A good friend decided to drop out of medical school. Even that vocabulary is suspect! He decided to do something else. Maybe he floated out of med school, or jumped, cruised, wandered, ran. I can’t remember now whether his leaving was audibly commented on along the lines of “dropped” or with visible smugness on the part of those left behind, but I felt at the time that the med school – teachers, students and all – should have responded with greater self-doubt: could we have done better and might we have retained him for medicine? Medicine is such a broad school. With the danger of a narrow ethos. I am in little doubt that he would have found a niche and the profession would have been better with him in than out.

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