A Dream Realized – Medicon 2011

With no power, comes no responsibilities- something which I firmly believed in right from the day I saw my first Spiderman movie. Things changed in 2009. Something spectacular happened. We went to Mangalore to attend Medicon 2009. That was my first exposure to organized research at the national level and I was mesmerized. I was overwhelmed by the quality of research and the excitement to share it with peers from all over the country. That was the time when we decided to replicate this dream at GMC. Two semesters and a failed love story later, here I was in the middle of September 2010 standing brave hearted all ready to take on the preparations of Medicon 2011 in my college - still unaware of the gale which was yet to ensue - final year. We set sail at a pretty good scale, many people rose up to the cause and GMC invited the offer with open arms (read - sure you can do it...we we found life on mars, didn't we?...we can do it in a govt medical college as well then...anything is possible!!). Propelled by an amazing task force always hungry for results and vada pav and guided by my supreme optimism we started getting results. The website came up and the help desk was put up to to the challenge of an unknown challenger, the onslaught of questions! From accommodation details to finance queries, from parental accommodation to possible matrimonial associations; we answered them all. And all this while I was still clueless as to what to write if somebody did pop an ACTUAL FINAL YEAR QUESTION to me.

Then came in the stars of the show - The abstracts!!. Believe me they were doing justice to the literal sense of their name. This Tsunami was  diverted by the organizers to the faculty members, who did a very good job of reviewing it, in the true spirit of the cause (we were afraid of repercussions of the same in the exams tho- but they were amazing--phew!! ). Accommodation was the best of the lot, I drew a lot of inspiration from Gen Musharraf and lets just say that the arrangements I made for the delegates was at the cost of my picture being hung outside the hostel canteen with very interesting adjectives!

Finally, the conference commenced on the  11th of May, 2011. Those four days were like a dream to me. Everything happened so quickly that I didn’t even realize it when it was all over. Although everything didn't take place exactly as we had planned and we had to deal with many last minute changes, in the end, all the delegates and the guests were  happy with the overall outcome of the conference. Their appreciation and thank-yous dwarfed all the gigantic obstacles which we had to overcome. I realized then that the biggest satisfaction in life is when someone appreciates your sincere efforts and suddenly the toughest path seems very easy once your goal is reached.

To cut   a long story short , I would say that Medicon 2011 was a great learning experience and a lifetime achievement for me which has left an indelible impression on me. Apart from the academic perspective, it taught me perseverance, patience, teamwork, courage and faith.

Let there be light.!!

Abhimanyu Singh
Grant Medical College