Countdown to Christmas!

Hello!

One exam down and one to go! We had an extended matching paper, done on computers, today. That involves choosing answers to several questions from the same list of up to 26 possibilities, before moving onto the next set of questions. Tomorrow is a more conventional multiple choice paper, where the single best answer to each question has to be picked. Both exams cover everything in the pathology course we've just completed, so now revision entails going over the same stuff that I just answered questions on, and inevitably spotting all the ones I got wrong! Fortunately, the paper this morning wasn't too bad and the pass mark is only around 50% anyway, but there seemed to be a mixture of questions that gave far more information than was necessary to get to the answer and others that involved knowing the diagnosis and then the appropriate biochemical or other tests that would be done in the lab to confirm it, with no half marks for only getting half way! Still, multiple choice is definitely less stressful than the essay papers that we're used to.

After tomorrows 3hr paper, we have a lecture about what's happening next term, entitled "Learning on the Wards", followed by a ballot to determine the groups (or firms) we'll be in for our rotations next year. Hopefully, I'll get into the same firm as my housemates so we're all around at the same time. And after that, we're free to go home for Christmas, providing we don't have vivas (oral exams), which are given to anyone with a borderline pass and those with a very high merit (to choose the top couple of students for prizes). Since it's all multiple choice, our results should be out on the next day, so after a final dinner with my housemates tomorrow night, I'll go home on Wednesday. We get 1 1/2 weeks off, which is less than we're used to but actually much better since we won't have to spend it revising, as we have for the past 3 years! We don't have any compulsory work to do at all, although I might write a quick essay for a competition run by the medical school. And then I'll be putting my new pathology knowledge into practise on the general medical wards on the 2nd Jan!

Have a good Christmas!

Time to breathe... and revise.

Hello,

Graduation, Tingewick, and midterm assessments are now all over. Graduation involved listening to some latin, bowing in three directions, eating lunch and having photos taken. Tingewick was sold out and got good reports, and hopefully raised a lot of money for charity (last year it was over £13,000). And the assessment went well too - unfortunately it's already time to start revision for the next one, at the end of term.

This week is amazingly quiet after the panto every night last week - it's a novelty now to not have to spend several hours wearing a pink elephant costume in the evenings. Most undergraduates have now gone home, but some of my college friends are staying up to help with interviews or to get work done, so I won't be completely surrounded by medics!

The pathology course lectures are still interesting, although the number of tumours we need to learn about is getting slightly excessive, especially where the classification systems are similar enough to be confusing but different enough to involve a lot of memorising. This week we're doing brains, which is good for me since I spent all of last year doing neuro. We've had a few patients brought into lectures, which adds variety and helps to make concepts memorable.

And tonight, we have a medic's carol service to give us all a little study break...