Contrary to popular belief, we do not only study here. There are other co-curricular and extra-curricular activities. Multiple societies keep on springing up. As much as I despise them for taking time off of our breaks, I cannot help but appreciate the efforts they put into bringing these activities to us through their own strenuous schedules.

To an outsider, a medical student might seem strange.

We revel in wearing our overalls, unless there are seniors nearby, then we hide the overalls or else they might want to conduct a forceful exchange. I have found a way around it. I have my name embroidered above the breast pocket on my overall. This way nobody will be able to make much use of it. But then again that’s what I thought when I had my name etched on a water bottle back in college whilst doing FSc, and it ended up getting stolen. I wonder how they explain the presence of my name on their bottle.

I suppose I need to acknowledge the elephant in the room here. The fooling. There’s no escaping it. Our campus has corridors after corridors and even now we are always sending recon units/sacrificial lambs ahead to make sure there’s no senior ahead who might’ve been kicked out of his class and is now looking forward to terrorizing juniors. Fortunately, since I am a day scholar, I haven’t witnessed the full extent of this form of torture.

Whenever there’s a free lecture or whenever we do not want to attend any lecture, we find areas on the campus where there’s sunlight. I am sure when summer arrives, we’ll be scuttling towards shade like mice in a damp room. However, the corridors outside Forensic and Community Medicine are always too cold. Whenever I walk past them, a chill runs down my spine. I suppose the presence of paranormal activity could explain this outside Forensic but not Community medicine.

The lecture halls are too steep. But that’s good and works out in favor of my classmates who sit in the back and sleep. The teachers rarely if ever climb the stairs and check up on students in the back. To be honest, the memorable parts of the day are usually spent inside the lecture hall; listening to teachers’ anecdotes, presentations, announcements or sleeping. But there’s really nothing that can be written down here and which will contribute to increasing the entertainment value of this entry.

All in all, it’s quite an experience. I have made some friends here. They are from various regions. One of my friends is from Gilgit and to my astonishment told me that Gilgit wasn’t a part of KPK. I meet people from all walks of life. And that’s good, right? Once I become a doctor, I’ll have to interact with all sorts of people. The campus life at SZMC/H is training me for professional life, in perhaps the most fun way possible. Many times I ask myself “What the hell have I gotten myself into?” but then my friends and I do something goofy like try to balance ourselves on thin railings while wearing bags laden with bulky books (Guyton, KLM, I am looking at you) and I realize it’s all worth it.