Year

In a recent incident, my colleague FP got a surprising question from the new bunch of third-year medical students: "Which year did you graduate?"

I must say the question was, as Bernard Woolley usually put it, entirely correct - literally, and the students were probably using it for really benign reasons (for example, out of admiration for seeing an apparently young doctor capable of teaching them).

Our surprise was, in contrast, a result of our crooked mind because adult physicians usually hardly ask their questions directly. For example:

• If we wish to know the year of graduation of another doctor, we would search from the Medical Council web site, or ask his colleagues.
• If we ask someone directly his year of graduation, we are not interested in the numerical answer - we just want to get at a better psychological position and start a fight with him.

However, it is also a wrong idea that senile professors do give better teaching to the students. More commonly it is quite the opposite. After all, who are the ones living on earth and know better the daily running of medical practice?