Revision and rehearsals

Hello again,

With Tingewick fast approaching, and a mid-term assessment today, there's not been time to do much other than rehearse and revise this week. I've got Tingewick rehearsals most evenings now, and on Sunday we're supposed to be there from 10am until midnight for technical rehearsals! There are a few songs that everyone is in, so I've had to go to rehearsals for the act that I'm not actually acting in, as well as the one that I am. After the performances next week, it'll be strange to suddenly have some free evenings. It'll also be the end of term for undergraduates at the end of next week, so there will be less people in college to see and less going on there.

The assessment today is half written, with extended matching questions, and half done on computer, with multiple choice questions. It's a practise for the main one at the end of term, and apparently it's usually a lot harder than that one to shock us all into working hard. Although it doesn't count for anything officially, it would be reassuring to pass, as there are only a few weeks until the real thing and there'll be more to learn by then on top of what we have now.

This Saturday I have my graduation for my preclinical degree. We have to book our graduations, which are held throughout the year, so we're not necessarily with course- or college-mates but I've managed to arrange mine at the same time as my friends. I'll update you on what happens afterwards because it's all a bit of a mystery at the moment!

Hello,

Sorry for the pause in posting - I've been getting busier and busier as we approach the halfway point of the pathology course, and with it a midterm formative assessment. That's not for over a week yet, but with so much else going on at the moment, any spare moment is useful for revision! I've also been going to rehearsals for Tingewick, the medic's pantomime, which seems to be slowly but surely getting more organised - initially we were getting several emails a day with conflicting times for rehearsals, which discouraged anyone from turning up to very many. I think it should be fun when it happens, though. The audience is mostly doctors and hospital staff, with some students too.

Workwise, lectures and classes are still proving to be really interesting, and we're speeding through the body systems, with a lot of information attached to each, incredibly fast. There's certainly no time to get bored! On Friday I went to an autopsy, which is something we have to do at some point this term. It was amazing to see the pathology so clearly, and it was very well explained. Having seen a lot of dissections of preserved bodies, it wasn't too weird seeing another dead person, although it obviously looked a bit different with a lot more blood. I think it'll make it much easier to remember what I saw than it would have been from just looking at books, and the practical nature of clinical medicine is still showing through, despite the necessity of lecture-based learning to get the facts in our heads to start with. The combination of theory and practise is one of the things I've enjoyed most so far here.