Mission Admission:B.S. Physician Assistant

Entering B.S.Physician Assistant was itself a tough task, atleast to me... after all it is affiliated to BITS - Pilani and an off campus program of this top ranked university. The preliminary filtering happens at Pilani and when I received an hall ticket for written/oral examination I was overjoyed and surprised. I felt a little proud and why not? - I had been selected from among a few hundreds all over the country from different syllabus to appear in the next round of challenge that was to be held at the Madras Medical Mission(MMM), Chennai - a place for which I had fallen flat already and had started to dream being there!!!!....

25th July 2000 - the day of entrance test at the MMM and I was there with my father. Many fathers and few families had accompanied their aspiring bright young son/daughters. I knew from the list that 81 from few 100 odd candidates have been called for the test. I saw few north indian fathers/sons, few andhra girls and I was very proud of myself as it was the first time I was competing at the"National level". There were quite a few "nuts "who discussed what they studied with each other assuming all that would appear in the paper and a few my kinda guys too - pretty casual (atleast pretended to be). All of us were sent to the state of art auditorium in the 3rd floor, something I was seeing for the first time in life . "My heart will go on" from Titanic was being played in the background and I took a seat in the last row, patiently watching people scramble for first row seats...Few minutes after me one of those casual guys entered my row, crossed me and took a seat and a little later a north indian guy with his father entered the same row, crossed the casual guy and sat few seats apart. All 3 of us appeared unnerved by the rules of test(negative marking for wrong answers) and finished off the test pretty soon. After a break some highly impressive video about the hospital was screened followed by a tour to various departments of the hospital. A senior PA named Lakshmi took us around and I am sure all the parents were highly impressed by her... The results of the test were put on the board and I had a reason to smile!!! the marks column against my name read 29 and I was one of the 41 candidates selected for the viva voce to be held the next day....My dad probably was the most surprised person on my elevation to the second round...

26th July 2000 - MMM again and 7th floor this time. Vive voce was at 2 pm and from the list I knew I was the 1st candidate.I was just one stage away from getting into BITS - Pilani.If I am through I would be in the same university as my bro and in a bigger/stylish hospital, enrolled for a tougher programme than his...For the first time I was nervous and lot of people looked at me with eager/curious and sympathetic eyes, only made it worse.. The interview was a breeze, the wise men who sat there asked questions that I would have answered several 100 times like a tourist guide - (What is cordite?, its importance, how it is made, What is ooty famous for etc).. I was out within 5 minutes with a big smile telling my dad I had done well but then there were 40 more candidates which meant that many parents . a Few stood around and "interrogated" about my session inside the room. I was bored as time went on...Fathers became friends, few gals among themselves but i stayed isolated just as one of the fathers threw a thunderbolt saying bad people would not be interviewed longer... The north Indian guy with his dad and the casual guy were all there. My dad told me that the north Indian was from Bihar and his father a professor.... The interview got over by 7 pm and I had already become anxious for the result. By 8 pm the same fellow who on the previous day pasted the list brought another list which had 21 students selected for the course.... Through the crowd I went and checked the list to find my name there on the top of the list (not topper just the roll no).... I thought that was the biggest achievement i ever did..... Later I came to know those two nice guys who sat in the same row during exam were Tanmay Acharia and Anandkumar. Incidentally, we three ended up being room mates after joining the course....

Looking back I can only laugh at those bitter sweet memories, but then the mood was all together different.... It is often said that the journey of 1000 miles begins with the first step and probably that viva voce day was a beginning in this long journey of adult life....