How I'm Dealing (Procrastinating) with my Finals.

          Every time I feel like I want to restart this blog, I always never maintain it but after becoming an avid reader of this one medical doctor's blog (I'll link him below), I want to blog about my experiences through medical school. So today's post will be about how I'm preparing for my final examinations ,or as we here doing medicine at UM call it Barrier Examination (BA). 
          Briefly, my BA is basically a week of 5 examinations which are PSST (Pathology Summative Spot Test), ASST (Anatomy Summative Spot Test), OSCE (Objective Structured Clinical Examinations) and my two written BA papers. To know more about my individual examinations do read my upcoming post about the structure of UM's medical programme. Basically, I've been given a 3 week study week to somehow swallow all the things I learnt in my first year of medical school which contrary to most medical schools also include clinical and imaging lectures. Right now I just finished my first week of study week but I have yet to cover even half of the 621 lecture notes I have to cover.

There's one week missing but this is pretty much it. ACLS is Advanced Cardiac Life Support and is just a day course.


          So how am I tackling my finals? Well, right now I've made a rough strategy which I've summarized to the following statements

  • Finish making notes for my Basic Clinical Sciences (Anatomy, Physiology, Pathology, Pharmacology, Biochemistry)
                -I plan to summarize all my lecture notes into my own handwritten notes because these are                   the important ones I can review later during my clinical years and they also help me                             understand the clinical lectures better.
Anatomy notes

Just some 'simple' physiology
  • Tackle my clinical lectures by the disease
                -So unlike most other medical schools about half my lectures are clinical based lectures, be                   it about management of disease, modality used, rehabilitation, ECG, you name it. These                       are a bit tough to tackle because the lecture notes are quite hefty but there are only bits                       and pieces I really need to know, the important part is I understand it and when I enter my                   clinical years, these same topics will mostly be covered again so I'm planning to just                             summarize these lectures into a page which captures the most important parts of the                             lecture.
  • Tackle the imaging lectures together
               -I kid you not, we actually have a lot of imaging lectures, mostly X-ray but also CT, MRI,                       DEXA, and nuclear medicine. These lectures are hard to make notes on so I'm just going                    to give them a quick read a few days before the exam to refresh what I learnt then. 
  • Practice OSCE with my PBL mates and buddies 
               -Now this is what I fear the most, it's not because I'm bad at physical examinations and                         history taking but if I were to freeze up during the OSCE, that's it. Also, I don't practice                      my physical examinations a lot, so I'm trying to do one everyday just to make it muscle                        memory.
  • Stare at models and pictures for ASST and PSST
              -No cheat way around it, I'll have to go to the Anatomy Lab everyday to have a look at what                 I've learnt and I'll have to review all my lecture notes for the histopathology pictures.



No joke there are actually 621 notes in first year averaging 50 slides per note.


          Strategy aside, I don't know how I really feel about my finals. I'm grateful that I've been given 3 weeks to recover everything I've learnt but I'd sooner have it done and over with rather than be stressed about it and procrastinate my time by writing a post on this blog. It does help that I'm not really aiming for distinction this time but I'd be lying if I said I didn't mind not getting it. Surprisingly, I'm not too stressed but maybe it's too soon to tell. I just can't wait for it all to end and enjoy my one month break from the daily grind of medical school!


P.S. If you're reading this on your phone it may look a bit weird with a lot of gaps, just ignore them. I was trying something new but it only looks nice when you use a laptop to read the post. 

Link: http://safuannnnhkm.blogspot.com/
-Amazing blog of a Malaysian medical officer how blogged throughout his housemanship and made me really want to work hard to be somewhat like him when I'm where he's at in his life.

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