The following is an excerpt from an article written by a 3rd med student named Rachel Hepherd from the University of Leeds, and it's about pre-exam life in med school. Somehow I find it comforting that med students from the other side of the globe feel and behave almost the same way as I do now too. Maybe it's bcuz it give me an assurance that I'm not the odd one out in med school for feeling increduosly stupid and incompetent among my peers, heehee. Enjoy guys! ;)
The week before
Preset room to about 17°C - if there is no working radiator in the room (as in most student accommodation) then improvisewith suitable layers of clothing.
Put all those good intentions to one side.
Bored already? - take a trip downstairs and prepare a hot beverage, chat to your housemates, then reluctantly return to your room
Finally open a book. The first topic seems so unfamiliar that you have to check the subject syllabus to make sure you need to learn it.You do (as is usually the case).
Spend a copious amount of time writing out perfect notes on the particular topic.
Six hours have now passed and three pages of perfectly condensed notes have been copied from the textbook. This is now the time to panic as you look back over the list of topics and slowly realise that the topic you have just spent the last six hours toiling over is one of 25 topics, all as gruelling and similar in complexity.
Telephone a colleague. He or she is just as stressed as you are and together you decide that perhaps three or four heads are better than one, and a group revision session may be your best sporting chance of cramming two years of information into a few days .
Five minutes later your colleagues arrive with books and notes in hand. After spending the first half hour telling each other about how stressed you are and how everyone is going to fail, you start to quiz each other on things you've learnt
Arghh! Everyone else seems to know much more than you do. You decide that this public display of lack of knowledge is not going to help your exam performance, so continue for the rest of the week studying on your own, filling in chunks of missing or lost notes from 9 am lectures.
The night before
By this time there are no nails left on your fingertips. You can't eat for fear of vomiting. Your notes seem alien to you. All you can do is sit and hope. An all night session is on the agenda, but you are so exhausted that you fall asleep at 2 am.
The end result
Who knows, only time will tell. The thing to remember is that thousands of medical students undergo this cruel ritual every year (including myself), and most of those do indeed pass. Don't give up hope.
No comments:
Post a Comment