On Tuesday afternoon, Zhaxi was sitting in the demonstration room revising the fifth draft of his thesis when his phone rang. It was Professor Yang.

"Come to my office!"

Zhaxi put down his computer and jogged over, knocked on Professor Yang’s office door, Yang Ping raised his head and pointed at the chair opposite: "Sit!"

A pile of literature was spread out on the desk, all about Clostridium difficile infections. Zhaxi recognized a few of them, the ones he had consulted when writing his thesis. Yang Ping had a printed copy of Zhaxi’s paper in his hand, still with red pen annotations.

"I’ve read your thesis, fifth draft!" Yang Ping placed it on the desk, flipping to the first page, "It’s much better than the fourth draft, but there are still issues."

Zhaxi’s heart tightened: "What issues?"

Yang Ping didn’t answer directly, but asked him instead: "Let me ask you a question, how long did you spend writing this thesis?"

Zhaxi thought for a moment: "On and off for about a week."

"A week!" Yang Ping nodded, "And in that week, did you thoroughly understand this disease? The horizontal, vertical, and intersecting knowledge surrounding this disease..."

Zhaxi opened his mouth, wanting to say "almost," but the words stuck in his throat. Truthfully, he had indeed researched a lot of literature and wrote a case report, but he knew his understanding of Clostridium difficile infection was still at the level of "can write a case report." If asked deeper questions, such as what is the pathogenic mechanism of this bacteria, why this particular patient got infected and not others, how to grasp the course and discontinuation indications of antibiotic treatment, what are the risk factors for relapse, he couldn’t answer any of them.

Yang Ping looked at his expression and seemed to have known the answer. 𝑓𝓇𝘦ℯ𝘸𝘦𝑏𝓃𝑜𝘷ℯ𝑙.𝑐𝑜𝓂

"Zhaxi, have you heard of Li Min?"

Zhaxi nodded.

"Do you know how Li Min grew?" Yang Ping asked.

Zhaxi shook his head.

Yang Ping leaned back in his chair, his gaze falling outside the window, as if reminiscing about something. "When Li Min first came, he was about like you, not bad in foundation, but not outstanding either. One day, he followed me to admit a patient with lumbar disc herniation, a very common disease, and I let him manage this patient."

He paused for a moment, looking at Zhaxi: "Do you know how I asked him to manage it?"

Zhaxi shook his head.

Yang Ping said: "I asked him to thoroughly study this patient from head to toe, not just the diagnosis and treatment, but all related knowledge. What’s the anatomical structure of the disc? Where does the blood supply come from? What are the pathophysiological changes when the nerve root is compressed? Why does it hurt? Why does it go numb? In what scenarios is conservative treatment effective? When is surgical intervention necessary? What types of surgeries are available? What are the pros and cons of each? How to prevent postoperative complications? How to handle them?"

Zhaxi listened, wide-eyed.

Yang Ping continued, "I let him go to the library to turn over all the books on lumbar disc herniation, to go to PubMed to search all related literature, to go to the operating room and follow all achievable disc surgeries. A week later, he came to report to me. I asked him, how much do you understand about this disease now? He said he thought he understood about eighty percent. I said, not enough, keep going. Another week passed, and he reported again. I asked, how about now? He said, ninety percent. I said, still not enough. In the third week, he came to report again. I asked, how about now? He thought for a while and said, I understood ten percent."

Zhaxi froze: "Ten percent?"

Yang Ping laughed: "Yes, ten percent. He said, the more he understands, the more he finds out about what he doesn’t know."

Zhaxi sat there with a complex feeling bubbling inside. He recalled the process of writing his thesis, researching over a dozen papers, and writing a case report made him feel he was almost there. But compared to Li Min’s ’three weeks,’ his ’one week’ was simply a joke.

Yang Ping looked at him, his tone becoming serious: "Zhaxi, do you know why I am telling you this?"

Zhaxi shook his head.

Yang Ping pointed at the pile of literature on the table and then at Zhaxi’s thesis: "The case you wrote, Clostridium difficile infectious aneurysm, is very rare. But rarity isn’t the focus, the focus is whether you have used this case to thoroughly understand this type of disease."

Zhaxi was stunned: "A type of disease?"

Yang Ping stood up, walked to the whiteboard, picked up a pen, and wrote a few words: Infectious Aneurysm.

"What you encountered this time is an infectious aneurysm caused by Clostridium difficile. But the pathogens of infectious aneurysms are not only Clostridium difficile. Streptococcus, Staphylococcus, Salmonella, Brucella can all cause it. What are the differences in their pathogenic mechanisms? What are the clinical manifestations? What are the differences in diagnostic methods? What are the treatment plans? Can you handle it effortlessly the next time you encounter such cases?"

As he spoke, he drew a table on the whiteboard, filling it densely with information.

Zhaxi looked at the table, his mind buzzing, he had never thought that a disease could be learned in such a way.

Yang Ping turned around and looked at him: "From now on, this case is your entry point. You need to take it as a starting point and learn all the related knowledge."

Yang Ping saw Zhaxi’s amazed expression and smiled: "Are you scared?"

Zhaxi took a deep breath: "Not scared."

Yang Ping nodded: "That’s good, remember, I’m not asking you to memorize all these things. I’m asking you to establish a framework, so in the future, whenever you encounter any case, you know where to start, how to learn, how to search, how to think. This ability is more important than knowing how to perform a hundred surgeries."