"Do or do not - there is no try"

Master Yoda said these words to a naive Luke as he prepared with his training for what Luke deemed impossible.

It is the Semester Four exam on Tuesday. It is around two hours long and is of the "Select the correct letter" genus. The two species in the paper are Multi-choice and Extended Matching Question.

For applicants reading this, EMQs and MCQs are not easy. It is a real change from questions at ALevel, or even in other degrees where you are given time to explain yourself, and there is a plethora of answers (within reason) you can get and get the 25marks allocated to that gem of knowledge you learnt whilst swallowing your 100th ProPlus. The answers are right or wrong. Unfortunately, there are even discrepancies in the mark schemes, with them being contradictory.

There are lots of rumours flying around about this exam, from the fact it could be really clinical and full of anatomy because we don't have OSCEs this time around, to the fact that we might need to know the substrates that HMGCoAreductase or ACoACholesterolAcylesterase act on, and extremely delicate things like that. Chances are it will be the latter.

Back to the thread title, and to apply the post to my own experience.

I find revising extremely difficult. I do. It takes me three days to do what anyone can accomplish in six hours. The reality of the Medical Course is that there are some really smart people on it. Somehow I managed through year one, and the first half of year two. One must learn to adapt and "learn to learn" which Manchester actually try to help you to do during the first four weeks of Year One. It is reasonably helpful but not really guided enough. After all, how can one learn how to learn if you aren't taught how to learn! From that, I now know about 70% of the content. The exam is likely to be on 100% of the content, sods law is that it will be on things I don't know.

A good piece of advice I got (actually neither from a Tutor, nor a Medic) is that in sitting the exam, even though it is a Medical School Assessment, you will be treated in the marking as a Doctor, albeit a potential one. The attitude you have when you sit it should therefore reflect that.

...and that is basically "Do or do not...there is no try."

Basically Fear the fucking fear and do it anyway.


WISH ME LUCK!!


I shall not edit this post at a later date. It would be good to look back on this and reflect, to say "I told you I'd fail" or "What were you worrying about" in the future.