I am just speaking out for all the medical students who come to Bangladesh to accomplish their dreams of becoming a doctor. It’s my final year and I know how things work here, through and through. So here’s a list of things that you will end up doing, especially when you study in the capital city.
- You will spend a lot of money on food. You will either spend most of it on fast food chains or you will end it on junk food for your “while you study” regimen.
- Dhaka is no place for partying or drinking. Alcohol is prohibited and the only alcohol that you smell is at the airport lobby before the final immigration hassle. So forget about how much you enjoy you Gin and Tonic and try adjusting to “Tang Juice “and “Prawn mango “drinks.
- You need a serious wardrobe change up, no low cut vests and you can say good bye to your shorts and skirts. Because here, people like to see girls all dressed up from head to toe, despite the scorching sun and heat. It actually depends on how you handle the wardrobe change in your life, I have seen girls dressed in the usual clothes that we wear in Kathmandu and they do get the blunt stares but somehow they dare to manage it without much fuss. For me, I personally like to dress in “Salwar Kameez” when I go out or I wear the “Kurtes” the rest of the time. You should be comfortable in what you wear and thats my fashion statement.
- Trying to adjust with the fact that most of the books that you just bought are photocopied versions of the original and move on with it. I think the fake ones are better than the original ones and money-wise it saves me half the amount that most med’s have to pay in other parts of the world.
- You need to learn “Bangla” fast, like within a week or two because most of the stuff happens in this very language, its mostly like Nepali but the old Sanskrit version of it. It’s easy to understand but you need time to work on replying back. No matter how much one glorifies a college, most medical schools teach in Bangla at the very starting and end of the lectures. But no harms done when you can understand what they say.
- It depends on which college that you go to. Mine, well literally forces the balls/guts out the students to study so basically when I am bored to death and wish I was not a medical student, I still would be studying or giving an exam. There is no way out of this mess of items, card finals, ward ending exams, block finals. So, you repeatedly get beaten up, mentally of course to study all your life, as long as you are in Dhaka. You life becomes a mess when you can’t balance the pressure and fun.
- Coming to the part, “Fun”. What’s the fun part about being a medical student here? Well, none, besides that fact that we spend half our times obsessing about how our fellow med students in Nepal are having all the fun that we did not get. And the rest half of the time goes into studying excessive theory, seriously, like as if we are giving the PG exams the next very day and we stay focused, because there are no distractions, except when you fall in love, but that’s rare.
- Is Dhaka the right place for you? Yes, if you can learn to cope up with new changes in your life, starting off with eating, living and defining fun, all together, if you need some seriously studying to be done with less distraction for the rest of the five years and six months then this is the best place for you. Once you make a group with a bunch of people that you like hanging out, you will always find ways to have fun and satisfaction in life in ways that you could not have imagined.