jacksfirstyearofmed

[jacksfirstyearofmed]

A New Year, A New Blog.

Seeing as I've been officially accepted into second year, I guess 'jacksfirstyearofmed' no longer really applies. Standard lack of foresight from me.  In the interests of keeping things fresh (and a few other reasons), I'm heading darkside. Wordpress darkside. For now at least, you can find my blog at jackversusmedicine.wordpress.com. While the title is perhaps a little confrontational, hopefully I can brainstorm something better in the near future.  See you on the other side of cyberspace.

[jacksfirstyearofmed]

Second-Year Med Students, 1886

Swag. Image: University Archives, G3_224_0007

[jacksfirstyearofmed]

One More Month of Freedom - 12/1/13

So although medicine couldn’t be further from my mind right now, second year is really sneaking up on me and neuro is making me nervous.  Got my enrolment confirmation email the other day (showing my skyrocketing HECS debt, but never mind) and it made me realise I’ve got to make the most of the rest of the holidays.  Especially as next year they are cut in half!  A few of my mates in second year are heading up to Lismore or Orange for their rural year, which is definitely on my to-do list! I’ve never lived bush before and I think it’s worth a look, especially as once I have found a Scandinavian wife and lured her to Australia I reckon being a GP in a country town with a nice little property is not a bad way to go. I’m not getting ahead of myself am I? Is that creepy? Anyway, point is that I plan on making the most of these holidays! 

Especially with the nightmare that is neuro just around the corner.

The holidays have been awesome though, with my Norwegian housemate from my 2011 exchange in Bergen coming to stay for a few weeks.  I feel like we showed Leo a pretty good trip and, although we somehow didn’t find time to see the Opera House or the Harbour Bridge, he definitely went home with an impressive tan, sand all through his bag and salty hair.

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Ernabella - A long way from Bondi.

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Happy Days - 7/12/12

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The Big Exam - 26/11/12

So before every big exam, when you’ve left everything too late, you have to make sacrifices. My friend Sam calls it high-yield vs. low-yield study.  When time is of the essence, only look at the things that are going to get you clutch marks.  Don’t bother with the stuff you’re not even close to understanding and don’t go over things that have already stuck.  Look at schemas, draw diagrams and memorise mnemonics.  Guess what they are going to ask. And learn it.

Well that all went a little wrong.  I have two questions really. Why do they split the exam in two with a two hour break in between. And why did they ask so many questions on the lipids lecture that I never went to, listened to at home, or even looked over.

I think I did enough. Time will tell.

[jacksfirstyearofmed]

Preparing for the Anatomy Spot Test - 10/11/12

So there are a couple of anatomical structures we need to know...

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Study/Skating Weekend at Wentworth Falls - 5/11/12

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Fjellheim - 5/11/12

Study weekend at my friend Verity's place up in the Blue Mountains. Trying to kick the Facebook habit: clearly failing. Lucky it's a convenient place to duck down to Nepean from on Monday morning for my last day there for the year. Probably the only place it's convenient for...

[jacksfirstyearofmed]

End of Year Exam - 2/11/12

And now it gets serious. But there is some good news, if it all falls apart and I fail, I get another crack: on January 7. Seeing as that falls mid-Tasmania adventure I guess it’s all the more incentive to put my head down and get this done.

Pretty much our exam is made up of two parts: the anatomy part and the written part.  Both are effectively pass/fail this year but are separate, so you have to do enough in both of them.

The anatomy part is effectively a ‘name that thing’ test with 3 different types of specimens.  The first are prosections with pins in them denoting muscles, nerves, parts of bones and things like that.  These are okay because we have been looking at prosectioned cadavers the whole year so we should be able to recognize them. It just gets difficult when you look at the list of 300+ structures we need to know… The second are histology slides on enlarged print outs.  These are perhaps the ones I am most worried about, largely due to my inexperience with, and dislike of, anything cellular. And the third are pathology bottles in which we have to describe what we see.  These should be fine because as far as I can tell they give us the list of 50-odd bottles we could get and you just sit down for a day and rote learn them. The other thing that scares me about this part of the exam is the way you rotate around the stations with a timer and a bell to move you on.  No time to look out the window and imagine holidays, or to leave it and come back later.

The written part of the exam is a little different and comprises two 80 question exams of two hours each, split by a lunch break.  It’s all multi choice but I tell you what that option E really changes things.  The written exam is pretty much based on a spread of material based on the 250+ lectures and pracs we have had this year, with a weighting towards the more recent blocks.  A heap of content but I guess I want my doctors to know all of it, so fair enough.

And on the other side… nearly 3 months of summer holidays.

[jacksfirstyearofmed]

Redfern and Bondi. Past and Future. - 22/10/12

[jacksfirstyearofmed]

The End of the Redfern Era - 22/10/12

Goodbye Redfern - 9 /9/12

I have written a bit before about the rental market in Sydney and it’s all about to change. Because the boys are back in the hunt.  We don’t like to use the ‘e’ word but effectively our lease in Redfern didn’t get renewed. So we are in the game, and we are keeping it pretty simple. Beach or uni. Bondi or Redfern. Holidays or semester. We have 3 months until we need to be out so there is no real rush but it’d be nice to lock something down before summer. Stay tuned.

Update – Hello Bondi. 22/10/12

So we got a house, and we have already moved in. Talk about stressful, let me give you a rundown of how our hunt went. Hopefully it’ll give a bit of insight into living in Sydney.

We started with a pretty broad net and chucked a couple of applications in, one just round the corner from us in Redfern and one a bit further afield in Bronte. After being knocked back in Redfern pretty much for being 4 boys, we scored the one in Bronte but turned it down, realized there was no rush and decided to lay low for a bit.

The closer it got to exams, though, the more time I found I was wasting on real estate websites and the more mental energy I was expending worrying about what to do.

And then the perfect joint came up.  15 mins walk from the beach and 10 to the station. All day parking out the front and 4 pretty sweet bedrooms inside.  And the 2026 postcode as the kicker.  The new Bondi Hipsters have arrived.

All it needed was the construction of a wall to split the living area in 2 and make the 4th bedroom, but we have experience with that from our place in Redfern.  And the actual move itself. What a struggle that turned out to be.  We hired a truck and shipped all our stuff across in pretty much a day, no worries. But despite the three day clean we did on our place (including a couple of wall-patchings and paint jobs) we are still chasing our bond from the bully of a real estate agent. Not easy. 

But Bondi is the dream so it was all worth it!

[jacksfirstyearofmed]

Well that was fun - 8/10/12

So that week came and went in a flash of AFL grand final, sun, beach and not talking about uni.  The little test thingy that marked the end of haematolidays was an absolute non event and nek minnit I was up the coast at Boomerang Beach sipping on Caronas and cooking a BBQ with the crew.  It went as holidays tend to, too fast but the books didn’t come out once and it was nice to chill out before Cardiology.  I can’t really see how a 6 week block about one muscular organ can be too intense but apparently it’s kind of full-on.

[jacksfirstyearofmed]

The Patients' Perspective - 28/9/12

Today we had a really different, really great experience out at Nepean and this time it didn’t revolve around a 3-0 ping pong, pool, foosball whitewash.  Filing into the lecture theatre for a presentation on ‘patients with long-term illnesses’ we really didn’t know what to expect.  2 hours later we filed out with an emotional tsunami of coping with chemotherapy while trying to live a life and look after a family.  The first time we had really been able to sit back and take in a patient’s view of the situation.  It was surprising the little things that stood out to them about the care they were given, even though they were probably the same things we would have commented on 10 months ago.  Things like needles and waiting around for doctors and having to make space for appointments.  Five really different people gave five really different speeches but it all combined into one big emotional episode.

[jacksfirstyearofmed]

OSCE - 21/9/12

So this week we also had our first practical exam and boy was it frightening.  Nothing new or challenging really. Just stressful.  They call it an OSCE and it is pretty much a 5 station rotation in which you do a combination of procedures, examinations and histories while the examiners breathe down the back of your neck.  Things like taking blood pressure, doing chest exams, taking histories about drug and alcohol use, ready chest X-rays etc. Things we are meant to have down pat but realistically still sort of wing every time.  Entering the door is almost ‘thank god you’re here’-ish.

We went in there with a fairly good idea of which things we were going to have to do, only to get five completely different ones.  I choked on one but the other four were okay so hopefully that’s enough.  The examiners were all pretty encouraging and it was a good experience.

[jacksfirstyearofmed]

Nudity - 18/9/12

So I can’t help but feel like I missed out. Placebo Royale, Med Revue 2012 came and went and despite my weekly claims that I would definitely be in it, it turned out that I just wasn’t so keen to put myself up on stage like that. Even chat that I would join the nude scene for a one night only cameo were empty (I will go into the reasons for my absence in a bit). I’ve never really been drawn to theatre or acting or music or dancing or really anything indoors where people are looking at you but the thrill of it and how much fun everyone said they had sounded pretty tops. Oh well.

But to the reason why I missed the nude scene… I have mentioned in previous posts the so-called Independent Learning Activity and how I was taking my first step towards solving Australia’s Indigenous helth problems by visiting rural SA in December. Well my friend Sarah is in second year and is has done a considerable amount more than just talk about helping out, though for a different cause.  She did her ILA in Cambodia last year as part of Project Indochina, an Australian founded and run NGO which aims to increase the welfare of disadvantaged individuals across South East Asia. And while she was there she took some photos. Awesome photos. And that night she was putting on an exhibition to raise money for the place she had already spent a month helping. $5,000 and one missed nude scene later, it is an interesting insight into the opportunities that doing Medicine at Sydney Uni can open up for you.

[jacksfirstyearofmed]

Still Carollin' - 13/9/12

...down to the snow