Don't Panic!

May is the time of year when I stop acting like an adult rational human being and become a gibbering wreak, obsessed with medicine, irrationally attacking my housemates¹. May is exam time.

I've got quite good at the conventional sort of exams by now, I've been sitting them every summer for the past 7 years. In my year out I took an evening class because I rather missed them. I've got the good luck rituals sorted out. Don't revise the night before. Look through your notes instead, calmly of course. I may be nervous before the papers are given out, but then I turn it over, realise what I should have revised and the salvage operation begins. I'm quite good at it, even if I do say so myself. But I've passed three years and never failed an exam² - apart from one that is.

That was a clinical exams, you go on a ward, exam a patient, the examiner watches and asks questions. Then you leave the ward and feel like crying, and the elderly ladies who run the 'League of Friends' ³ look at you sympathetically because they assume that you've just found out about the death of a parent.

I've got my second clinical exam on Friday. I'm typing this on Sunday, avoiding going to bed, because I'm scared of it. Scared that when I wake up, it will be exam week.

This is a short edition of 'A Baby Doctor Writes'. I'm going back to learning obscure causes of heart disease, and worrying.

And my Consultants tip? Don't Panic

A Baby Doctor Writes -
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