PGIship: The Naked Truth

I am in my last two weeks as an OB-GYNE PGI. Life has been pretty generous to me and the rest of the PGIs. After 6 months of training, I have come to know and discover my fellow PGIs, especially their unique personalities and even eccentricities, including my own.

Pressure and stress are the best precipitants for revealing one's character. The world of PGI-ship is never without these. The small On-call room at 208 and the cozy Dormitory at 205 have become our little world where friendships are made, secrets are traded, promises are broken and trust shattered. Hook up at least 5 24/7 cams and you have yourself a mini Big Brother series, featuring the PGIs of BOLMSH.

How you work (and how you play) with others tell the kind of person you are. It doesn't matter whether you are this or that. What matters more is how you deal with the differences of other people around you, how you resolve these inherent conflicts and opposing personalities, how you learn to tolerate them and maybe later on, like them, if not love.

I have to say that no two PGIs in BOLMSH are alike. Our personalities have a wide range, from the autistic to the altruistic, from the conservative to the wanna-be-conservative, from the obsessive to the lenient, from the attractive to the superduper attractive, from the soft-spoken to the loquacious, from the bookishly smart to the practical smart, from the quiet to the loud, from in-love to out-of-love, from the fulfilled to the desperate, from the fortunate to the unfortunate.

I love these people and so far, despite the unfortunate events and the unavoidable tensions that have surpassed us, I have no regrets in choosing to train with these individuals. In working with these individuals, I have learned not only the rudiments of medicine but of human relationships as well.

So what if we have quarrels. So what if we have arguments. So what if we don't agree all the time? Who does? What matters is we learn to tolerate and accept each other, flaws and all. Nobody's perfect. There is no room for self-righteousness here.

I dread the day when we will all end our PGIship training, take the boards and go on separate ways. I shall miss this bunch of weirdos.