And breathe...

Well, the latest round of exams are finally over, and I never seem to take full advantage of the moment of freedom afterwards; even after this mega exam consisting of Human Development (basically about stuff where the sun don't shine), Cardio-Resp ("lub dub") and Metabolism (digestion,diarrhoea and a re-haunting of Biochem), I didn't exactly know how to celebrate. The exam in my opinion, went quite well alhamdulillah; not too many tricky questions, and compared to FunMed, I didn't have to quickly fill any gaps in whilst the examiner told everyone to stop writing. I actually quite enjoy exams, especially if I'm properly prepared for them and even if I'm not, the vibe filling the whole room is something unique. Exam halls aren't places regularly frequented, and the seriousness of both the invigilators and fellow exam-takers is something I find quite amusing. All past friendships are forgotten once those doors open, with people managing only an awkward smile as they walk past to find their seats.

When you're sitting the exam, everything in your mind is a jumble; do I start at the beginning or skip to a certain section? Our exams involve Short Answer Questions (SAQ's) and Extended Matching Questions (EMQ's, where they give you a list of 20 words and you have to match them to the descriptions given; quite tricky sometimes). All past papers you've done are nothing in comparison to this exam, why on earth do they have to shake things up when it's my year, always?! But maybe it's just the adrenaline pumping through your veins as you wonder if you'll finish in time, and whether or not you'll make a fool of yourself in front of the markers.  Any little sound becomes amplified and could put you right off your flow; any constant coughing, or interruptions by the examiners, or the constant clockety clock footsteps of the invigilators can really annoy you.  And it doesn't help that every so often you can hear a tube train run underneath the exam hall.  It's actually one of the reasons why I want to take a dyslexia test (apart from getting extra time); I get to escape to a quieter venue to sit my exam!

The morning exam was the online anatomy/micronatomy spotter (no, it doesn't mean identifying zits); they give you pictures of corpses and microscope slides, and either ask you to identify bits or layers of cells, or their function and what they produce. This exam was easier than the FunMed one, and apart from some menacing placenta questions, it was quite a chilled exam, especially as alot of questions were repeated from earlier years.

When it's all over, and you think you've done well (which in Medicine's case means scraping a pass), there's an overwhelming sense of relief as everyone gets up from their places with wide (and sometimes uneasy) grins on their faces. And then begins the chatter about how everyone found the exam, and what they put for specific questions; and I'm quite a guilty culprit when it gets to this stage, needing some sort of reason to justify some of the answers I put down during the exam.

So now I'm in the middle of a clinical hypnosis module, I can relax, literally. An update on that will come once I actually finish learning and experiencing everything and get assessed (but so far it has been phenomenal!), and once I get this PBL writeup done; my blog being the last excuse I can make before I really get down to typing 2000 words on Vibrio cholerae and how it causes diarrhoea. Goodbye.