It's over!!!!!

Medical school is over for the year. The assessment is finished, the PBL groups have wrapped up, we have jumped through all of the hoops and I'm there.

How do I feel? I am spent. Drained. Exhausted.

To be honest, I am very glad that I finished the year. In the second semester, I felt completely lost at times. That goodness that I had a great group of friends who, although they might not have realised it, helped to get me through the year. THANKS, everybody!

I never had any intention of dropping out, but it is a testament to having lived a little and having a slightly balanced perspective on life that I didn't crumble completely. I'm a consistent student who tries to work hard. If I found it difficult, god knows how others managed.

I have to have a solid whinge about our course at this point. Even though the point of graduate medicine is that you have experienced people who can learn independently in your course, it doesn't mean that you can just throw them to the sharks and expect them to teach it all to themselves, and then examine them on material that hasn't been covered in your lectures, PBLs, notes or anything that your floundering students are likely to remember.

Running a course like this will help you end up with a lot more work, due to the number of students sitting supplementary exams, and a high drop-out rate, not to mention a dreadful student morale. But perhaps you just don't care, and choose to focus on the numbers and the amount of times you can make the paper for innovations.

Bah, humbug. I'm just bitter and twisted.

I'm taking up more exercise and meditation in the break, learning to take healthy perspective on life, plan things better and spend more time catching up with friends and less time doing unnecessary things. I would be lying if I said that I hadn't lost a close friendship or two in the past year. To be honest, this wasn't entirely from the course but due to external life events, however being busy and distracted with study did not help.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go and sleep for another month. In a few more weeks, it all starts again.