The wrong man in the right place

I believe that people who take an unusually long time to finish their professional studies are not suitable for the given profession. He or she should look for another career. I arrived at this conclusion after closely observing my friends and acquaintances.

An acquaintance of mine took ten years, instead of the usual five years, to finish his study as a dentist. Now he is the chief of a vehicle repair workshop in America.

A close friend of mine studied a very long time to become a physician. One day a man brought his daughter to the doctor for treatment. The daughter was suffering from fever and the doctor diagnosed severe influenza. Alas the girl died of dengue fever; she died as a consequence of the doctors' misdiagnosis.

Likewise, a female doctor diagnosed her husband's recurring fevers as a bout of influenza. The young couple and their two year old took off to Hong Kong for a vacation. However, during the holidays, the husband's fever became worse. When they returned to Indonesia he was admitted to hospital for observation. Alas, the doctor ascertained that the patient was suffering from dengue fever and the patient died later.

I know a young man with a civil engineering degree working in an investment bank, a graduate from the Bogor Agricultural University working as a manager of a financial institution, an engineering graduate of the Bandung Institute of Technology who is a successful salesman of a Canadian herbal drink, and so on.

When my company's managing director from Tokyo was introduced to my colleague, a dentist, in our Jakarta office, the director guffawed and said: "A dentist working in a trading company, such a thing does not happen in Japan."

A. DJUANA

Jakarta