Books

Finally, I attended the admission interview last week. Szeto said one could learn a lot about another person by the books he reads. So I asked the candidates what books they had read in the last two months.

The results were revealing. It was clear that some students did not read anything other than their textbooks. Two boys said they read a lot of novels when they were young, but now they only read non-fictions. Another boy talked about Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka. I asked him why Kafka portrayed Gregor Samsa as a man transforming into a large insect. He said he was describing loneliness.

Soon, I realized that I forgot to ask Szeto a question – then what? While I understood the candidates more after this question, this in itself would not help me determine if they should be admitted to the medical school.