Exam Intelligence

Lipstick Application Uploaded on July 19, 2007 by tanakawho

So firstly I guess you are wondering why I am the ex girlfriend?

Well it had nothing to do with exam stress, although there were times when I thought that the idea of another…however many months…of our lives revolving around viva books and chipping my pink toe nail varnish tripping over yet another MCQ book would get me!! (Thinking about it now though, how many books does one doctor need on MCQ’s, or pharmacology, or drugs used in Anaesthesia and Intensive Care?)

So yes I am the ex, it wasn’t the exams and that’s all I am going to divulge.

Someone once remarked on the fact that doctors are all geeks, I thought “my boyfriend never, he‘s no geek”. Want to know something…..he is, he’s no different to all the rest! As a true girl, I have often come under attack for loving pink and having loads of tubes of lipgloss. I can’t see the problem now I have witnessed first hand the number of books one doctor can have for one exam. Furthermore my lip gloss (all nice makes of course) always cost less than his study books.

Being an Intensive Care Nurse I thought I had the heads up on going out with a doctor, and working in ICU I thought I knew what anaesthetists were like.

Oh….how naïve was I? We met six months before the exams so I was lulled into a false sense of security. On the lead up to the exams my ex-boyfriends colleagues warned me that things were about to change and not to expect him to be able to talk about anything else other than the effects of propofol on P2X4 receptors in Xenopus carnivorous frogs, or possibly even GABA-A receptors. I decided that I ought to discuss this with him, so that I could prepare myself. Our colleagues were right, he said that he would turn into a walking talking study book, where I and our relationship would take second place to on-line tutorials and hours and hours of reading…. Hours and hours of reading, as far as I could tell the same page AND GUESS WHAT ON…..PROPOFOL!!!

You think I am joking, I tell you I am not, it’s still something I tease him about frequently. Its white, it puts patients to sleep and it can cause hypotension, what else do you need to know about it to use it?!

On the subject of preparing myself, had I taken all the warnings and jibes a little more seriously, I would have made serious efforts to SKY+ as much as I could.

To survive exam stress, one of the things you need to be able to enjoy is being on your own and being able to immerse yourself in Greys Anatomy, Americas Next Top Model, Big Brother, House…..you get the idea.

The L shaped sofa soon became my new best friend! My boyfriend, well I kind of forgot what he looked like and I am sure he did me too, despite several attempts to distract him by lying over his books and pleading for a bit of relationship time. This seldom worked, unless of course he was on a study break.

I’m serious but of course I don’t need to tell you that because you know you’re all the same. Study breaks mapped into the study timetable.

Which brings me onto the Study Timetable; I haven’t had one of those since I was about thirteen! I could hardly understand the timetable, let alone the content of the books….

In the next instalment of the ex girlfriend’s guide to surviving exam stress, finding time in the timetable for each other, how not to let it wind you up and how to keep smiling!