Today

Part of the challenge of the Fulbright is being ready for the unexpected – and today that couldn’t have been truer.

At the start of my class (that just finished) Co Dung (my co-teacher) and I noticed a student at the front who appeared to be sleeping and we didn’t think much of it. About 5 minutes into the lesson the student started to dry heave, severly drool and couldn’t be roused.

Quickly Co Dung got the students to move the desks and chairs – I literally scooped her up like Michelangelo’s La Pieta and carried my unconscious heaving student draped in my arms down two flights of stairs and across the entire campus to the medical center with a herd of students with umbrellas trying to cover her and Co Dung keeping the calm.

I laid my student on the hospital bed and shepherded my worried students back across campus and back to class while Co Dung waited at the medical center for my student's mother to arrive. I took my students back to the classroom and restarted their lesson.

I was never frightened or nervous (thank you EMT training), and just slipped into some natural mode. Focused and collected, I got vitals and carried my student to help, as much of the campus stopped to watch. Some of my other students were shaken. I did my best to get them refocused and working - such is my coping mechanism.

Strangely we finished the material and Co Dung rejoined me for the last hour after my student’s mother arrived at the college. I am thankful for my co-teacher and my wonderful students who stepped in and stepped up for one of their own. I am also glad that I was the teacher and could carry my student in my arms to help. And now more importantly my student is at home getting help.

In fact this experience was more unnerving after the class ended and I was like a fly on the wall seeing it all. Seriously it felt like a move...but nobody called "cut".

More then ever, this out-of-body experience has shown just how far I have become. I dealt with the incident, kept my classroom under control, got my students refocused and finished the entire lesson. I think that in that moment I was the man my parents raised me to be, the teacher I am proud to have become and the compassionate, focused and collected doctor I will become.

Being a teacher is about so much more then just teaching.