fast our heart is beating at that time. How our stomachs are filled with angry butterflies, munching their way through our gut wall. But still, we managed to put on an act. And that act, somehow, managed to get us through it.

We act as if we don't care what others say about us, when in reality, our heart is grind to pieces by them. If we always took whatever these 'nasty' consultants or senior doctors say to us by heart, believe me, we would be squashed and crushed and torn apart. And that will make it even more difficult to bounce back. I learnt to put a wall of brick in my heart. I was once crushed by a consultant, and almost shattered into pieces. I almost lost my confidence. He almost make me hate doing Medicine. That was until i learn to take his seriously harsh critiscm as a challenge to myself. That, seriously, changed everything. I pretend as if he said that because he wants to see me become a great doctor. Even though i doubt that is the case, but i still pretend that was his intention. huhu.

All in all, we are no greater than others. We are merely just actors. Pretending to know something that we have no idea about. And pretending to be good in something that we are clueless about. But, this pretention, later on, helps us to have the good qualities that a doctor should have one day, insyaAllah. That, i believe.