Revision

Well, the revision is plodding along. Not as quick as i would like but i am learning. Thank the lord. I have 14 days until the important exam. The not so important exam is 12 days away. I have a lot to learn but if i stick to the schedule and get intensive when i return to University on Saturday i should at least be as prepared as i can make myself. I'm slightly terrified though, but with me, exams go the same way. It's a multiple choice, so it may perhaps be harder to tell if i've done awfully, but usually my gut feeling of failure is right. There was an occasion when it wasn't, but it's best to expect the worst, then you're less devastated.

Exams and i go one way; i do them, i cry, i obsess over every detail and question for a week, get sick of obsessing and realise there is nothing i can do. I prepare myself for failure. I convince myself that the worst is not actually that bad. Results day looms, for three days before i cry. I cry a lot. I feel like pooh. The results are released. I decide it's better to live in blissful ignorance. I don't discover my results. One or two days pass, and i decide that i'm being a fool. I look at my result. Usually, in all past experiences, it has been fine. But if it's not fine there are re-sit exams in August. I don't even want to do well, i just want to pass. I just want to pass. Being an honours student would be fantastic, it would make Mother Dearest so proud, but all i want is to be a good doctor. To do right by my prospective patients. I don't think i need to pass with honours to do this. I just want to be a good doctor.

Right now, being a doctor feels like such a far off and challenging goal; to speak to a patient as a doctor, to diagnose the patient, to ensure that every aspect of their health, both psychological and physical is catered for, to embody that role..requires extensive training. I am glad the course is 5 years long because i think it takes that amount of time to aquire the skills needed.

My friend Pt also studies medicine. He, like me, doubted he would even get into Medical School, but we both did. At my University our clinical skills or early experience, or whatever you want to call it consists soley of speaking to patients. That's all we've done, and all we will do, in Semesters 1 & 2. At his University they are already using stethescopes and being taught how to take blood! I think it highlights the differences between the Medical Schools we attend. Where i am the emphasis is most definately on th patient as human being, as a person who has many factors affecting their health, not just simply the disease they are suffering from. That's highly emphasised. Perhaps at Pt's there are taught to see the patient as a biochemicalmachine. Personally, the biochemical machine model of a patient is a hell of a lot less terifying than the human model.

I called that girl. I doubted there would be time to meet [and shag] but i did anyway..and as always she spoke, a lot. Sometimes i get so bored of what she's saying i wonder if she'll notice that i've hung up. Most of it is reasonably interesting if it were a conversation, but it is a one way dialouge. I always worry that i'll become like that. Someone who spouts inane information about their life to anyone that'll listen. So i always try to ask questions, even if they are unnecesary. I always try, or at least when i become conscious of the fact that the conversation has become slightly one sided, i try to engage the other person. But usually there's an equal balance.

I am slightly obsessed by facebook. And for some idiotic reason i am slightly obsessed by the number of friends i have, not so as i can prove to myself or others that i'm popular [har har] but just because i'd like a certain number to illustrate the fact that i can make new friends. To illustrate it to myself, of course. Not to anyone else. I don't particularly give a flying fuck what anyone else thinks about the number of friends i have. But i've noticed that my number of friends has been decreasing. This is probably due to the fact that people i don't know [who i usually don't allow anyway but sometimes they slip through the drunken gaps] or people who aren't real people [such as organisations] have been deleting me. But to delete a friend is a big step. I've only done it once. And that was to prevent them stalking me.