Rebuttal

In a peaceful afternoon, my friend WY came to my office, rather unexpectedly.

She was obviously not very happy.

“Em… Szeto, does the specialty that you are talking about begin with X?” She asked.

In no time I realized she was referring to my recent blog on specialty board examination. (See http://ccszeto.blogspot.com/2011/12/question.html)

“Oh, yes. What’s wrong?” I felt like a primary school student being caught red-handed by his class mistress after doing something naughty.

“Nothing. Just that the questions you mentioned is not the truth – or, at least, not the whole truth.” The consultant said.

“You mean…?”

“Well, we did ask for specific guidelines and FDA recommendations, but, the discussion began with clincical scenarios related to the routine management of common problems, and what information the candidate would provide to his or her patients in real life.” My friend gave her version of the story – which was the examiner’s account, “But, since some candidates seemed having very little idea how some common drugs are used as well as their important contraindications, we had no choice but needed to probe at specific angles – so as to make sure the candidate really did not know what’s going on.”

I nodded. As always, the same event is described in entirely different manner by two different persons. This little incidence of Rashomon also serves as an excellent illustration of a general principle: Students (or candidates in professional examinations) never fail because they do not know the answer of difficult questions; they fail because they trigger the examiners to ask those questions. As a rule, a student has already failed when his examiner decides to ask some difficult stuff.

PS. The opposite is also true: A distinction candidate is not someone who could answer difficult questions, but the one who could answer simple questions in a confident and seamless manner.