FIRST PROFESSIONAL EXAMS

I arrived early for my Physiology viva. In my hand was Guyton and some notes. I looked around, and I saw anxious faces everywhere. Jovial personalities had turned serious as they studied from highlighted textbooks and notes.
Besides Guytons, there were Ganongs, Best and Taylors and Chatterjis. Some were sitting down on the stairs and the floor; others were standing or pacing anxiously.

Earlier, the written exams come and gone uneventfully for me. I was accustomed to sitting down for three hours and answer essay type questions. It was the Viva that I always dreaded.

When the first student came out after taking the viva, he was mobbed and bombarded with questions. ‘How was it?’; ‘What were they asking?’; ‘How is the External (examiner)?’ ‘Is Prof Nusrat Waqar in good mood?’ Some of us were the ‘message boys’ relaying what was being asked to their respective groups where the ‘knowledgeable ones’ were providing the answers verbatim or looking them up the text books before summarizing the answer for the group. There were some ‘confident ones’ too. They were sitting further away looking at chaotic scene with a relaxed expression.

Agha Arif and Aquil Haider came out after taking the viva and were confident that they had done well. Then my study group friend, Afzal Saeed came out and… he was smiling. ‘How did it go?’ I asked. He told me that the external examiner was very nice. ‘He (external) started the viva pointing to my watch and saying that it was a nice watch. I said thank you. That made me relax and the viva went great after that’.

Soon it was lunchtime and my turn had not come yet. We were told that the viva would resume in about an hour. By now, we had already spent more than four tense hours. We waited and waited, an hour stretched to two and the examiners were not back yet. To this day, I remember the tension of this wait. I know that some of our class fellows are now in academia in Pakistan. If they happen to read this blog, I request them to take steps to change the way visas are conducted, if they have not done already. Perhaps the students can be grouped in a way, that indicate to them the approximate hour of their viva.

Worry, sleep deprivation, exhaustion from sitting, standing and walking had turned my brain into mush by the time my turn came. The external indeed seemed like a nice person. He was smiling. He held out a written exam paper. On the page, there was a diagram of Loop of Henle with arrows indicating what was being excreted and what was being absorbed at various levels. I recognized the writing, it was my own paper! Suddenly, my brain simply switched off. He asked me something about the diagram but I could not understand what he was asking. Noticing my panic- stricken face, he complemented me on how well I had explained the counter current multiplier mechanism in the written and asked me to simply read from my paper. Which I did... like a robot. The sentences coming out of my mouth made no sense to me. What happened subsequently is a blur in my memory, but I know when I came out of that Viva, I was not a confident of passing.

Anatomy viva was much easier, I think because of our experiences with Stage vivas. As I sat down in front of Prof Tuqqaiya, I expected her to start the viva with some bone. Instead, she slipped something flabby in my hand. As I recovered from my shock, I realized that it was a uterus. She asked me about the insertion of the broad ligament. Which luckily, I knew. Soon the viva was over.
As I walked out, and took in a deep breath. O how good it felt! A cool breeze was blowing and I could hear the birds chirping.