thoughts on finals

writing this on a rainy saturday morning at the end of easter break. exactly 2 months till my last exam. wanted to stop and take stock of medsch so far, of five years of my 20s that went by in the blink of an eye. thinking back to when i first romanced the idea of medicine as a second degree (while driving around tuscany with then manfriend / now mister on my grad trip) and realise how crazy it was to dive into another professional degree after finishing one. but really, the seed was maybe planted two years earlier when the mister was in belgium on exchange and i'd gone to visit him but got banished during his exams to dublin to stay with my cousin, who was then doing medicine as a graduate. meeting her and her engaging, articulate grad med friends who struck me as well-rounded and brimming with emotional depth make me think about the viability (and benefit!) of doing medicine in uni v2. so wanting something is really different from actually putting in the hard work to get it. and i'm constantly reminded of how good God is, from taking medsch entrance exams at the same time as my bar exam, to interviewing just before starting pupillage and to later find out mid-trial that i'd been accepted (and the defense soon capitulated, so it was mega wins all round!)

medsch itself has been a wonderful 'pause' button on life and its accompanying responsibilities in one's 20s. grateful for the time out, for what i joke is my 'five year sabbatical' before rejoining the workforce. have the horrible tendency to gloss over the bad (and why waste precious time and energy dwelling on the negative) but there were low points, like when the state of arrested development got to me (typically every birthday!) and my former colleagues were all climbing the legal practice ladder and becoming senior associates, junior partners and more laterly, partners!) and how my friends who'd gone straight into undergrad medicine were regs and soon-to-be consultants. or how many of the doctors who've been saddled with me in clinical years are younger than me but yay for azn looks and unless i'm wearing my wedding band, no one clocks that i'm maybe old enough to be their mother. 

feel the undergrad medical course could easily be telescoped into 3.5 years but is deliberately prolonged for extra tuition fees and to give the younglings time to grow up. after all, not many 21 year olds would be good doctors. i defo wouldn't trust my 21 year old self to be a doctor. wish i could've done the accelerator course but alas, non-EU = ineligible. in a way the 5 year course is relaxed, wayy too much time off and hm i got to do other stuff so no real complaints, apart from this desire to get on with it and maybe get going on a career. with the way things are looking in the UK (yuck) and their increasingly protectionist measures (latest: hiring scores of foreign doctors but not allowing UK trained foreign doctors like me to remain... uh, why???) i'm not sure where i'll end up. it depends on the mister, where the wind blows him for work, and ultimately what i want to do (still don't know! please don't ask me what i want to specialise in!) oscillate between wanting to be a hospital consultant and doing some uber niche medicolegal thing where the arena is less crowded and i won't waste 5 years of legal training. then another part of me wants to be an itinerant earth mother home-schooling my photogenic brood who moves home every few months (years?) oh my poor imaginary gypsy family! 

that's all far away, and for now the task at hand is plainly simple. revise, pass finals then re-assess. in a way the next two years are sorted (hellooo junior-doctor-dom in north*west*thames!) and if things go according to plan, i've accidentally got a break coming up pretty soon after starting work haha. at this point, i'm so near the finish line now it's time to stop being bored (attention span is way too short, can't sit still and study for more than half an hour, want to be on the internets or out and about!) give it one last push when i've never really pushed before. always felt we'd ample time and practice for exams then need to remind myself it's a course designed for undergraduates, for children unable to time-manage because i've a 6 year life headstart on most of them that comes with 6 more years of exam experience. then again, going from wonderful law exams (loved studying law, loved exams! such fun!) to re-training my brain to pick up all this science, and drug mechanisms and body systems etc. wish it were more a transferable skill but alas it's starting from scratch and creating a brand new schema. have gotten by on embarrassingly little so far, so much so i was a little too close to the wire but lived to tell the tale. only discovered textbooks this year (oh the shame, i blame over-reliance on excellent seniors' notes through lawsch) to which my father sniffed, "better late than never". he's great, constantly telling people in the lift "i'm amazed she's not failed yet". well, so am i! the whole intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation to study is a real struggle. should want to know more medicine so i'll be a good doctor and good for patients, but it's fear of failure that's driven me to work thus far!

my confidence took a beating earlier this year, a combination of meeting exacting consultants who didn't mince their words (and they were right!) and being overwhelmed by irrational finals fear. it all got too much and i ran away to NYC (trigger: anxiety / counter-productive coping mechanism: horriday) where i hung out with A who was a surgeon then realised it wasn't for her and went to oil&gas and is now a management consultant. and she's the loveliest creature ever and she talked sense into me, saying how she too was exhausted of having to explain why she's 'dr' (actually 'miss') to people because her life about-turn happened so many years ago, it's old news. she too faced the same confidence issue, where she used to be uber confident because she was a terrific surgeon but having to start at the bottom of a new industry, knowing nothing, really knocked her for six. and i realised that's how i felt too! which was encouraging because she promised that given time, i'd build confidence in this new arena and would be synergistic by the time i bridged newfound confidence with latent confidence. fingers crossed! still waiting for that to happen :)

whenever the finals anxiety hits, i try to remind myself it's a numbers game. that being older / more mature / responsible, fortunate not having to work part-time while studying already puts me at an advantage. so the game plan for now is head down and chip away at the mammoth mountain. to be systematic and efficient (because there's no time!) to study smart, to retain information, not to do conscience-assuaging revision where i re-read what i already know to massage my ego... part of me thinks there's plenty of time, having really only needed a couple of days before each preceding end-of-year exam. this will be a walk in the park, they want to pass me, right? cf membership exams where they want to fail me :/  

only two months to go, will be over in no time and then helloo grad trip #2! 

edit 16 june 2016: found out today that i passed finals. thank God.