“ I believe, that with the pace machine learning is going, it’ ll soon out do several areas of medicine. Pathology and Radiology will be the first to go. My wife is a radiologist, doing tele-medicine with a hospital in the US. It’ s interesting, since I work in machine learning, so basically, I am trying to get her out of a job!” frog in a well’ picture of mine. But now I understand that there are a lot of exit routes from the well, but only to those who chose to take it.
It is not as bad as it used to be, that you have to go outside to learn what was happening. Now I think it’ s more like, if you just choose to open your eyes and look around, as opposed to simply focussing.
But the thing I feel sad about is the tremendous competition you guys face for the PG entrance. I think that’ s what is screwing up our system. I sometimes wonder, what’ d have happened if we guys had to face what you guys face. My time was the time with reservation, your time is the one without it. We were the penultimate batch with PG reservation. Basically, all of us would get more or less, the PGs of our choice. The class could divide its PG seats amongst ourselves. [ laughs ]
Do you guys take time now for PG? How does it work for you? Do you start focusing on the PG by the time you are in your third or fourth years?
SP: Almost all of us start going to coaching
AA: It’ s just so sad. SP: Yes, I agree.
AA: It’ s all just so sad. There’ s one advice I would definitely give you people. If it comes down to having to slog your ass off and going to coaching for two to three years to get a PG seat in India, you’ re better off with a residency abroad. Do your MLEs! Build your CV in unusual ways. Why waste time? This is a waste of one of your most critical periods of your life, when your mind is at its sharpest. You wouldn’ t know this now. My father used to tell me this. I can look back as to how much faster my mind was when I was in my twenties. My father used to tell me while solving puzzles together,“ If I were as young as you are, I would have done this twice as faster” I used to say,“ Yeah, right!”. [ laughs ]
Now I know this. I mean, the mind works well, but it works along established routes. But when it comes to something you’ ve never seen before, the way your mind would’ ve worked in the twenties, you’ d be much slower now. So, this is the key time of your life where you people should be taking up bigger, better and ambitious things. Most of you now probably crack 99s on the MLE, right?‘ Coz I had a 99 on my score and that was probably the first time anyone had got one. Now I think it’ s a routine. Somebody’ s also got a 100 I think.
VP: 276...
AA: 276, yeah right! So, I got a 268 or something. That time that was the highest score anybody had seen. So now you guys are scoring 270s. That’ s great! Surgery is also now possible. Once upon a time, surgery used to be almost impossible. Derma people will not get Derma. Nobody gets derma as far as I know. But as far as I know, I don’ t think anybody loves Derma. [ laughs ] Nobody ever grows up thinking,“ I want to be a dermatologist”. Yeah, there are very very smart people, Somesh( Somesh Gupta, AIIMS) etc. who are excellent dermatologists, but apart from the convenience of life thing, I don’ t think many people want it. But anyway...
I just can’ t see why our system forces people to do this three years of reading for an entrance.
I have a daughter. I just am not mentally happy for her to go to