So so much work
So tired from netball
So need to tidy my room
So little time
and did I mention SO SO SO much work...how am I gonna cope with this much work until the end of June?! Argh!!

That's literally all I've got time to write but, seeing as I have 4 followers now (wow!), I thought I should let you all know I'm still alive (which reminds me, I need to do the same for my mother!)

Faye
xxx

p.s. I get to wear scrubs and watch angioplasty tomorrow - SO excited!

I'm still alive!

Just realised I've completely and utterly neglected this blog...but for good reason! Shortly after making my last blog entry I was contacted by the medical school who offered me a place on the GEP course and I took it! So my journey to becoming Dr Faye started 2 weeks earlier than planned on the 6th Sept! Since then life has been absolutely mental (and that's an underestimation!) - for the first week and a half I was commuting up to London every day as I couldn't move into halls early. All I can say about that is...never again! I have never been so exhausted in my life...I was getting back at 7pm, eating, showering and going to bed. Luckily I moved into halls before the workload fully hit. Which it most definitely has now! 1 exam down on the first module, Movement & Posture (which I passed, phew!), next one on Carriage of Oxygen next Tues eek! I'm busier than I've ever been before and I LOVE IT! All the lectures and anatomy classes are really interesting which is a welcome change from biomed! What with playing for the 2nds netball team twice a week and all the extra work I have to do, spare time is at an all time low! I manage to go out quite a bit in the first week of freshers with my flatmates who are on the 5 year course but have barely been out since then due to the sheer amount of work :( It will be worth it in the end though as I'll be in clinics next year and, if all goes to plan, a doctor a year earlier!!

I'm gonna keep this short and sweet as I need to do a bit more work before turning in for the night. Off to the hospital tomorrow for my first day of hospital placement on cardio...looking forward to using my very pretty brand new stethoscope!!

Over and out,

Faye
xxx

One month today!!

Exactly one month today I'm going to be moving into halls in London and finally realising my dream. Still doesn't feel real but I'm getting just a little excited. Bit apprehensive about going back into halls and making all new friends and everything again but I'm sure it'll be fiiiiine.

Bought the last few bits yesterday that needed replacing like frying pan, backing tray etc. Also bought 16 cans of Branston baked beans 'cos they were £1 for 4 cans which is bargainous and I do go through them quite quickly...just hope no one judges me for rocking up to uni with 16 cans of beans (and 12 packs of Ainsley Harriot's cous cous haha!). Well it's their problem if they do!

I was paid my student loan the other day, rediculously earlier than usual but apparently that's the norm now. As it stands, once I've paid my rent I'll have £100 to live on from Sept til Dec, what a joke! Living off the savings it is then! Unfortunately there haven't been that many shifts available so haven't been able to work in the hospital that much...so gonna have to be really really careful with money. At least this time round uni will be close enough for me to go home and work at weekends if need be.

I've got a very exciting weekend lined up this week...I'm off to Oxford to meet up with all my uni friends. Feels like forever since I've seen them when realistically it's only been a month. I've never been to Oxford before so am muchos excited...apparently we're going to go punting and see all the sights and whatnot...can't wait!!

I've had no shifts at work the past few days so have just been bumming around and finding new blogs to read. Was hugely excited to discover Mumford & Sons blogs...it never occurred to me that these would exist. So I've spent the last few days watching pretty much every interview they've ever done and swooning over Ben Lovett. Thank God I've got a shift tomorrow to give me something constructive to do!

*sigh* perfection in a man!

Long time no blog...

Well it's been a while since I've updated this....have been rather busy! The most major event in my life since March would be finishing degree number one with a first (woop!). I graduated yesterday...had such a lovely day but it was sad to bid farewell to all the friends I've made over the three years :( Everyone says that we'll meet up at some point but I know that's not always the case.

I must say I'm bored of being home and it being the summer holidays already! I don't think I've said before but I'm definitely going to Barts medical school this September and since I'm so incredibly rediculously excited time is going beyond slowly. The plan was to work lots but unfortunately there haven't been that many shifts at the hospital so I've been bumming around at home and trying to get to the gym a few times a week. I recently got a second job at a children's hospice but all the adminy stuff seems to be going really slowly - I don't have my pre-employment medical for a months time so it doesn't look like I'll get any shifts in before uni :( Ah well there's always Christmas (and every other holiday for the next 5 years!). I'm off to Turkey a week today...all inclusive for a week, not good for the waistline! Should be a good break though and I'll hopefully top up the tan a bit :)

Have gone a bit blog-subscribing mad over the past few days. My latest interest has been baking blogs...I'm gonna try making some cupcakes for the mother over the next couple of days methinks - it'll give me something to do at least! Although now my sisters have finished school I'll have two extra pairs of hands since they LOVE baking...unfortunately they usually do more harm than good but then I guess as long as they taste nice it doesn't matter if they don't look perfect.

Gonna try updating this a bit more frequently as it's a nightmare trying to cram 4 months of my life into a blog!

Faye
xxx

Lab Freedom!

As the title may suggest I'm now finished in the lab forever, which I'm more than a little happy about! My results are awful and I've somehow got to write a dissertation on them but I (perhaps unfortunately) don't care! I've reached a bit of a wall with my degree, I just want to be finished it now and be starting medicine. I'm going home for the Easter holiday this Saturday so hopefully 4 weeks at home will rejuvenate me and I'll come back for the last few months!

Medicine offer-wise it's a week and a day 'til my Warwick and Barts selection centre and supposedly I'm going to hear from Southampton by the end of this week. My housemate was rejected from Soton yesterday which kinda made it all seem real again but I'm expecting a rejection from them too so it won't be too much of a shock when it comes! Selection centre-wise I'm so busy at the moment I've got no time to think about it but this time next week I know I'll be panicking at my complete lack of preparation!!

I've got quite a busy week planned so hopefully it'll go quickly. Tomorrow I'm spending the day in the library to hopefully get a lot of my dissertation introduction done (although the last trip to the library resulted in my housemate and I going to the cafe for a quick lunch break where we then decided to work from home for the rest of the day, and needless to say no further work was done!). Then tomorrow evening I'm heading off to the campus pub for a few beverages for St. Patrick's day, although nothing too heavy. Then Thursday it's lectures with a pub lunch with my course girlies in between. And on Friday it's more lectures and then going out for a friend's birthday in the evening, which is likely to be very messy!! Then on Saturday fingers crossed the parents won't turn up too early so I can have a nice lay in before heading back home. Oh and I suppose I should pack at some point too!

Think I'll leave it at that for now...will try and update soonish!

Faye
xxx

Procrastination

Well it's been nearly a week since my first blog - not sure if this is a suitable time frame to be between blogs or not? I haven't really had anything interesting to say (not that I do now!) so I suppose it's ok.

In the last week very little has happened, which is in line with my not very exciting life right now. I was in the lab Mon, Tues and Weds battling once again to get some results and on the most part I failed. Then Thurs was lectures and a meeting with the dissertation tutor on writing my dissertation (eek!) - the meeting was quite helpful though and I feel ever so slightly more confident now about writing it up. Also had a netball match on Thurs which we won 11-4 woop!! Then Friday was netball training and then 3 hours of lectures of varying degrees of interest - one on strokes managed to hold my attention for the most part. It only went downhill from there on unfortunately!

The most exciting things I did on Saturday were going to the bank to pay the bills and buy the mother a 50th birthday card...and then a shop at ASDA in the evening - I only needed a few bits but managed to spend £22 somehow?! Hopefully this means I won't need to go food shopping for the forseeable future.

In an ideal world for the rest of yesterday and all of today I would have done lots of work but alas, this of course was not the case. It has been a weekend of procrastination without a doubt! I spend yesterday evening and the greater part of today reading this blog from start to finish: http://micropreemietwins.blogspot.com/ I definitely recommend it!

Tomorrow graduate ball tickets go on sale on campus at 10am. However due to its popularity, we're going to start queuing at 7am!! That's a whole 5 hours earlier than I woke up today! I am most definitely not going to enjoy that, but then it'll be worth it as the grad ball should be amazing :) Fingers crossed that the queue moves quite quickly as i'll have to go into the lab after and the later I start in the lab the later i'll be finished!

This time in 4 weeks i'll be heading back to Kent for the Easter holidays except it won't be much of a holiday as i'll have a dissertation to write and exams to revise for! It will be good to see the family though and i'll be turning 21 eek! I don't feel old enough to be 21!

Over and out,

Faye xxx

The Beginning!

Well I thought it was finally time that I entered the land of blogging. After recently discovering some great medical student blogs I couldn't resist joining in now that I'll definitely be a medical student this September! I used to love keeping a diary but have failed at it over the past few years so am hoping I will be more likely to keep this updated (despite the fact I expect no one will read it!).

So, here's my story so far:

After getting 4 rejections for medical school back in 2006, I decided to go down the graduate entry medicine (GEM) route rather than taking a gap year and work as a Healthcare Assistant during univeristy holidays for experience (and money!!). Now 3 years on I'm in my final year of Biomedical Sciences at the University of Southampton and having a massive dissertation nightmare! But, on a much brighter note, after what I thought was a dodgy interview, Barts and the London recently offered me a place on their 5-year course (conditional on me getting a 2:1 in my degree) AND I have an interview (well, "selection centre") for Warwick and Barts' 4-year GEM courses at the end of March PLUS I'm still waiting to hear from Southampton's GEM course. So things are finally looking up for me! So, although I don't know exactly where I'm going to be in September, I know I'm going to be studying medicine somewhere! Being a fairly negative person who thought she was never going to get in, this came as a pretty big shock and I still don't think it's sunk in!!

But in the meantime I'm stuck doing a degree that I just want to hurry up and finish. I really enjoy (most of) my lectures but unfortunately I'm still in the lab doing work for my dissertation that should have been finished by Christmas...but, due to a number of reasons (the main one being my lab tutor's unwillingness to help me) I'm still there. I'm not even meant to be doing this project but thanks to an admin error my preferences were lost and so I was allocated this beast of a project. On the upside I know I have to be finished by the 16th March, but (and it's a big but!) as yet I still have no results. Zilch. So I have absolutely no idea how I'm going to write a dissertation on something I: (1) don't understand and (2) have no results for. I'll keep my fingers crossed that my lab tutor is feeling cooperative when I meet with him on Thursday (please!!!).

As if that all wasn't enough, my body decided to become nocturnal recently. Probably due to a combination of me staying up late/going out til late and then sleeping during the day wherever possible/napping later in the day whenever I had to be up early. So I've been trying to go to bed at a reasonable time and then get up earlyish...I just seem to have a problem in getting up when I don't have to. But tomorrow I need to go into the lab early so that I finish early enough to go food shopping - I was planning to go today but got roped into going to a presentation by an external speaker (COMPLETE waste of time grrr) so I didn't get home til 7 and dinner from the local chippy had to suffice. I must go tomorrow though - my body is in need of fruit and vegetables!!

Right I suppose I shall stop there for now. May update tomorrow on the joyous day I'm going to have in the lab but I'm meant to be going to So:Bar (Tuesdays at So:Bar = MESSY!) so may not have time.

Faye xxx