Uni Stuff > The University Journey Journal
Vox Nihili, Vox Dei—VN's Medicine Journey Journal
vox nihili:
Have finally finished up for the year!
Exams wen't ok—not as well as they did last year, but I've managed to enjoy a better balance between studying and social life and have probably had a happier year than first year, so that's good in the end. To add to that, I've also pursued more opportunities outside of med, which have been fantastic.
A huge highlight this year was getting to go on a sponsored trip to Canberra (if you're a med student, feel free to send me a message about it—it's great) for AMSA National Leadership Development Seminar. There we did the typical kind of conferency stuff, with speakers from a broad range of areas. They were pretty fantastic, but the best part of it by far was getting to meet medical students from all around the country and hang out in Canberra. I made some really wonderful friends there, some of whom I'm seeing next week actually, and even got a chance to sneak into parliament for Question Time.
Next year I have decided to continue to try to pursue things outside of med, even if it means that my marks will suffer for it slightly. To that end, I will be getting more involved in Global Health, as our MedSoc's co-chair of Global Health. I will also continue working with SWOT, a charity initiative aimed at providing VCE students from disadvantaged backgrounds revision programmes, this time in the capacity as their HR Officer.
Med wise, third year sees us all over the shop. Personally, I start off doing GP, then onto psych and after that aged care. The last two rotations of the year, which take place in the year's second half, are paediatrics (at the Children's!) and women's. Looking forward to GP and paeds in particular, the rest is a bit eh but you never know what that might be like at the end of the day!
This will likely be my last entry for the year; potentially something around results time, but I will be in Europe at that point...so probs not.
Calebark:
A bit early, but wishing you all the luck in the world for the rest of the degree.
--- Quote from: vox nihili on November 17, 2017, 12:26:50 am --- I will also continue working with SWOT, a charity initiative aimed at providing VCE students from disadvantaged backgrounds revision programmes, this time in the capacity as their HR Officer.
--- End quote ---
I also hope you're comfortable with being called a fucking baller because you're a fucking baller.
vox nihili:
Decided to chuck in a results post now that I'm back from overseas.
Earlier in this journal I briefly discussed having to rejig my expectations around results time. I didn't really give it a full discussion, which is a pity because it's something that played on my mind a lot. When you start med school, you're told 1000x over that you can't expect to do as well as you did in your undergrad. Effectively, everyone who goes into med came into it via an HD average, so given our results are comparative, the majority of the cohort will go from an HD average to something lower.
For the first semester or so, this was difficult to deal with. I'd prided myself on doing really well and suddenly feeling like the dumbest person in the room was challenging. It wasn't until half way through the year, when I did surprisingly well on our midyears (I actually fluked my way into the top 15 or so in the cohort) that I realised that I probably could do really well out of that year. As it turned out, come results time I did: I just scraped through with an 81.
Come second year, I knew the challenge would be bigger. First year is all the pre-clinical stuff, basically the fourth year of biomedicine; whereas, second year is all about clinical knowledge, something which I struggle to study for. As second year progressed, I constantly found myself without any real idea about what I should be doing. I felt very much like I was treading water, as opposed to first year when I worked my arse off and constantly pushed towards my goal of doing well.
Second year eventually got to a point where it became pretty clear that I wouldn't be able to repeat my success. So begun the long process of trying to accept that, particularly as the chances of saving my year at the last minute became more and more distant. There were lots of conversations with loved ones about it, and then conversations with friends, too. At one point, I even discussed it with one of my MD1 tute groups, to try to let them know that I knew what some of them were going through.
Come exam time I didn't prepare nearly as hard as the previous year. I just wanted to pass through respectably and I started to feel reasonably confident that I could do that. When exams came around, I knew I'd put in a solid effort and was certain I would pass competently. It didn't feel like it had the previous year though, when I felt confident that I knew things.
I had VCESS work to do after exams and then headed overseas, so I really didn't think about results much until it was about time for them to come out. When they eventually did come out, it was a WAM change, so I had to calculate it. The WAM change shocked me: it had gone up. I crunched the numbers in my head and worked out that I'd managed an 82.
What hit me was a mixture of joy, crushing guilt and an emotion that can only be termed "what the fuck". My humour is often self-deprecating, but I've never been a person to talk myself down academically. Indeed, I've usually had a fairly good idea of how I'd go. If I'd do well, I knew I'd do well. Likewise, if I'd cooked something, I knew it was cooked.
At the end of it all, I'd spoken to a lot of people about results, including everyone here, and now feel like a total fraud. In high school, I used to be able to wing things pretty well, but at uni I've always prided myself on "earning" my results, so that I ended up with that is something I feel extremely grateful for, but also something that made me feel like a bit of a fraud in the end.
Shenz0r:
Only just stumbled onto this, but can very strongly echo the sentiment of feeling completely out of your depth in terms of knowledge.
I was the reverse to vox - same grade in MD1 but I took a slight hit in MD2, dropping down to a H2A.
To all prospective medical students though, if you can get good marks, that’s icing on the cake, but remember that it’s the experiences you get and the opportunities you ask for that are the most important! Your clinical skills aren’t entirely reflected by your exam marks. Took a while for me to get over the fact that I wasn’t getting as high as I used to and a lot of medical students have the same issue. Imposter syndrome is very real.
vox nihili:
--- Quote from: Shenz0r on January 02, 2018, 11:55:39 pm ---To all prospective medical students though, if you can get good marks, that’s icing on the cake, but remember that it’s the experiences you get and the opportunities you ask for that are the most important! Your clinical skills aren’t entirely reflected by your exam marks. Took a while for me to get over the fact that I wasn’t getting as high as I used to and a lot of medical students have the same issue. Imposter syndrome is very real.
--- End quote ---
This sums it up so well in a way that I couldn't really capture here, thanks so much for this.
Marks matter insofar as they help determine where your internship will be, but I'm not really convinced that they give any insight into the kind of doctor someone will be. "Experiences and opportunities", where I felt I let myself down a lot last year, really do matter a lot more in the long run. Nobody asks their doctor "what mark did you get in medical school", but they do always ask "have you done/seen this before?".
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