All entries for Friday 29 March 2019

Highlighters, Blue pens and Common Room Heaters

This is it. The big revision break is here. I am happy to say it is going well as far. I have got myself into a nice routine and even discovered I am a bit of an early bird starting at 8am every day. I have also found that I work well in the common room but it is freezing in here, so I have kidnapped a heater from the CBL rooms and I now am as toasty as …. Well … Toast? I am also finding (rather oddly) that moving round the common room day to day is helping me to revise and not procrastinate so I am making full use of have the entire room to myself.

It’s going ok and I am pleased with my progress for once! I have decided to hit three blocks over Easter as I wanted to take things a slowly rather than trying to cram four blocks in four weeks without a break, so I will tackle Block Three (my favourite block) with Block 5. I am hoping that will work, as I would rather get a good breadth of information rather than trying to work myself to the bare bones and burn out before exams. I am a lot calmer than I was last week, I think this is because I am finally able to review and learn the things that we didn't have time for when in the blocks. You have to get used to taking in content quickly as you are hit with new information every day, and I worked out that we have had 21 solid weeks of new content since September. It sounds scary, but it's all coming together, and I can finally see the connections between lectures so it's making it a lot easier to learn. You just need to keep in mind that the human body is an intricate puzzle and you have to see the bigger picture to understand how each part works.

Not much has gone on here apart from me walking into the MTC at 8am to start revision and leaving between 5pm and 8pm to go home and collapse on my bed. However, I did pop back up to Preston for a couple of days over the last week which is where I completed my undergraduate degree. It was nice to see my old lecturers and catch up with my old course mates and of course my best friends. It’s important to keep in touch with your non-medic friends during the course as it can get lonely when you're in week 7 out of 10 and the only people that you talk to are other medics. I got to go into my old SU bar and have a pizza of which I had been craving for a while, and in the evening, we headed to a “place of entertainment” of which I had missed a lot and sung every song that came on at the top of my lungs. It was amazing to catch up with them and even though I haven't seen them since July, it felt like I had never been away. It was good to get out of Coventry and away from my textbooks and now feel a little bit less like a walking textbook, albeit a rather blank textbook.

There has also been the introduction of a #MedStudentTwitter this week on Twitter so I have been following it as part of my revision/ procrastination breaks and people have been sharing tips on clinical learning and revision for exams. It is a nice way to be reminded that you are part of a wider community of future doctors and that we are all banding together to support each other through the intense world of medical school.

I'm looking forward to the open day next week as I am doing the student life talk for the incoming perspective med students. This feels a bit deja vu as I used to do the student life talks for my old university in front of more than 500 people so, it will be nice to do what I loved. I know the university are overtaking the common room for the open day so, I guess I am going to have to find somewhere else to make a revision nest in. I don't mind I guess these people will be in their first year when I'm in my third, which is quite a scary thought!

I have procrastinated enough writing this blog……. back to Gas Laws and Tubular Flow it is!

Abbie

Charlie Gallan : 29 Mar 2019 14:21 |  Tags: Abbie Mbchb Student Warwick Wms |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem