ramblings~
Yijin + girls! '05
Xiz, Ms Wang + guys! '04
* 03S78
* hwachong junior college
* candice
* lifang
* yang
* xiaoxuan
* hilda
* quanyao
* xizhen
* sharon
* huiqi
* meiyin
* yijin
* yifan
* pear
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* weixin
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* ningqi
* pua
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* wijaya
* ronnie
* weilei
* bong
* ryan shea
* wuwei
* r~linz
* hwachong!
* IVLE :)
* 30th Anniversary!
* HJC Council! :)
* our funky yahoogroups! :)
* winning thinkquest entry - i-Matrix
* blogger
* blogskins
* junior class!
* grandjuniors!
* 06s78
* 07s78
* 08s78
* dearly beloved ms wang!
* 03S77
* 03S75
* 03S71
* 03S7A
* 03A11
* 03A12
* 03S62
* 03S69
* 04S68
* 04S62
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from a meddie
Hello everybody,
Yes, at long last, the meddies are on a holiday: our first real one for this past year! As a "double happiness", we just had a belated birthday celebration for ningqi... who has recently found a new hobby in assembling computers =P
Since everyone is in the mood for updates, I guess I’ll contribute. After all, I should have plenty to say since its been one year since we’ve started our clinicals. That’s one year spent patrolling the wards, taking down particulars of every new inpatient. Twelve months of standing guard at the operating tables. 42 weeks getting addicted to the sight of juicy veins and what we can stick into them. 365 days of disrupted circadian rhythms, bundled with lost weekends and holidays. Man, we’re probably able to identify the curtains of all the different hospitals in Singapore.
In the process, we’ve grown used to embarrassing ourselves on a daily basis. At least, yours truly has. From stuttering in dialect to stammering like an infatuated fool in front of professors, from fumbling over various tools of examination to kicking over urine containers, the ward fears the medical student as much as the medical student fears the ward. Initially, at least =)
Some days, we tire and puncture like a flat tyre. On others, we perk up and work like an energizer bunny for days at a stretch without need for rest. In between this mad blur of activity, we also had the privilege to reflect on the life stories of the people we met. We get to question both the wise and the unreasonable patient. We feel depressed with the depressed patient and laugh with the manic one.
In fact, this one year has been such an emotional and intellectual roller-coaster, the normal medical student might just be forgiven for saying he or she is exhausted.
So then, that begs the question: am I happily exhausted?
=)
To reach the answer, allow me to first explain why medical students are perpetually stuck in study.
The fault lies with medicine being very much an uncertain science. Herein lies both the beauty of medicine as well as the root of frustration for the student: errors are abound in the interpretation of many a medical observation!
In an attempt to solve this, the teaching of medicine today is becoming increasingly mechanistic. Like economists pouring over charts and various forms of technical analysis to predict market movements, medical students learn diagnostic criteria, cut-off values and predictive values. Following that, we rely on a plethora of classifications which help us decide which protocol to follow. What a barrage of information to blow the neural fuses and sockets! Yet, given that these values and guides are no more than “averages” of clinical studies conducted, the inexperienced medical student often feels like he is playing the stock market for the first time.
The novice medical student thus faces the challenge of developing his own fiercely independent brand of thinking to marry both mechanistic data with humanistic elements (aka common sense, experience and insight) to better his practice of medicine. The inadequacies a medical student feels when starting out are frightening. I cannot begin to describe the terror medical students feel when they cannot reach a diagnosis, let alone remember how to treat a certain condition when the patient’s life depends on it.
This is where the problem starts.
Driven by high ideals of service and the dreams of becoming a good doctor, the medical student then pressures himself to study harder. He starts by memorizing 20 differentials for clubbing of the fingers, the pathophysiology of which is uncertain. He then does the same for hundreds of other signs and conditions. Under pressure or after a few weeks, he then forgets 80% of all that.
There, he studies yet harder and loses the plot.
Doesn’t sound very fun huh. So why are we all not raving mad yet? (Or perhaps you think we already are!)
I think the reason most of us have actually enjoyed the first clinical year lies simply in that amazingly, we have all retained a sense of humour. We laugh at each other’s ridiculous jokes, we learn imitate distinctive bedside mannerisms and clinical signs, we recount outrageous patient interviews and how we got out of trouble.
While the serious medical student labours endlessly discussing the features of a disease, the medical student with a good sense of humour indulges in flashes of wit, showing up very practical contradictions to simplify a previously complex and boring problem. (Think VP kumar!) Instead of feeling frustrated, the student learns to be see the ironies that colour medicine and life in a different light.
When we next meet up, it will be these stories that we will relate in vivid detail. And yes, we won’t forget one year’s worth of gossip. There’s plenty of that as well!
In the meantime, all the best for anyone with remaining papers!
ryaniq lived on 1:27 AM
- 03S78 forever -
from canberra
hi all,
given the perpetual onslaught of exams in med school, I really shouldn't be surprised if you guys tell me you are in perpetual mugging mode as well.
A good counterexample is mathematics. Either you know it or you don't. Not much of fine print to struggle with there. It's more of learning greek letters and dealing with the occasional onset of depression and epiphany(not unlike bipolar disorder), except maybe one is too tired from the process of understanding to even bother mumbling eureka.
Nope, I am not doing such excruciatingly enjoyable mathematics yet. I am just a first year student at anu, doing really simple stuff, while developing an oscillatory love-hate relationship with my school. That's my update for now, mates.
Yeong Heng lived on 9:09 PM
- 03S78 forever -
test coming up
hello all.
sorry to yijin and xiz, the medicine people are currently stuck with mugging for the end-of-posting test. For quanyao, weix, ryan and myself, we have an orthopaedics mcq test coming up tmr. Don't look down on this mcq k.... they're darn difficult la. While broad principles are tested, sometimes the fine print comes up. And unlike 'A' levels, where some *ahem ahem* could afford to attempt to mug out all those fine prints in the bio notes, I personally think it is impossible to do the same for medicine. You will cry. (I believe the same would apply to most tertiary education subjects)
Yijin and yifan, you must have finished your course of study by now... err right? Congrats! Together with Candice (I think) you guys are one of the first degree holders in our class haha =)
Ok back to mugging (read: spotting questions with tys).
ningky lived on 11:53 AM
- 03S78 forever -
not anymore!
hey guys,
thanks man yijin for starting the ball rolling :P if people still check this blog then i think/hope they will reply too to your post! anyway, updates fr my side - nth spectacular, much more studying, a little bit of panicking, still travelling around to visit friends and still entertaining many visiting friends. all is good on our side of the earth, wouldn't you say ;)
oh yes, i met up with jaya in LA (i was honoured to be his first ever visitor!) in march, man that seems like such a long time ago! we went all around LA and drove to vegas (ask us about our near-death experience!) and all in all it was good fun :))
yeaaaah ok i shall go back to studying or maybe sleeping.. mmmm.. goodnight!
xiz lived on 6:56 AM
- 03S78 forever -
so dead!
seems like our class blog has degenerated into a page where pple post random youtube videos heh. what happened to updating each other on our lives? i vaguely remember ryan saying he'll do a post a week... =P
and to add insult to injury, a non-78er commented on how dead our blog is haha. are we not reading our own blog? =D
i guess most of u have already finished ur final exams for the year. sigh wish i could say the same - yifan and i are going to have our finals in a week's time. i haven't heard from him for a long time, despite being about 100m away from each other XD my guess is that he's chomping notes for breakfast, lunch and dinner, while i force mine down in nibbles and liberal quantities of water, in the various forms of slacking. like what i'm doing right now.
haha. will write something longer when my exams are over i guess. have 9 more days to remember details on the cell cycle, plant and microbial stuff, and also development. urgh!!
wish me luck man. sorry for writing such a ranty post haha.
ps remember how i looked when i met some of u guys in rome 2 yrs ago? i look something like that now too =P
Yi Jin lived on 12:56 AM
- 03S78 forever -
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