The morning was hot and sunny, even though it was early and I was making my way up the hill to school. I reached the fifth floor a bit out of breath and a little sweaty. It wasn’t because of the walk.
I sat down in the chair and tried to write my name on the four-million exam pages laid out in front of me. I’ve always seen it as a bit of torture; something to freak you out with as you watch your hands tremble under the weight of all that horrible pressure.
Anyway, the perusal time started and I flicked through the pages of the supplementary exam.
‘Oh, no,’ I thought to myself as my heart sank. This was not what I studied. In fact, this exam seemed to be crammed full of the stuff I didn’t study. I must have misjudged entirely what the second-year coordinator had said about this supp exam, because I was under the impression that this exam would be much like the last. In fact, this was much harder that the original exam that I failed.
I flew through the exam while being as careful as possible to put every detail down. Although I shouldn’t have been watching the clock, I did have a charity meeting to attend about 20 minutes before the exam was slated to finish, so I may have rushed myself a little.
Anyway, the exam finished and I had enough time for a cigarette downstairs before running up to the meeting that went on for ever and ever. By the time I got out I was already running late to go to a colleague’s house to complete a paper outlining research in pregnant women. As soon as I got outside I felt rather than saw the change in the weather. There was a bitterly cold wind whipping through the admittedly permanent wind tunnel that is sandwiched between the hospital and the medical school. I looked up into the sky just as it was broken by a delta of lightning bolts.
I felt like I had been asleep all day and was just waking up.
I drove the 40 minutes or so to the colleague’s house in hail and rain to continue my day of dull duties.
Sometimes I feel like my time has been so over-appropriated by my life as a med student that it bites severely into my sleep time. Oh well, I’m sure I’m supposed to just suck it up.
In any case, that was last Wednesday. I’m not sure when the results are coming out, but I won’t hold my breath for them. I think time will pass a little smoother if I just forget about it entirely.
This weekend was a rural health trip to Bundaberg, and of course the famous Bundaberg rum was sampled at some stage. Although I could have given myself a weekend free to fuck around in the garden (my tomatoes are growing like bamboo), I decided to take a look at rural health. The weekend involved intubations and resuscitation of a bleeding neonate.
Thank God the individuals involved were made of plastic!
But now I can sit back and smile because an irritating phase of the year has just passed. And now I’m just bloody tired.
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