My M.B.B.S Journey (Part 1)

My M.B.B.S Journey (Part 1)

Preamble: Are you worried about whether you will be able to gain admission into the University to study medicine and surgery ? Do you worry about whether or not you can succeed in the study of medicine? This is my personal story of how I started and my advice to you on how to prepare for the study of medicine .

“Prepare, you’ll take JAMB next year..”
These were the words of my Dad one fine morning when I was just hanging around doing nothing serious.

Well, the words left me shocked at once, the shock was not because of my fear for the UTME; I knew absolutely nothing about it at that time, the shock was because I thought I was too young for university, I mean, I was just sixteen at that time, a fresh secondary school graduate with excellent grades in the SSCE and all that, I was completely ignorant of what they do at university, though I knew I was going to go there someday, I didn’t think it was going to be this soon.

I picked my small Tecno T-34 phone and began punching words like “Jamb”, “University”, “Admission” and stuff like that, little did I know that my greatest troubles were just about to begin.

My name is Utibe and I live with my parents in Calabar. I attended a public secondary school and was one of the best students in my school; I was always selected among those who were going to represent the school in competitions and all that, and when the SSCE came, we smashed it and emerged in flying colours with lots of A’s here and there and just a few B’s; excellent results everywhere! While in secondary school, most of us didn’t really decide on what we were going to study at university and our school didn’t have time for that. We graduated and left to various computer training centres around the town, it was while I was learning how to use Microsoft word I heard the instructor say we should learn this thing so that we can be fit to write Jamb CBT. That was the first time I ever heard such and it was the first time I was going to do a Computer based test. But I didn’t bother anyway, I kept on learning.

Few months after my dad told those words to me, I had researched enough to know when JAMB form was going to be out, I also had read a lot about the courses universities offer, I never really knew what the courses were and some websites used to list the courses with some numbers attached to them, I remember I used to see stuff like: Accountancy – 255, Banking & finance – 215, Law – 276, Medicine & Surgery – 282 etc. I didn’t really know what the numbers meant at that time and no body was ready to explain them to me so I just kept on researching until I found out that these numbers were actually scores one must get in order to be admitted into the respective programme, and that the numbers change every year depending on candidates’ performance.

It was early December 2013, and once again, my dad told me that JAMB form was out and that we’ll be going to register by weekend. I told him I already knew, he just responded, “Good!”

It was weekend already and we were already on our way to JAMB office, Mary Slessor avenue, Calabar to do the registrations. I was a very tiny person at that time and I had to go with my dad for obvious reasons. On getting there, we met a huge crowd and such a busy arena; people running around with white papers, countless laptop computers. One guy walked up to us and said “JAMB registration sir?”, looking at my dad and not me of course, we said yes and he led us to his shed. While we were going, he asked me about the course I wanted to study and I told him Medicine & surgery, I don’t know why but I remember he turned and looked at me, maybe to weigh my physical size and the magnitude of what just came out from my mouth…

Read Part Two

Utibe Umoh

Utibe Umoh is a Public health enthusiast, poet and author with a great deal of interest in romance-fiction stories and short essays. His first e-Book, Tales of bliss, was out in 2020 and is currently available on the Amazon Kindle bookstore and free on okadabooks.com bookstore.
He currently pursues a degree in Medicine and Surgery at the College of Health Sciences, University of Uyo and is editor-in-chief for his Medical student association. He is content creator for Ray of thought - an assembly of young thinkers who are out to impact the world positively - and enjoys listening to classical music at his leisure hours.