It has been a while since I last blogged about how life in Med school was. Because of the tight schedules we have been experiencing in 3rd year, the time that has been spent on using the computer for blogging has been overshadowed by the tons of paper work, reading, and other academic priorities.
It has been already one semester (actually, 3 days to go before the end of the sem) and it feels like time has flown so fast. It felt like it was just yesterday when we returned to the halls of our school (now on a revamped look) and hurdle another year in Med school. It felt like it was months since we endured 2nd year, and it felt like almost a year since we narrowly passed 1st year.
Looking back and comparing 3rd year with the past 2 years, this year has been the most mentally toxic of all the year levels. It's true what our preceptor back in 2nd year said: that 2nd year was the easiest. I guess she's right: 2nd year was the easiest, but only the easiest in terms of the schedule and light workload. Back then, we had more time for ourselves, though in 1st year we had the most time because of the few subjects that we took during those times. It is in 3rd year where we soon found out that the demands of academics and clinical work were somewhat overwhelming.
Entering 3rd year was like adding another weight to the already heavy load students have been carrying since the 1st day we entered Med. Third year, the year before Junior Internship, required us to become more adept into the clinical analysis and application of what we have learned from the 2 years in school. I personally admit that not all of what I learned from 1st to 2nd year came back immediately whenever we had preceptor sessions, but they slowly reappeared and were put into good use as time passed. Despite that lofty advantage, there has been a lot of difficulty in terms of meeting the demands of clinicians and professors. In 3rd year, we are required to think and act like doctors: we interview patients, examine them, and later on form a diagnosis from the findings. Not only that, we were made to submit paper works every week for each patient we checked up on. We have 3 to 4 preceptor sessions, and each session required us to submit a paper case per week. It's like working 3 to 4 papers weekly on top of the interviewing and examining of patients. It is a definitely heavy load for junior Med students. At first, the rigors of it were too overwhelming. The time spent on adjusting to the demands of clinical practice made us get used to these rigorous tasks. Truth be told, because of the loads of paper works, patient interactions, and lectures with exams, time really flew so fast. We thought that life would be so slow in 3rd year. Turns out, it kinda wasn't.
What's new in UERM is that the school has made quite a face lift of their classrooms. Five new classrooms were added to accommodate new and old students. The classrooms are quite nice: they have movie house seats, cozy atmosphere, and an environment that is really conducive to studying or sleeping (pick one). We have a new Skills Laboratory, which replaced the old rooms of the 2nd floor of the JMC building, which is really nice and clean-looking. In terms of student population, the 1st year batch was divided into 3 sections because of the enormous number of students who wish to try their luck in passing 1st year. Also new to the mix is the requirement of some classes to have an arranged seating for students, and a mandatory attendance sheet for strict monitoring of who's attending and who's not. It wasn't like that in the past. It just happened that most students tend not to attend lectures, that's why they made attendance mandatory. There's nothing wrong with it, as long as this is included in the grading system of the student.
Much as I want to say more to this, I just feel sleepy right now. It has been a long week for me because of the exams, and my mind is still exhausted from all the studying and mentally preparing for this past week.
It'll be a few more months before we become Junior Interns. I just hope that the remaining months would be so gentle to us so that we can be one step nearer to become the future doctors we have been molding to become.
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