I was in 4th grade when I heard my father telling that I am the son who is going to become a doctor. And from then on, my mind was completely wrapped around the notion that I have to be a doctor.I was always bestowed with special treatment in my house. My father was a school teacher and I was enrolled in the same school where he taught.I obtained my Matric level education in an Urdu medium school then i moved on for F.Sc and it was a difficult chore in the beginning but i persisted because of my passion, and left my small town to get education in a big city like Bahawalpur. Despite my hardwork, i could not manage to get good marks in the first year&that left me with such a low score overall that it was futile to even attempt giving the MCAT.My chances of admission were gone. But my father urged me to repeat, because he wanted me to become a doctor no matter what. The following year i managed to get 936 marks, which prompted my father to proudly say that "ab tmhara admition pakka hai".It was 2008 and these marks were considered very good back then. But because i did not receive any sort of guidance about how to tackle the MCAT, i could not get the required marks for admission in MBBS 😞 . So with a heavy heart, i settled for DPT in KEMU. When i was leaving home for Lahore, my father told me that he shifted the whole family from their village to a city just for the sake of our career and he did not consider any professional education better than the education of MBBS, despite the fact that his three daughters were doing Phds and an elder son was doing Engineering. So I started to study for the MCAT again, and that too during my DPT education. But once again, admission eluded me, this time only by 0.5%. And i also had to face being detained because of not paying attention to my DPT studies😑 This opened up a whole year for me to prepare for the MCAT, which i did. But this time too, i failed to get the required score. That night i clung to the grill around QMC Bahawalpur and cried for many hours, asking Allah why i was not being chosen to be one of the people to gain a seat in that institution😓ðŸ˜. I don’t remember who brought me back from that condition, but i do remember that upon coming home my father consoled me and urged me to go for another try.Once again I studied whole year, and was able to get good marks, which considerably brightened my chances of getting admission. But the merit increased dramatically, and for the 5th time i failed to get admission, this time by a margin of 0.1%.😣 Now i was thrown into denial, from which it was very hard to come back. I urged my father to allow me to complete my DPT degree, as i had completed three years already. But he stood firm, and told me that he had prayed to ALLAH in the Kaa'bah that his son will become an MBBS doctor, so only that should be my aim. I suggested opting for a private institution, but he refused, stating that it was better to do nothing than studying in a private college because getting admission in a government college is only commendable. So once again i threw myself in the preparation for the MCAT, and this time i managed to get an aggregate of 86%. This was 2013, and after my 6th MCAT attempt, it finally seemed that my wait was over.You can imagine my horror when the merit increased to such an extent that i failed to make the first list. In my despair, i started thinking that the merit increases every year just to deny my admission once again. But by the grace of Allah, my name came up in the second list in KMSMC.On my first day in the college, i saw a status update of a friend who used to be my FSc classmate, 'Alhamdulillah by the grace of Allah passed final year, done with MBBS.'
Those people who get admission easily and come into the MBBS world and then keep criticising it, they probably have no idea about the actual value of this field. It hurts me when i hear them saying bad things about this education. It is such a sacred and valuable field, that it is not only a profession, it is a huge responsibility. You are not studying to pass the Prof, you are studying for the day when you will be the only thing between a patient and a grave.May Allah guide us to fully grasp the importance of this prestigious field. Ameen.
