30 days, 720 hours, 43’200 minutes until exams…

Exam fever has turned into exam delirium and I find myself thinking of Dory from Disney’s Finding Nemo singing just keep swimming, just keep swimming as she swims through the dark and dangerous waters. Over the next 30 days I need to just keep revising as I pass through the murky and unfathomable waters of blocks 1 to 4 and grapple with new challenges presented by Block 5! It’s hard to maintain confidence in your own way of working when you find yourself comparing yourself to your fellow students some of whom seem to have no need to eat or sleep and seem to be able to reel off endless lists that you had forgotten even existed. I’ve always worked quite steadily, I try and make sure I don’t work too late and always make time for dinner that doesn’t just consist of cereal. Although I haven’t been very good at keeping up many extra activities outside of medicine this year I have started walking the 3 miles to the medical school a few times a week, making sure I have some fresh air which I think has really helped. Even during my PhD I didn’t let myself get too worked up over what other people were doing but I’m struggling to do the same in my first year of medicine. The amount of information is so mind boggling that most people have had to change their working style and mine has morphed and improved over the year, but have I done enough? I hope so, but I won’t know for sure until the end of June!

Apart from exam stress I have just finished my second week of block 5 Reproduction and Child health. We are covering some very interesting topics such as child development, conception and labour and because the block leads know we are revising at the same time they are doing everything they can to help us. Providing quizzes to help us consolidate our knowledge and providing quick recap sessions in response to questions sent in has been really helpful. The lecturers at the medical school really do go out of their way to help you if they can. A great example of this was a whole afternoon of revision on some of the trickier concepts from Block 1 and 2 which was run solely in response to requests from students. Peer support is now running two sessions a week and extra sessions on specific topics at the weekend. Ruder and more memorable mnemonics for various topics are passed around the cohort, and while I’ve never been so stressed in all my life the amount of help from the medical school and my fellow students is really encouraging.

I can’t just work constantly though and after a particularly long day this week I made my first trip to the SU bar the Dirty Duck on main campus with a few other medics who had had enough for the day. Chilling in the sunshine with a cold drink and new friends made me realise that we are all in the same boat and we just have to keep revising… only 43’200 minutes to go!

Megan Earle : 13 May 2015 09:36 |  Tags: Exams Joanne Mbchb Warwick |  Comments (0) |  Report a problem