The Great Indian NEET Tamasha

Medicos spend all of their 1^st and 2^nd years dreading 3^rd year and then their 3^rd years dreading internship, coz its such a drag for one and because suddenly PG entrance looms ahead. Suddenly, 4 and a half years melt down to nothing and we revere guides and volumes, like we’ve never revered Harrison’s textbook of Medicine. Finally we learn something..err.. at least I did. Only one glitch.. It’s a tad late to start learning ! How was it I never heard of Alport’s disease all these years when it was so important, we wonder. (or at least, I did). 

Internship( which consists of important jobs like carrying files to and fro and bringing coffee for nasty residents), an utter lack of knowledge  and of course laziness too, take their toll and the first attempt comes and goes. We suddenly find ourselves in a limbo. During the drop, lots of nice uncles and aunties want to know what we’re doing sitting at home. We try to give the best possible answer to make ourselves seem useful citizens of society, and fail miserably.  

 This year the PG entrance named dragon reared another ugly head- NEET PG. NEET  has been looming over the PG scene for long, being announced every year and then getting cancelled. But it HAD to make an appearance the very year we appeared for PG exam, because we are the lucky batch. We bring change( sarcastic).Anyway, NEET dint just come quietly , it sashayed in and took everyone’s breath away, literally. We were left gasping when NEET was announced in early December , rather than late Jan, effectively snatching away  a good 2 months of prep without any prior notice. 

It is to be a computerized exam with exams on several days with a mind boggling scoring system and different marking for different questions according to difficulty and response, we’re informed. The icing on the cake is that no one knows the new pattern. Aspirants who’re already scratching their hair out trying to mug up a million incoherent facts now get busy analyzing NEET. It IS quite a puzzle, believe me. A million speculations and guesses arise on PG websites and all over the medical world, and medicos would have placed bets on the NEET pattern, if they could have. Some frustrated ones take their ire out on PG websites, going as far as to say “Lets boycott NEET.. no one fill up the forms!” 

Many are in denial, even after the dates are announced, it seems like a bad dream.

But what truly sends the crowd into a frenzy is that the choice of  the date and place of taking the exam is in our hands , and take it into our hands we did. Elaborate plans about how to register first are made. Some even consult their religious guru and Jyotishis for “The” auspicious day, in the mahurat period of late November to early December. The day that banks sell the registration vouchers , doctors sleep in queues outside banks, in anticipation of tomorrow when they’ll be the first to hold the Holy Grail .There is rioting outside banks and in internet cafes as everyone tries to register first, get the date and place of their choice. Of course, as this is India, the bank’s internet server is done and so the queues are stalled , and those who slept outside the banks at night are not only tired but also hungry but most importantly frightened that all the centers are getting filled up.. and they’ll probably have to go to J&K to give the most important exam of their lives(or so it seems). When eventually they log in, they find a large object revolving on screen flashing a message- “High Transaction Volume” .They stare at it for hours willing it to move as if the force of their staring will make it disappear. Some unfortunate ones miss out ,panic and select  any erratic centre and date. Of course, they don’t know that the centers and dates they covet will open up again, at any time without any notice, and a person registering much later will grab them. No one knows this because the highly efficient NEET website talks of only 1^st come 1^st serve and does not mention that it would release only some seats at a time. In India, we believe in chance. Get lucky if you can. 

The registration process is so tiring, it seems we’ve given the exam and another day is dedicated to the NEET process and not to studying for NEET.By the end of the day, we’re poorer by Rs. 4250 and also a few neurons. 

We think wistfully about AIPGE … the days of filling forms by hand, when there was a single exam day ,when everyone got together to celebrate after the exam … when things were simpler. The good old days .. we sigh !

Anyway the D days are on us before we know it.. instead of the intelligent ,logical and clinical questions that we were promised in NEET , we get absurd, incredulous and irrelevant questions. Eg. Sir Ronal Ross died in the year ? a.1854 b1855 c1856 d1857. Really, the NEET examiners overestimated our intelligence and foresight. We dint know we had to mug up obituaries to become good clinicians. 

That WAS the aim of the new exam,right ?! To make us clinically sound? :O

Present scenario is that after a full 2 and a half months of the exam, we still don’t know the NEET result. Reason being that the drastic change is being opposed by states and private institutes alike. By now, we’r too tired to ask questions(at least I am), so we sit back and watch the Great Indian NEET Tamasha unfold.