My SAITM Story
By Chamalka Rathnayake –March 19, 2017
Chamalka Rathnayake
This is not to hurt anyone’s feelings but just to share my side of the story. Thought it’s the right time to open up. Hope you’ll spare few minutes to read 
Having done A/L’s for the second time in 2012 from Pushpadana Girls’ College Kandy, I got A (Physics), B, B with a Z score of 1.7868 and with the district rank 87. The cutoff mark being 1.86 (new syllabus) for medicine in Kandy district, shattered my childhood dream of getting into a government medical faculty.
I was thinking,
1. Should I give up on medicine
2. Should I do the exam again
3. Should I chose private education
1 – Should i give up?
Being a child from a middle class family whose parents are doctors, trust me our lives were not a bed of roses. I’ve seen the darkest years of my parents career. All the struggles they went through to raise 3 kids despite their stressful busy schedule is unbelievable. Seeing all this and still wanting to do medicine was not because they were doctors or for the sake of money. But how they enjoyed watching their patients genuine smile made me wonder how sacred is this profession and the struggle is worth it. So why giving up here?
2 – Do the exam again?
Having ended up in the margin of the cutoff hit me deep into the core. It was really hard to get over. The fear of not getting selected again drew me back from trying again. My utmost gratitude to all my friends who tried again and fulfilled their goals. Such courage should be admired.
3 – Private education?
This left me with the final option, which was the private education. With my sister studying abroad, I would have easily chosen a foreign medical faculty. But seeing my mother crying each and every time akki’s leaving the country and all the suffering they are going through thinking of her day and night was hard to bear up. So SAITM was the ultimate best choice.
Despite the economic burden rising head over, for letting me decide what I want, I would never ever be able to finish paying back the gratitude for my parents. As I stepped into SAITM on March 2013, I promised myself not to let them down again, and here I am at the end of 4th year successfully completing the exams and giving them all the happiness they deserve.
I strongly believe that you cannot decide the future of a child by just the A/L results. Dedication, hardwork and patience are the pillars of success and can take them anywhere in the world as long as they love what they are doing.
The fact that I couldn’t enter a government medical faculty was not because I was a failure, but because I couldn’t get into the district quota, while there were plenty of students who did A/L’s from various other districts, with z score values less than mine entered university while I was left behind. It’s not just me. There are 1000s out there who faced this situation and who WILL face this in near future too.
