I think I know it. I think I know it.

I properly learnt the coagulation cascade today. Sure it was examined in last year’s exam, but I just crammed everything in and had forgotten it as soon as I had my first glass of wine after the exams. It truly is a good feeling knowing what you’re supposed to know in the first place. I feel more comfortable facing the phase exams now. I just have to learn immunology (my worst, honestly) and try to teach myself neurophysiology. And I am off to bed now.

And the first fortnight of second year is almost over…

Med has finally started again and before I knew it, the first fortnight is a day away from being over. What have I learnt so far…

1. Nurses can make your life miserable… Yes, that does not only apply to being in a hospital; even a clinical skills nurse can do that.

2. Horoscopes lie.

3. Being a med student by day and forex trader by night means that your sleep will be cut in half.

4. A game of Risk online is the only thing that can get you through sitting in an RCA lecture.

5. Just don’t get caught playing it.

Ta,

N

Back from 2 month frantic med studying hiatus

Dear readers,

Apologies for my 2-month-hiatus from this blog. Medicine was consuming my life and that coupled with the part-time job that I’ve picked up (pizza-making) left me KO’ed in the evenings.

Here are a few updates:

• I passed my end-of-the-year exam with a satisfactory mark.
• I started working in Crust Gourmet Pizza as a pizza-maker in October.
• I bought Kumar & Clark, Guyton & Hall, G&H Physiology Review, and Oxford Handbook of Clinical Medicine from my pizza money.
• I also bought a few toys: a cookie cutter that prints out words on the cookie from Ebay and a bicycle. All from pizza money.
• I’m going home Monday and won’t be back in Australia until the end of January.
• I make mean ice creams; so far, I’ve made: strawberry sour cream ice cream, salted toffee ice cream, and mango ice cream…

Let’s talk about the most important of the list, which is the exams. I don’t know what the second-years were thinking, but our exams this year were killers. The MEQ (essays) was vague and not really what I studies. Throughout the entire year, we’ve been told to know the important concepts. Turned out a really crappy 50-min lecture on pelvic pain by a clinician who wouldn’t stop showing off his CREI was important enough as a 10-pt question for the exam. WTF? That was the first day (Monday Nov 30th). I was left so depressed that when I went to the shop later that afternoon to pick up stuff for dinner, I got lost walking home. That never happened to me before.

The second day was definitely slightly better. Two exams, both multiple choice. Although they were slightly easier than the MEQ, the bad thing about multiple choice is that you can’t get partial marks. The first exam of the day wasn’t too bad, but the anatomy exam was more confusing. I left the room unsure about ALL of the answers that I put in.

Fast forward to yesterday at 6:30pm. A few friends and I went to Sydney for dim sum. Kylie said if we fail, we’ll get a phone call. Throughout the day, we kept on getting phone calls from different people. The dim sum was great, the phone calls weren’t. We had such a frantic energy because we were scared of getting the dreaded phone calls.Got back to Wollongong at 6:30pm. Opened my SOLS account. Darn! Our internet connection has gone down to snail speed… It was dreadful waiting for 5 mins to get the result AND Google Chrome decided to crash before I got my result. The result finally came up and I got … an S!!! S for SATISFACTORY. Being satisfactory has never sweeter before.

I did promise myself though that if I pass, I would be a lot more consistent. I’m definitely taking my K&C and G&H home and I’ll be putting in 4-6 hours a day… I’ll still be enjoying myself; I’ve got the ‘rents and the food that I love. I just have to schedule my day so I can do both.