Crisis of confidence

What I'd like to talk about today is based on a malaysian girl who always comes to me before her OSCE exam to get advice and to practise. She is a year below me currently preparing for her end of third year exam. And whenever she comes, we would end up in a lengthy chat on language, confidence etc etc.

She's a malay malaysian, brought up in a malay community and secondarily educated in a boarding school exclusively for malay people. Like me, she is studying medicine here courtesy of a generous scholarship funded by the taxpayers' money. These scholarships have traditionally been awarded to high achievers in the public examinations. There is a fixed view that excellence in exam equals potential, nothing else counts. It doesn't take a genius to find this hypothesis significantly flawed.

She lamented about the old issues. She feels that her PBL mates laugh at her and talk behind her back, that her voice is not powerful enough to overcome her colleagues' in PBL eventhough she has all the knowledge in her head or that her PBL mates frequently interrupt her. In conclusion she feels like an outsider. If I was someone responsible for her education, I'd be at least slightly worried because this is her third year as a student in Manchester and in my opinion should have been fairly comfortable with fitting in.

But in actual fact many oversea students feel this way. I know lots of people who completely shy away from any contact with non-malaysian other than attendance at compulsory group work. They cope by sticking to the other lost malaysians and remain in their own comfort zone speaking their native language, practising their own customs and cultures. With no new experience, these students might as well have studied at home and relieve our country RM1million per person. These are the sort of comments I often find going through the 'letter to editor' section in Malaysian newspapers, and I have to agree.

Many British students have never experience speaking in a second language with a group of native speakers. My impression is that they underestimate the strength it takes to say something, let alone comfortably contribute as an equal member of the group. I remember in my first ever PBL session, I made a joke and I was so afraid that people won't laugh (and I distinctly remember telling myself over and over again 'It doesn't matter if I made a fool of myself. It doesn't matter!'), but they actually burst out laughing - and I was just so chuffed and euphoric. They laughed at my joke! Couldn't believe it! Communicating in a good standard of English is one thing, and I believe we can all do that after all those stringent medical school admission criteria; but fitting in with the local students is another thing and it requires more than good English. We need to be hanging out with them, understand their jokes and show bits of our personalities. As non British, we are extremely conscious that our facial feature, the way we dress, our accents mark us out as being different. People may well be oblivious to these, but some of us are so self aware that it hinders them from reaching out. Until we lose this inhibition, we are not likely to get further away from our comfort zone.

Fortunately for me I am well pass that stage a long time ago. I now see the British society just like any society that I know of. There are good people and bad people and many in between; there are the rich and powerful and the poor and lowly and many who belong to the 'middle class'. And to communicate with any of them, I do need reasonable proficiency in english, but most of all I need to be myself, rather than holding back because I feel inferior that my english is not as good is theirs. If whatever I say comes from my true self, the conversation always turns out alright. The sincerity of human race cuts across different languages, cultures and nations. Sometimes it is these concepts and social skills that the high scorers fail to grasp.

That brings me back to the issue of confidence when speaking in english to a group of native speaker. A supportive environment helps (for example, friends who appreciate that I don't want to drink alcohol and would compromise by a nightout at a restaurant instead). But at the end of the day it is down to herself. I advised the girl to just be a little thick skinned and start to reach out to people. Doesn’t matter if they respond by being horrible and nasty – there are rotton apples everywhere. Unless she gets to know people on a personal level and let other people know her, there's unlikely going to be any genuine flow of conversation and she is just going to carry on feeling miserable.

To learn medicine, we can’t afford not to be able to talk naturally. Half of medicine really is just talking. Does it make sense?

More entries to come. Reminder to myself. * Chorus * Ophthalmology * Project option.



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