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Wednesday 31 August 2011

LETTER TO MY LECTURERS

Dear Mr/Mrs Lecturer,

First, let me commend your efforts so far in the year. You are mostly able to break from your busy schedule and show up in class and teach us. Even when you only change the background of last year’s slides and present them, I appreciate the many times you prepare and deliver knowledge to us students. However, there are a few issues I need to bring to your attention.

When I can’t avoid it, I skive your lectures once in a while. Stop looking at me that way now. Let’s face it: you skive too Mr. /Mrs. Lecturer. A few times I prefer bumming. Other times I just want to read on my own. It is a more constructive way to spend my time because I may attend lectures and end up not listening to you. The way you talk mostly hypnotizes me to sleep. I do not like sleeping in class as it is uncomfortable and the bad posture is contraindicated. So could you please spice up your lecture? I have a few recommendations.

For starters, you could make grand entrances; a drum-roll followed by a cat walk or a swaggerific bounce would do. Avoid regurgitating a Katzung’ or any other text book in class. Throw some candy or currency, depending on which side of the economy you woke up on, to those who answer questions. You might also want to walk around in class and pick on a few classmates (at your own risk). Also, bust some dance moves occasionally while teaching; example, pass a wave to demonstrate chorea, or ‘kadunga’ to explain akathisia caused by antipsychotic drugs. Feel free to perform demonstrations of clinical symptoms except those of vomiting, diarrhea and flatulence (biohazard!). I believe words here are enough to pass the mental picture.

Sometimes I feel you give us too much information. There are all these strange micro organisms like Chikungunya and Onyong’nyong’ virus, Burgia malayi, to mention but a few. These are things I will hardly remember or even encounter yet you still jam them into my cranium. Then come their vectors and transmitting agents. Many a time I'm sitting your lectures I feel part zoologist, part exterminator and part microbiologist: hardly a medical student. I also wonder why some drugs have side effects so severe that the patient would gladly prefer their disease to our therapy. Worse still you insist that when everything else fails to work, those are the drugs we should turn to. What sort of demented pharmacist had this evil idea of a practical medical joke?

When it comes to exams, lately you've become too harsh. The marks you give hardly translate to our efforts. Put in economic terms, sometimes they can hardly purchase an ugali and a decent accompaniment at the students mess. We take time to look at your questions and write whatever comes to mind, so please take time to look at our answers. I know we write gibberish at times, but please bestow thy mercy upon the humorous. A half a mark for comic relief and a longer life isn't so bad an exchange now is it? And before you ask us questions that do not make sense, teach what you require of us in such scenarios. Please look into this issue before our marks start economically depicting PK moments!

If you look at these issues and many others that my classmates might raise, I am sure we will all get along very well. Reply at your earliest convenience.

Yours sincerely,
The Bush Doctor


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