"Think" by MSIH first year blogger Ayal Levi




This little statue is called "The Thinking Man."  My (future) mother-in-law bought it in Uganda, then passed it over to me as a present, before I joined the rest of this inimitable group here in the Desert. Now, he sits on my desk, eyes half-shut, staring at me. He never stops staring, this “Thinking Man.”  He certainly is consistent; I’ll give him that. As we spend considerable hours together, trying to find our way through a waterfall of information, he has become a constant reminder to stop and think. To pause, shake my head, and work through the intricacies of acid-base metabolism, the autonomic nervous system drugs, and what feels like a black-hole of microbiology

“Slow it down there sparky, and use your head.” Or something to that effect.

A classmate of mine, a sort of philosopher-king, quoted me a short line from a letter Oscar Wilde wrote to Lord Alfred Douglas (complicated relationship). “Education is 


the ability to play gracefully with ideas.” What a great concept, to play with our learning and our knowledge with a bit of grace.

It’s the middle of exams, so “grace,” a quality I have little of, remains elusive, particularly when it comes to all this studying. But maybe, there is an element of applicable truth to Wilde’s thoughts. This has been one of the things that has been the most challenging, both in the preparation for and the execution of, my exams over first year. Most of my previous educational experiences involved stuffing facts into my head and some first (and rarely second order) questions. Almost trained to see a column of multiple choice options and have the answer jump out. Maybe rattle off a basic formula, smash on the calculator, and voila, the answer.

Take a break from school, arrive here, and then find myself trying to figure out what kind immune disease presents with silver hair (Chédiak–Higashi syndrome). Bit of a shift.

Beyond all the rote memorization, flash cards, and new vocabulary, there is another skill we have all been working on. Solving the riddle, working through the options, rationalizing our answer choice. Probably what most people refer to as “thinking it through.” Or maybe just thinking. It is the key skill that helps learn the material better, but also makes it more interesting. Yes, more challenging, but vastly more engaging, this “playing gracefully with ideas.” On the good study swings, it turns the hours spent grinding into a game. On the not-so-good ones, it helps sharpen the focus. Either way, even if none of that is true, it stillseems like a worthwhile practice, if only for the grades.


As we move into the rest of our exams, the end is in sight. I’m confident that the right mixture of coffee, tea, and cafeteria food will get us through it, even with smiles on our faces.

Maybe I’ll let “The Thinking Man” sum it up.

“Think.”

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