My third year has come to a close with the biggest, hardest exam I've had to do so far in life. An Incremental Clinical Exam (I.C.E.) which is like a miniature OSCE-type exam in which my clinical, hands-on, patient interaction skills are tested. That came along with 2 written exams in Surgery and Child Health all in the same week. That was one crazy week.
But I've come away with successful results in my I.C.E. I wish I knew what my exact mark was but seeing the word 'PASS' was relief enough! I've passed all my exams for my courses but I'm still not sure what everything adds up to for my course work because I've had procedure cards, case books and reports to hand in for each specialty clerkship I did over the past three months and they account for quite a handful of my grade. I'll find out on Monday how everything goes but I'm sure I've passed all three 9-credit courses and will successfully move onto my fourth year of medical school.
Fourth year marks the beginning of a new phase of medical school: Phase II of my M.B.B.S. programme. From here, everything I do is clinically based...no more time on the university campus anymore. It's almost depressing since I hadn't particularly liked all the time I've had to spend in the hospital over the past 3 months...it's a little saddening that I have another 3 years to bear with but I'm sure I'll come away with all my successes in hand. I'll miss the days when I had time to do nothing...to a certain extent but I'll enjoy the busy buzz of hospital life...to a certain extent. I try to comfort myself by believing that the hospital life is an...acquired taste. But only time will tell. Fourth year starts in just over a week's time so I sure hope I'll know what our group allocations are and what rotations I'll have over the next year by next week!
Phase I was an experience of it's own. I'm quite happy with the people I met and the lecturers I've had...they've all taught me something different...good or bad. I'm pretty sure Phase II will be faced with hardships that cannot be compared to those of Phase I and I'll make it through as I always do. It's funny, I can look back on the past 3 years and think that all the stuff we went through before was really not as hard as they seemed at the time. I'm sure 4th and 5th year will be the same. Honestly, I can't even believe 3 years have come and gone so quickly. I can still recall my orientation into medical school. Oh, how time flies.
1 comment:
I feel all warm and fuzzy inside reading this entry and applying it to myself. Just as i can imagine every single detail u have described experiencing, i can almost do the same for me. I know each experience has to be unique - just hope mine isn't too too bad
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