Recapturing Youth: Remember the Youth's Lofty Aspirations, Once Vowing to Be the Best on Earth

In the blink of an eye, ten days have passed since I reported to school. After registration, classes began in earnest; setting aside one weekend, we have now had eight days of classes. Among these courses, there are the "water courses" (low-value filler courses) that I am most unwilling to take but must, as well as the professional courses I love. In the first semester, filler courses take up a large proportion — almost half of the time is spent on them.

From the very first day I chose to sit in the front row. Because I am older, my hearing and eyesight cannot keep up, and sitting in the front row helps me follow the lectures. In professional courses and English class, the front row is basically full. In filler courses, only a few people remain in the front row. The smarter students have run to the back row to do other things; I am not clever enough, and to this day I still sit in the front row listening.

But that is about to end; I think for the filler courses from now on I will also learn to run to the back row to study other things on my own. Because some filler-course teachers' lectures are simply going through the motions, a total waste of life — wasting both their own lives and the students'. I have calculated that in a year, half of our time is taken up by all kinds of holidays. Even on days at school, classes are not scheduled every day, and about half of the scheduled courses are filler courses. So the time actually spent learning professional knowledge in a year is less than a quarter.

This is a frightening thing when you think it through carefully: most medical students will one day go on to work treating and saving people. I have spent more than ten years researching one or two diseases, and my level is still very limited. The most golden learning period of most medical students' lives is the short few years on campus, of which the effective study time may be less than a year. With such inefficient use of time at school, how much can they actually learn? Every year China admits about 90,000 clinical medicine undergraduates and 70,000 clinical medicine junior-college students; a considerable proportion will eventually flow to primary-level medical institutions. With the limited professional knowledge these students acquire, it is hard for them to provide effective diagnosis and treatment.

I still have elderly parents and children in my hometown, and I have personally seen how, when they fell ill, treatment at a primary-level hospital had no effect at all.

Earlier this year, my mother-in-law developed sudden deafness. Treatment at the people's hospital in my hometown was ineffective, and the doctor urged her to have surgery. I know this kind of surgery is highly destructive; about one in five patients develops empty-nose syndrome afterward, an extremely bothersome sequela that, once it appears, greatly degrades quality of life. So I refused this treatment recommendation and treated her myself with Lianhua Qingwen capsules and Erlong Zuoci pills; within a week she was better.

Then, not long ago, my middle-school-age nephew had a headache; he was given IV drips at a local clinic in my hometown for two days with no effect at all. Worse, the symptoms actually worsened, with added vomiting. The hometown doctor even suspected an intracranial lesion in such a small child. I gave him my Chaijie Jiedu Wan, which I had used during COVID. After just one dose, by the next morning his headache was gone, he returned to school, and it never recurred.

A while ago, a friend's daughter had a toothache. The child was not yet ten; her mother took her to a dentist at a hospital in Foshan, Guangdong, and the dentist recommended root canal treatment. This surprised me — does such a small child need this kind of treatment? She asked me what to do; I suggested first taking bezoar metronidazole plus cefuroxime axetil for two days. The child took five doses and was fine, with no recurrence.

These are the realities of primary-level medical care I have personally witnessed. I used to be astonished by such situations at primary-level institutions, but after entering medical school to study clinical medicine, I am no longer surprised. What medical students can learn is very limited. Although people say that medical students are like being in senior year of high school every year, what I have actually experienced at medical school is not like that. In such limited professional study time, most of the young people are still desperately playing games. Whenever they have free time, they immerse themselves in games.

If I had not seen it with my own eyes, I would have viewed students of this major through a legendary filter. But now I am one of them — or rather, one who does not fit in. Because I never touch online games, I actually have no common language with them.

The first time I downloaded and registered a Douyin account was last night, because the school issued a notice requiring us to study some volunteer-activity content on Douyin; this is a learning item that college students must complete. Many of the medical students around me spend quite a lot of time scrolling Douyin short videos. Games and short videos occupy a great deal of their time and energy, so in class they sometimes look listless.

What I have seen and heard has secretly startled me: these future primary-level doctors are laying their medical foundations under such conditions. When they enter clinical practice, how will therapeutic outcomes be achieved? Medicine already has enormous uncertainty; even with assiduous study one may not achieve outcomes that satisfy every patient. With such slack learning, how can one continuously improve one's skill and "strive for the utmost perfection"?

My resilience to the environment has been tempered here. Apart from eating, sleeping and exercising, I am either in class or in the library; I leave campus only once a week, which is when I go home. On the first night, their gaming kept me awake. But by now, even if the children are playing games in the dorm to deafening effect, I still fall asleep quickly. Occasionally, when I wake up at night to use the restroom, one or two children are still playing games in bed; I look at the time and it is already three or four in the morning.

When I first arrived, these young classmates in the class were curious about my age and came to ask about me. Within less than a week, they were won over by my perseverance and self-discipline. Several children who wanted to study hard but could not fully escape environmental influence took the initiative to ask to sit beside me and follow me to the library. At first it was two or three boys; later some girls did the same.

Thinking that they will eventually go to primary-level medical institutions to treat people like my parents and my brothers and sisters living at the grassroots, I earnestly hope that my influence on them can truly change their lives, and thereby also change the lives of the patients who will receive their care in the future. I come from the grassroots, and my heart is always with the grassroots. Big cities are not short of good doctors, but my hometown and the countless grassroots areas like it are desperately short of good doctors.

Many of the filler courses at school have one advantage: the teacher allows, even encourages, students to come up to the podium themselves and share some of their thoughts — this is allowed in every class. I would very much like to use such opportunities to share some of my life insights with my classmates. But I am not ready yet; I want to continue observing these young people for a while to see how to communicate with them without provoking resentment.

For now I am quite popular and get along very well with the few kids in our dorm. When they are injured or ill, I dress their wounds and treat them with medicine. Even a child who forgets to bring toilet paper to the bathroom will come to me, this uncle, asking me to deliver some. Although there is a generational gap between us, they and I still get along closely and without barriers.

They may all put on white coats and treat patients in the future, but at this moment they can hardly empathize with the suffering of patients and their families, nor fully understand the responsibility and mission on their shoulders. They need to grow up; and in the course of growing up, they have met me. I only hope that the influence I bring them is positive rather than negative.

Opening my own diary from the age they are now, that youthful, vigorous me was full of passion, once harboring lofty aspirations and vowing to become the best on earth. The years have turned; although I am no longer eighteen or nineteen, what I am doing now is the work of an eighteen- or nineteen-year-old.

I still hope to become the best on earth, but beyond that, I also hope to lead more people around me to become the best. I hope to watch these not-yet-mature young people gradually mature, with hearts filled with benevolence, so that in the future, at their posts, they will continuously refine and improve their medical skills, relieve the suffering of others, and help patients strive for happier lives.