The Dust Settles

When John Steinbeck wrote The Grapes Of Wrath he inadvertently provided great material for devotees of the pun such as I.

I write this the evening after the evening before. Permit me to explain. Yesterday afternoon at times varying between half past four and five o clock in the afternoon, over a hundred third year medical students at Keele University put down their pens for the last time at the end of our final third year exams. Medicine is a bit of a slog. Not the sort of thing one turns to to fill a couple of hours on Tuesday evenings. It is a relentless avalanche of information being exposed to a cohort of students over a five year period in the vain hope that some of it might stick. You may imagine the relief which I felt as I departed the Examination Hall yesterday with the exams now firmly in my rear view mirror. Oh yes, John Steinbeck. Rather than the Grapes Of Wrath this morning, I fear that it was the Wrath Of Grapes which exacted its revenge following the celebrations of last night - deserved though they were.

However, the fact remains that I, along with my esteemed colleagues, am rather like Kermit The Frog's nephew Robin in the 1980 song: Halfway Down The Stairs. We're not at the bottom but neither are we are the top. In other words, we still have some way to go with more exams to negotiate. The snag is that as with any ladder, the further you ascend, the further there is to fall should one lose one's grip. Do you see what I mean? The more pressure we deal with, the more pressure we generate. I wonder, could this be an allegory for life itself? Perhaps.

So how does a medical student cope when the dust begins to settle the day after the exams? Early days for me but I can freely admit it is difficult sometimes. To be a tap which can be turned on and off at will is not without its challenges. That being said I have no regrets about choosing medicine. On the 5th of June it will be five years since our beautiful daughter Thea died. If I have no other motivation to carry on studying, the memories of Thea will sustain me forever. I can't bring her back but I can't forget her unique sparkle.

To all my colleagues, I wish you a long, hot summer in the company of those you love and those who love you.

When time stood still

Yesterday, as a third year medical student, I dutifully attended my OSCE assessment stations. I can best compare this to anyone else queueing up for the biggest roller coaster at Alton Towers. The conjecture regarding what lay ahead of us a seemingly endless series of conspiracy theory and personal nemeses. As we were led upstairs to where the examination stations were situated, the feelings of escalating upwards at the start of a roller coaster ride came flooding back. As with the roller coaster ride, it was all over so quickly - nigh on three hours! If anyone was studying medicine for the purpose of financial gain at the end of it all, this is the equivalent of those Japanese TV programmes first championed by Clive James in the 1980s. These programmes were a vehicle for people to show off their unfeasible appetites for masochism on scales hitherto unthought of. We all hope of course to have performed with few enough mistakes to be deemed worthy of progression to our next year of study were we will doubtless be subjected to ever higher levels of difficulty. No, you're quite right - logic has nothing to do with it. Ironic for a group of students considered to be of above average intelligence...