Hypotheticals

Half of my class is made up of doctors. For our unit on Medicine we were split up into two groups of doctors and non-doctors. The task was for the doctors to come up with questions that they would most likely ask patients and vice versa.

Ten minutes later each group had a set of questions. Obviously my group of non-doctors had been extremely filmy about the whole task. Our first and obviously most important question was how much longer we had to live. We of course, expected only just a friendly smile from our doctors but got disapproving sighs instead.

“No one can tell you how long you have to live. Even if you have a terrible disease and have a short time to live, a doctor will not be able to tell you exactly how long you have to live. This question just can’t be answered. It’s impossible…” Insert lots of shaking of heads and nods of agreement towards the man who is talking from the others.

Now insert a table made up of students, an engineer, a man doing his PhD in Philosophy, an economist and a Chef all looking at each other in utter confusion and disbelief. We then all started talking at once, trying to explain that we were not actually being serious and that it was just a harmless question.

“Nevertheless, it’s something we can’t answer,” one of the doctors who is always more serious and dull than the others said.

This is one situation I have never fully understood. We had just finished explaining that this was in fact not a serious question and his answer seemed to suggest that we were in some way trying to justify the correctness of the question. I mean, just look in a dictionary and you are sure to find the definition of the word “nevertheless”.

Despite the really gripping conversation that was taking place, my teacher, Anja directed us to the other questions. Low and behold, we soon got to another question that fetched us even more looks of disapproval. The question was whether or not we could drink alcohol.

There were more protests and refusals to answer these fake questions. Before we were able to launch into yet another discussion, Anja intervened.

“You will be faced with many such questions when you begin your work as doctors here in Germany. You need to understand that these questions are considered quite normal here in Germany and irrespective of where you may come from, you must recognize that you are currently not in that place. And please, whatever you do, do not lecture your patients about your culture. They will not be interested.”

BEST.