CHENNAI: My village has no doctor and I will be first, assures Afrin Sifaya, who hails from a small village called Mayakulam near Keezhakarai in Ramanathapuram district. Benefitting from the 7.5 per cent reservation for government school students, she will be pursuing her MBBS at Stanley Medical College this year.
Her father works as a labourer at a hardware store and her mother is a housewife. When she was all of 12-years-old Sifaya decided that she would be neither, but only be a doctor. "I want to go back to my village and be a doctor. If that's not possible, I will go to some other village like mine that is in dire need of health care," she asserted.
Sifaya graduated from the Government Girls Higher Secondary School, Ashok Nagar in 2019. Last year she scored 221 in NEET and decided to take a gap year and managed to score 340 out of 720 in 2020.
"I asked my parents if they will enroll me in a coaching during the gap year. Even though the six months coaching cost nearly a lakh, they got the help of a Trust and obtained loans and arranged the remaining funds," she said adding that she was unsure if she would have been able to pay for medical college without the government offering to pay up.
Sifaya said that to crack any competitive exam, one must come up with a routine to avoid distractions. "You must draw a time table and stick to it. Use phone or laptop only when absolutely necessary. Have a dedicated study space. And make a list of subjects you have covered and keep taking tests on them," she advised medical aspirants.