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