APMEC 2012

KQ and I made both made presentations at this year's APMEC yesterday, joining the ranks of of those nifty people wearing name tags and eating free food amongst gentlemen wearing suits and speaking in foreign accents. While it wasn't anything to rave about, it was a nerve wrecking enough experience, having to speak before an audience who were ready to critique and question your topic of choice. Still, I think the fact that we clearly introduced ourselves as Medical Students gave us some leeway from time to time.

What was interesting about this conference was how impressed both of us were at the amount of passion that all the conference participants demonstrated towards education. We met doctors, educators, academics, researchers and psychologists, all meeting together in the name of educating a future generation. As medical students, all this talk was certainly mindblowing. People were investing tremendous amounts of time and money into developing teaching methods, simulators, analysing past errors and designing new constructs to better teach the junior medical faculty - the entire conference was about us! It was all very inspiring and humbling at the same time. I almost felt embarrassed each time as speakers shared about struggles they faced in the classroom. Oops, that sounds like me!

All my life I've always viewed teaching (in the classic classroom Teacher way) as a very noble calling. I always dreamt of becoming a teacher day, until the day I found how how bitchy students got when talking about their teacher's behind their backs. Taking on the title of an educator is no simple undertaking. Still, I hope to be able to be part of a teaching faculty in the future, but for now, I'll need to learn how to do so.