Jul/090
Where to begin?!
Summer term flew by, meaning tremendous exam stress (did I mention we medics are slightly competitive?) and many late nights of revision! Exams were based around our neuroscience/anatomy teaching and the endocrine and reproductive system - some were horrible as expected and others came as a huge relief to those of us who were already scrapping our summer plans in fear of resits! Having spent six weeks loathing neuroanatomy I was shocked to learn that I had in fact excelled in the exam and come out in the top 5% of my year (there is probably a lesson to be learned in that somewhere!).
Exams aside however, I am already finding myself running out of things to do until I return to university at the end of September. I'm really looking forwards to going back and beginning my intercalation in Cancer Biology which I realise is more than a little bit geeky! At the same time I realise that I have a lot of work to do to catch up with everyone else who has been studying the degree for two years already! I'm glad I made the decision to take the year out of medicine to study for it, having come straight from school at eighteen without a gap year I feel as though I'm accelerating towards adulthood and indeed 'doctor'hood without taking any kind of break to gain more life experience.
Whilst I'm sat taking in the grim Manchester weather many of my medic friends are off globetrotting. I've got a family holiday to look forwards to alongside some work on a summer camp later in August. No doubt September and my 21st will be here before I know it!
I always have lots of plans for designing this website & yet never get around to doing anything about them. Hopefully I'll have a surge of creativity and do something about it in the next few weeks, watch this space!
Feb/090
Gotta love brains..
..or not.
We've reached that stage in second year medicine where the budding surgeons can hardly contain their excitement.. but many more of us are shaking in our boots because we've just hit the neuroscience part of our course.
If you thought the brain was just a blobby, jelly like thing - think again.. there are names for all the pokey spaces, wiggly lines and cells that make up a brain.. names that I don't think I'll ever get my head around. Its hard to fathom how one bit of grey brain has a completely different job to the grey bit of brain next to it. Sadly this is exactly what the next six weeks of my life will be spent finding out!
We are two days in. I turned up with some enthusiasm - 'its the brain right? There must be lots of interesting things to learn about that'. I can feel that same enthusiasm slipping away rather quickly.. hopefully Amazon will be my friend and when my two shiny new neuroscience textbooks arrive my excitement will be 'rekindled'...
I can live in hope!
Jenn

