post-mortem

I’m not yet done with my long case exam (that’s on Thursday) but I already feel like doing a performance review.

I’ve had such a tumultuous week. I had been in a state of panic the week leading to my written exam on Wednesday, just scrambling to cram as much knowledge as possible to my alcohol-damaged brain. I don’t know what possessed me on Tuesday night but I tried to estimate just how well I needed to do for this paper to get my H1 (distinction) average – and it seemed pretty much impossible. I felt so lost. My whole raison d’être for this semester was to improve on my average, to get an internship in the big three metro hospitals, so I can give myself the best start possible. I really thought I could do it, and I didn’t do the proper calculations until Tuesday. But then I thought, hey, who knows, maybe I can make it after all.

Then came Wednesday – THE paper. 40% weightage. I felt so overwhelmed throughout the three hours. It’s a bloody marathon and after hour one I just lost steam. Give me more time and I could’ve reasoned properly at least ten questions and arrive at the correct answer. Of course, it didn’t help that I couldn’t sleep till 3am the night before. First word out of my mouth when it ended: “I’m just gonna go home and cry now.” Questions came up in later discussions with friends, and I got most of them wrong. I was so frustrated. I couldn’t bring myself to prep for Friday’s oral exam.

Thursday – On hindsight, maybe I was being overly dramatic on Wednesday. You know, me being my own harshest critic and all. I couldn’t have gone that badly, but I didn’t do fantastic either, and that’s why I was so angry at myself: I felt gypped that I had worked so hard over the last six months, killing off my social life (and everything else) in the process, and yet I still couldn’t improve on my performance. I was resigned to the fact that I’ll never be as smart and passionate about Medicine as the Dean’s Listers that I was trying to beat. And then I reached my zen. I was über-calm, very uncharacteristic on the night before an exam…

…but I think it helped my performance on Friday. The exam was rotating stations of ten minutes with each patient, and I had to take a history (or do an examination) and answer some questions. I walked in, confident that I knew what I needed to know, and that was enough. I beat myself up for the things I didn’t say in the first five minutes after the exam, but after that I was fine, I knew I didn’t screw up. Everyone is bound to miss out on things in that artificial, pressurised exam scenario. Did I just lower my standards? Or was I being more realistic? I’m a happier person for it, so does the answer really matter?

Over many beers later, my mates and I began to lament about why we put ourselves in this situation, in medical school. Many of us had been stellar in high school, but finding that you’re mediocre in a sea of smart people is a tough pill to swallow. It doesn’t help that our Type-A personalities (that brought us here in the first place) refuses to acknowledge that. We all end up overstressed, it’s no wonder the suicide rate is so high in our profession.

I probably won’t beat some people in the game of marks and grades. I really thought I could (was I delusional? I really thought I was that smart) and I kicked myself for not realising this earlier. I could’ve had a more enjoyable semester, without sacrificing my other activities so much. But maybe I needed to go through all this to learn my lesson. I need to play a different game to get ahead, and it’s nice to know I’ve been doing that all along: with my research papers, my conferences, my exchange semesters, and of course, generally being sycophantic around senior registrars and consultants. I will have to work that much harder because I don’t have the entire arsenal, but the fire of possibility keeps me going, the possibility that one day I can reach the top. As long as I can find smarter ways of getting ahead every day, I reckon I will be fine.