Part One – Here
(Western Hemisphere)
CHAPTER FOUR – KAPLAN AND WELFARE
Probably one of the most important issues is the topic of restoring the previous specialty. As I see it, the simplest, although not the easiest, solution was for mathematicians, and even more so if they were not against changing their theoretical mathematics to applied mathematics. In many ways, this meant programming, although the term is very capacious and every programmer can tell his own employment story.
It was much more difficult for physicists and engineers to restore their profession. Getting a job without American experience was a problem. Plenty of technicians applied to programming; in fact, it was such a hot specialty that private schools produced specialists from a wide range of ex-Soviet engineers who could speak English with confidence. The rest stuck to temporary work until they better mastered the language.
I will return to this topic later, for the time when it will affect my loved ones. For now, I will talk about those who chose the path of restoring a medical specialty in a new country, using the example of my friends and myself.
All doctors knew well (or have learned) that there was a company – Kaplan courses in the USA, which trained specialists in passing state licensing exams in any field.
It was created in 1938 by Stanley Kaplan, the son of immigrants from Imperial Russia, as a company of tutors, but grew after the World War II, when veterans returning from the front had to finish their studies while working at the same time. Compact tape recorders had just appeared, and the owner of the company had the idea to record professors’ lectures, compose questions for self-tests, and open training centers throughout the country, and then throughout the world. Of course, “the whole world” did not include socialist countries, because twenty years later, after the fall of the socialist system, Kaplan courses, textbooks and questionnaires appeared there, and it became possible to take exams without changing place of residence. But this is how it worked during the years of our emigration.
Having paid a certain amount, those who wanted to study received the right to come to the center, you can call it a library, take materials and spend there even the whole day. This is what the immigrants did. From the very morning, former doctors gathered at the center, preparing to pass their licensing exams. Of course, they were from all over the world, but the largest groups consisted of former citizens of the USSR, China, Pakistan and India.
Most visitors worked until closing time and at least five days a week. In order to become a doctor in the USA, it was necessary to complete a residency – a three-year internship in an accredited program at a hospital and pass three exams to obtain a medical license. The first two had to be passed before entering the residency.
No “old merits” were taken into account. I knew a neurosurgeon who was the first in the world to reattach a child’s legs cut off by a tram and restore his ability to walk. He was an honorary member of surgical societies in various countries, including the United States, but could not work in his old specialty until he passed the exams and completed residency, which was very painful process for him. I will return to this topic when I talk about residency and residents. In the meantime, let’s talk about classes.
So, the doctors sorted out the lecture tapes and folders with questions and placed themselves at the tables of the hall. Some listened to the lectures with pleasure, while others understood almost nothing and suffered greatly from this. One way to overcome difficulties was to continue listening to lectures, and the second, apparently more popular way, was to switch to reading American textbooks on medical subjects.
Kaplan’s courses provided doctors with six or seven thin books – textbook summaries. Considering that they took notes not from Soviet, but from American textbooks, the discrepancy was significant. Many of the notes lacked explanations, and those whose memory did not allow them to simply “photograph” the data in the notes answered the test questions poorly. Therefore, most doctors bought textbooks from the series for independent exam preparation and studied subjects from these books.
Probably trial and error chose the best books for preparation. Everyone willingly shared this knowledge with each other. Actually, there were a lot of conversations. Most doctors claimed to be heads of departments in their past. A minority objected that there were not as many departments in the USSR as their heads of departments here.
Those who studied all day took a lunch break. Many are for a smoke break, others are for a walk in a small group around a new city in a new country. Even going to the store was fun. What can we do, we have never seen such stores, such goods, or such textbooks.
The number of acquaintances gradually increased and friendships were formed. Many agreed to study a certain subject together: question each other, do tests, compete. But this was impossible in the common room; silence had to be maintained there. It was good that the courses had many classrooms for group lessons with students who were empty most of the day. Pairs of doctors were located in them. It was rumored that some women even became pregnant from such activities. I’m sure that’s not the case. Not from classes!
However, in fact, I believe that the stress and tension caused by long studies, low exam results and poor expat life gave rise to “folk creative art” – romantic gossips and all sorts of love stories, with which the mind was filling a student imagination, making meager and monotonous everyday life more adventurous. So, under the influence of various “ballads” about those and others characters, I composed “Amorous Story”. Here is the synopsis of this short story:
Medicine classes. Long preparation for passing exams. One man (M) studies in a group with two women (W1, W2). Each of them tells at home that she is studying with a friend and her husband. Each of the husbands (M1, M2) considers M to be the husband of his wife’s friend correspondingly (W2, W1).
One couple (M1, F1) is going to an upstate resort to relax for the one day time period and invites the other couple with them. In the resort, the couple is entitled to a room (they don’t take a second room, it’s cheaper). The room is used in turns (to take a shower, change clothes after massages, etc. and whatever the spouses want). So the second couple (M, W2) also behaves like a married couple.
After some time, the second couple (M2, W2) responds by inviting the first couple on another day time trip. Now M and W1 are portraying the spouses.
Both husbands sooner or later meet a man (M) with his wife 
arm in arm, etc., and think that they know his wife (M1 thinks it is W2, and M2 thinks it is W1), and this woman (that is, W) is his mistress and shares with their wives (M1 with W1, and M2 with W2). Every man says something like this,
“I found out that your colleague (M) has a mistress!”
Every woman, knowing that her husband considers her girlfriend to be the wife of this colleague (M), begins to worry about herself, whether her own husband has exposed her?
M1 meets M with W1, thinks that M wants to hit on his wife. W1 rejects these suspicions as naive (of course, what kind of courting when he lives with her full extend!)
But M1 does not calm down and complains to W2 about M.
She responds that she suspects him of infidelity with another woman (which M1 immediately believes, since he saw M with another woman W) and would like to cheat on him and take revenge (she really, is jealous of M for W1), but does not know the right person. Then M1 offers himself for this role and begins an affair with W2.
As a result, the relationship between M1 and W1 deteriorates, W1 throws herself into her studies and passes exams! W2, as a result of promiscuous relationships with three men, becomes pregnant and quits her studies.
M1 respects his wife for her successes, his mistress has left the scene, and he ends the affair.
Fortunately, W2 has had a child from her husband M2, and this unites the family.
M – remains alone in his cramming, recalling a recent fabulous life!
But let’s move from fantasy to realism.
The situation at the courses was constantly changing. Initially, when I first came there, it was enough to pay for six months and go whenever you wanted. After six months, many continued to attend courses using the old ID; no one checked the date upon entry. However, they were checked it when using the library – without this, not tapes, nor test materials could not be taken. But in six months, doctors acquired textbooks and collections of questions from the Barnes & Noble store and already had many friends with whom they studied in separate classrooms.
However, after some time, the courses clarified the situation and began checking the ID for freshness during entry. It was here that the ranks of the Kaplan attendee thinned significantly. Armed with textbooks and questions, doctors were no longer as interested in Kaplan’s courses as in the study rooms. It turned out that any college or university has libraries in which anyone is allowed to study, not just its own students. In some places no document was required, in others they provided a local ID with a photo. Please sit and study! That’s what we did.
After a couple of years, “my team” expanded. When my cousin Valya, also a doctor, arrived (more on this is in the story ahead; we have to break the order of events to maintain the theme) and settled in our residential complex, we set up school at home. Two of our friends and one girlfriend, as well as Valya and I, alternately and in pairs studied different subjects and switched after two hours. Here’s the carousel! Whatever you can do to successfully pass the exams.
I would like to add – and quickly, but it would be against the facts. For most people, the process took four to five years for the first two exams. To be honest, I must admit that passing exams depends solely on memory. Among those who passed the exams quickly and well, I know “weak” doctors, although they do not think so. On the contrary, among those who took a long time and passed the exams with low but passing grades, there are “wise” doctors. And this, I believe, is not entirely true, although perhaps each of them thinks so.
I would like to remember with the kind words of the English teacher from the Kaplan courses. She was a thin, snub-nosed woman whom I met in the library. She dropped a stack of tests, and I helped collecting them from the floor. We started talking. Her name was Greta, she taught European languages and suggested that I sometimes write essays in English, and she would correct them. Of course, it was very interesting for me to communicate with an educated woman from a new country.
Soon she and her husband invited us to a modern miniature theater, which rented the premises of a gay club, where muscular men openly kissed each other in lips. It was disgusting, but the miniatures that we understood seemed funny.
Now we have invited the Americans… Well, where could we invite them? Home for a dinner. The table, which was quite modest by Georgian standards – khachapuri (pastry with cheese), a couple of different vegetables with nuts – pkhali and chicken “tobacco” (deeply fried Cornish chicken) – caused a furor among our guests.
“Let’s open a company selling frozen khachapuri and boxes of pkhali,” suggested the businesslike Greta, “You will organize production, and I will organize advertising and sales. You know, before the war there was no pizza in America, and now frozen pizza makers are billionaires.”
“I’m for it,” I agreed. Partners 50% to 50%.”
“No, dear,” Greta objected, “You can’t imagine what investments this will require, two hundred thousand each. Where did you get that kind of money? I will pay you any salary, but the entire enterprise has to be mine.”
I did not explain that I had someone to borrow that kind of money from, I simply refused, citing my main business – passing exams. Of course, I don’t regret it, but three decades later I see that the producers of the products of the former fraternal republics of the USSR have indeed become millionaires.
I’ll also should mentioning Welfare. The reader may wonder how the author lived without working and how he paid for Kaplan’s courses. It’s simple – my friend Sasha paid for the courses, as well as down payment for our apartment. It was a debt that I paid off in two or three years (I’ll tell you later, how I did it), and the Welfare social program helped with my living thanks to cheap apartment and food. Welfare provided cash benefits to low-income immigrants as long as someone studied, and other family members earned less than a certain level. When the family reached this level, the cash benefit was withdrawn, and medical insurance, albeit weak, which good doctors did not accept, remained for a while. In those years, the employer was not required to provide insurance; it’s good that we were young and healthy!
Every six months it was necessary to go to the social assistance office and show documents about study and work, about passing exams in a specialty and similar evidence of useful activities for society, because work is already taxes in the public treasury, and study is future and possibly increased taxes. This approach was a simple and effective way to bring my studies to the happy end.
Sometimes the Welfare office would hand out “gifts” to those in need, such as bags of condoms. But they were looked at with disgust or contempt – the birth of children increased the allowance, no one wanted to spit in the well…
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