Down The Memory Lane

Volume 11 Issue 9 September, 2021

Second strings

I was born in an era in which television and social media did not exist. We made our entertainment. We took up hobbies and learned how to excel in these.

The youth of today do not have the advantages that I enjoyed. Their time is eaten away by Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Netflix, messaging services, television serials, and perhaps other forms of cancer.

In the late 1980s, when I moved away from clinical services into clinical research, I quickly realized that the ability to design, conduct, and publish good research requires a sound footing in statistics and research methodology. However, statisticians speak mathematics whereas psychiatrists speak ordinary English. This meant that I needed to learn statistics and research methodology on my own.

There were no computers in those days. I studied statistics from textbooks, learned complicated formulae, some of which ran into pages of steps, and performed lengthy statistical analyses using a simple calculator. I was ecstatic the day I acquired a scientific calculator which had a built-in function for standard deviation and a few other mathematical operators; nevertheless, it still took days to weeks to complete analyses that can today be run in minutes using proprietary or open-source statistical software.

Working with numbers gave me an understanding of what I was doing that is deeper than what can be obtained from clicking on tabs in statistical programs. I had the time to learn, and that gave me a second string to my bow; at least a hundred of the 500-600 research articles that I have published directly address issues related to statistics and research methods. I am sought after for my expertise in these fields.

I have other second strings, too. I had the time to develop competence in nearly a dozen outdoor and indoor games, from hockey and cricket to contract bridge and chess. I studied classical poetry and can write in fluent meter. I taught myself skills ranging from shorthand to graphology. I learnt how to play 4 musical instruments and played in several orchestras. I learnt how to compose music. I can juggle. I can conduct a full magic show, close-up as well as stage. I’ve been on 6 mountaineering expeditions in Asia and Africa and have scaled 11 peaks. And there is more.

All this, because I chose how to spend my time. You too have the choice to decide how to use the time that you have if you want to excel in your field and add second strings to your bows. Choose well, because you cannot buy time.