End Of The Week Recap

On Monday, we had our finals for the GIT (gastrointestinal tract) module in the morning, Microbiology non-synchronized topics in the afternoon; Tuesday, Reproductive module in the morning, Community Medicine evaluations in the afternoon; Wednesday, Endocrine module in the morning, Obstetrics & Gynecology in the afternoon; Thursday, Surgery non-synchronized topics in the morning; Friday (today), Pediatrics in the morning and Pharmacology non-synchronized topics in the afternoon (just finished... whew!).

GIT was a nightmare of a million topics that covered had all our subjects covered (the feared 3: patho, micro, pharma; the rest: medicine & physical diagnosis)... Micro was not as horrible as I thought it would be... Repro was so-so, ComMed, ugh, I don't even want to talk about that subject! And after ComMed, instead of being able to study for our finals the next day, we had to have our preceptorial meeting for the final revision of our research paper. So that's 4 hours down the drain... Endo wasn't too bad and Ob was, as usual, the time when everyone was gesturing in their seats while taking the test (i.e. trying to imagine the fetal presentation and where the fetus' body parts are supposed to be at certain times in their life...). Surgery, originaly, was one of my more easier subjects but they sure made their finals as hard as they could make it... everyone hated it. Pediatrics was loooong and there was a lot to memorize... and if I knew it was mostly past evaluations, I wouldn't have spent the entire night studying it. If I had just studied past E's, then I'd have been able to study pharma. Pharma. Pharma, pharma, pharma - my most problematic subject. The finals today wasn't as hard as everyone thought it would be (Pharma was famous for giving out exams that were hellish) but I knew I could've done better if I had been able to study for it enough.

You know, students should be the one to schedule the finals, not the professors. If I had been the one to schedule it, I'd have made all non-synchronized topics as a once-a-day test and scheduled it last week (we were kind of light last week, as compared to this week). Anyway, at least, the worst is over (or, actually, just worsE, since I'm sure there are many more worsTS to come...) since next week, we have Urinary and Musculo on Monday - Musculo's a nightmare but at least we have the weekend to study for it. And then Tuesday afternoon, Nervous System module and Wednesday afternoon, Community Medicine finals. Easier, right? My plan is to study tomorrow for my Monday evals and hopefully, have time enough to go home on Sunday and have dinner with my family and my balikbayan cousins. Tuesday finals will be studied on Monday, and Wednesday finals on Tuesday. Today is definitely my rest day. I need to recover. I never realized just how much a body can take and how far it will go, fueled by pure will and a helluva lot of caffeine.

Check it. Since 12 midnight Sunday (as in, the midnight of Saturday to Sunday) until 3pm, today, I have had...

- 14 hours of entertainment (resting, eating, fiddling with my computer to de-stress)

- 6 hours of printing transcripts/notes

- 7 1/2 hours of exam-taking (I rarely take more than hour when taking exams; I figure, if I don't know it, I won't know it even if I stare at it for 5 hours... besides, we do have time limits and the longest so far was an hour and a half)

- 6 hours of doing ComMed (precep, editing, printing, editing, printing...)

- 27 hours of sleep (the longest amount of straight sleep being 6 hours [before Surgery finals] and the shortest 1 hour [last night and naps between exams])

- 73 hours of studying (which is why I gave myself this afternoon as my 'reward')

Coffee is now my bestfriend. Softdrinks too. I gained weight this week because, when burning the midnight oil, I'd eat to stay awake and keep my energy level up. Plus no sleep? Yeah, thanks to humanity's adaptation to survival, my body's now doing it's utmost to conserve every single thing I eat so that it'll have the energy to get through the day.

This week, I have experienced mental fatigue unlike anything I've quite experienced before. I mean, I certainly don't remember last sem's finals draining me like this.

Thing is, when I really think about it, I'm not even sure what exactly is the main stressor - if there even is one. I think a lot has to do with stress... you have a lot of subject matter to cover and not enough time in the day/night to study them. It's kind of frustrating, actually, because you spend five hours studying for a 45-item test that'll be over in 30 minutes. You memorize (especially in pharma) drug names, their mode of action, their adverse effects, their drug-drug interaction, their contraindications, indications; (in micro) you make sure to differentiate baterial names, fungi names, virus names, all their life cycles, diagnostic stages, staining, infective stages, medications, preventive measures; (in patho) you have to know and understand all the disease names, processes, hallmark lesions, other lesions, clinical presentations, gross and histological findings, (sometimes) epidemiology to answer 5 items for each subject matter. Ugh. How can one not get stressed?

I have eyebags. I have a fat tummy. I have a headache every so often. I almost nodded off while taking the Repro and Endo finals in class (my head was just a few inches from the table). While studying for pharma today, I was squinting at my notes because my eyes were drifting shut. I sometimes take exams not really knowing if what I'm aswering is right but being really too tired to think about it too much.

And yet, surprisingly, at the midst of it... even if I'm near-tears (totally just wanted to sit and start bawling as I was studying Pharma), even if I'm staggering around my dorm like a drunken lout because I'm half-asleep and doing everything I can to wake up, even if I'm not sure if my tachycardia (fast heart beat) is due to caffeine or stress or nervousness, even if my mood's so thrown off I'm nodding off one minute and feeling so energetic the next, even when I feel like I just want to give up and cheerfully commit all my notes to flame... I'm happy. I'm enjoying this. And is that not just totally sick? LOL

I mean, I'm dead tired... I'm fatigued out of my wits... I'm on my last legs... I feel like I'm surviving solely on adrenaline and caffeine, especially on the later part of the week... I'm very sleepy ('xept that I drank coffee this lunch and experience tells me, I'll be [semi] hyper until later)... I'm fat again coz I eat and eat and just sit on my ass the whole day... and yet... I'm (in a sick, weird way) enjoying it. I'm kind of at awe at myself. I cannot believe I survived one whole week, functioniong quite well - certainly not my best but at least I'm not at my worst - only on 27 hours of sleep.

Of course... I'll probably sleep the summer away. Or at least, the first week of summer.

There are times, believe me, when I just wanted to give up. When I was studying and trying to memorize and cram everything in the few hours I had before each exam and I'd think: "Will I even pass? Will this even matter in the great big scheme of my grades?" Sometimes I was so tired when I got to the dorm, I just wanted to lie down and sleep for ten hundred years and yet I didn't, I trudged on...

Because for crying out loud, I ain't gonna let medicine defeat me! Dammit! I'm supposed to be smart (or at least, not stupid, right?)! I'm supposed to be able to handle this! I got 85 on my NMAT so I sure as heck know that I deserve to be in med school. I'm working and studying hard! I like the subject matter we're dealing with and even if I had enough time to stop and smell the roses, so to speak, I'll love this all the more! So, gosh darn it, I ain't going down. It ain't over til the fat lady sings. I'm going to have my fighting spirit until the end.

According to Erich Seagel (?) who wrote Doctors (haven't read the book, but I'm familiar with the quote), he said something like: "Medicine exemplifies Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. It is here that you can see it in all it's glory. The survival of the fittest - not just intellectually, but the psyche." (does anybody know the full quote?) And he's right. I see it around me, I've been part of it. This is the survival of the fittest. Not just intellectual because any smart ass can pass medicine. But not many can pass with their sanity intact... it is stressful, mentally and emotionally, and physically exhausting. You gotta love this to live it. I admire those who are forced to study medicine and yet excell. They're the lucky ones.

So, yeah... I don't want to give up. I won't give up. I'll do my best even if I'm crawling and staggering all over the place, half-asleep on my feet with my head aching and stomach bulging and eyes popping out. I mean... I just have to believe, right?