Decision to leave medical teaching

I resigned my job as a medical teacher about 2 weeks ago. I think it is time to reflect on what it meant to be a medical teacher and how life has been over the past few months. When I joined my college as a teacher about 8 years ago, I felt like I had arrived in response to a deep inner calling. I have always enjoyed teaching and sharing knowledge from childhood and so getting into medical education was a natural choice. The fulfilment I received from the job was unparalleled. Entering into classrooms and sharing my thoughts to a room full of young people, at least a few of whom were attentively listening to what I had to say, gave me a high which I hadn't received before. It was a validation of the ingenuity of some of my thoughts. The time I joined medical college as a teacher, it had been more than 5 years after my postgraduate qualification. I thought I had learned some important things from life and was looking for avenues to share these learnings. Medical college gave me this platform for sharing them and also gave me the validation that I sought. 

A few students connected very closely with me. In every batch of 100, there would be 2-3 students who forged with me, bonds for life.They stay in touch with me even today. I don't know if I should call myself their mentor. Yes, I did teach classes for them. But these 2-3 students in each batch became close to me not through the exchange of subject knowledge, but through the shared vision, ideas, ideologies and interests. One young man from my first batch challenged me with interesting questions. We would have long train journeys to reach a rural clinic where I volunteered my time and he joined me to gain some experience from there. During these conversations he would ask me questions about life, medicine, neuroscience and everything in between. I am no philosopher, and I had no answers for any of his questions. But our conversations were always so enriching and fulfilling. Today he is training in the UK to become a specialist. He will probably discover the neurological basis of human consciousness and win a Nobel prize for it. I am so privileged to have had his company for those few years. In my second batch there is this young woman, who was energetic, enthusiastic and restless. I have stood by her side and watched her blossom into this mature young woman who has got into primary care medicine. She says our weekly visits to the rural primary care facility motivated her. But I know, the seed was already there. My job was only to stand by the side and say positive things as she blossomed. She will one day make amazing strides in taking primary care medicine of highest quality to the remote corners of our country. Another young man from my second year in the college, who is one of the most calm and cool persons I have every met, has gone through difficulties and challenges that a young person his age should never have to go through. He struggled through poor health of his parents, and lost his mother to a severe illness. I have seen him bounce back from every blow that the universe dealt him. I have amazed at his resilience and his composure in the face of difficulties. He inspires me at a whole different level. 

There is this young Tamil language poet and writer in the third batch. He is a passionate and intense young man. Recently I met him after a long time. I couldn't recognize him. This was because he looked healthy and taller. It is biologically unlikely that a 22-23 year old man grows taller. I noticed that he was just standing taller. He had lost his slouch. He had developed a lot of self confidence and was a completely transformed young man. From a scrawny slouched timid young boy, he had grown into this healthy, tall and confident young doctor. Such transformations and growths make life so exciting on a daily basis. The tall confident leader of the fourth batch, a giant with such a child-like heart, is today a mature and calm young man. The young boy whom once I chastised for attending my clinic with a heavy hang-over from the previous nights drinking, is today a responsible doctor taking charge of the economic upliftment of his entire family. Every such instance of these young people's stories have enriched my life immensely over the past 8 years. 

I ask myself why did I choose to leave a job that gave me so much fulfilment? When anyone asks, the reason I give is that I was being transferred to another college in another state and I am not willing to leave because of several family, social commitments in my city. But I think this is only the precipitating factor. My unrest and decision to leave the medical college had started quite some time ago. As I had mentioned earlier in this blog, knowledge exchange about subject matter has never been the reason why students connected with me. It was a deeper personal connection based on shared values and ideologies. That reduced over the past 4 years. By nature I am an introvert and it has always been the students who have initiated conversations with me and made entry into my life. All those who struck conversations with me and sought my company were people similar to me in some way, introverted to an extent, or found the ideas and thoughts I had appealing to them. Over the past 4 years that reduced. In fact of late there aren't any students who come with me to the rural clinic which I go to on Sundays. That used to be the space where we connected, had conversations and dreamt together about a future. Those kinds of conversations stopped. I also felt that students started intellectualising many of my thoughts. They were still engaging with what I had to say, but at an intellectual level and not at an emotional level. Nowadays there is a clear separation between things that we debate and discuss, and things that we do in real life. Such a separation is a bit disparaging for me personally. I think I clearly need an update or reboot, because the values and ideas that I have seem to be irrelevant. I went through this existential crisis questioning my relevance among students a couple of years ago when the fulfilment of the initial years started fading away. I spoke to many seniors, friends, colleagues about this. They all told me one thing. They said, staying relevant will require adapting myself and changing myself with changing times. I tried that over the last 2 years. I realized that in the attempt to stay relevant, I was just changing into someone I wouldn't recognize myself or even like. This is a major reason I decided to leave medical college. 

Someone asked me, "Ok, now that you have quit medical college, how will you stay relevant? Do you think sticking on to your old ideals is what will work?" I don't have an answer. I dont think anybody can stay with a constant set of ideas and principles forever. Everyone evolves and changes. But an organic evolution is one which is natural and almost imperceptible. I have changed a lot over the past 23 years after my MBBS. But I have never stood to think and make conscious decisions to change. Change has happened on its own. That is how changes should happen. That is natural evolution. This adaptation to a culture of show, self advertisement, intellectualisation of everything, and lack of integrity between what is spoken and done, is not evolution. I don't want to be part of it. 

I have still not figured out what I should be doing next. I appreciate the whole idea of 3 months notice period before resignation. I submitted my resignation on 06 November 2023 after thinking about it from 12 October 2023. I was relieved on 05 Feb 2024. The three months in between gave me adequate time to write letters to all my special student-friends, buy books and small gifts to all those lovely people who made my life so much meaningful in college. It also gave me time to mentally transition out of the college and prepare myself for the life after medical college. I am not going to falsely say that I am fine with the decision to quit and everything is normal. It is highly unsettling. The financial insecurity that accompanies such a major decision is bearing down on me mentally. But this situation is not new. I have been here before and have come through it, and I am hoping that I can again. For starters, I will write more now, for in writing we truly live our lives!