To add variety to dry data

I got to the Faculty of Medicine by a coincidence of strange coincidences. In the 1970s, only one application could be submitted to a university. I had filled out two – for medicine and the second one for chemistry because it was widely known that without a "push," you almost certainly can´t get into medicine. The deadline for sending an application quickly approached, but I still had to see the school doctor, to whom I gave both applications, saying that I didn´t know.

 He told me that if I didn´t have anyone in medicine, I should apply for chemistry. But then he looked at the attached school report cards and put a stamp on the medical application. It didn´t end there.

Even then, the entrance exams for medicine consisted of written tests, which were of course very simple compared to today, and an oral interview where the committee could ask anything, the mandatory question being a political question. They asked me about the RVHP, so I spilled something out of myself because at the gymnasium (high school) they fed us enough with this political bread.

And then came the "insidious" question – what I know about the structure of nucleic acids.

This was not taught at all at that time, at least at our gymnasium (high school), even though Watson and Crick received the Nobel Prize in 1962.

However, my parents gave me a book for Christmas that dealt with this very topic quite extensively, and which I read with great interest, almost like a detective story. The committee was taken aback and after a while, I was speaking (those who know me know that I can speak very fast), one of the examiners said: "Thank you, that´s enough for us, you can go." It was said in such a tone that I understood that I would be accepted, even though the official result had to wait quite a long time.