'I'm not an Ambi-balancer!'

In the (edited) words of the fabulous Derek Zoolander, i am not, nor shall i ever be an ambibalancer. he couldnt turn left and for the life of me i cannot stand balanced on my left leg with my right leg tucked into my thigh in 'tree' position.
My yoga instructor thinks im a tard...

Communications; The Futures bright..the futures...more training...

So today as well as lectures on Pedigree Interpretation (those family trees with little black or white squares or circles telling you how likely a person is to inherit a genetic disease) and the CASE WRAP up session (telling us all the things we HAVENT learnt that were meant to find time in our fulllll week to cover) we had 'Communications Training'- yes, learning to speak...
Now, I'm very proud to say I'm a student at Manchester Medical School because it is well known (to those who know about university med school requirements) that Manchester pick the person and not the grades...That is once you have proven that you will get the AAB ABB or whatever they invite you to interview and talk to you...
Don't get me wrong, its a competition, at the end of the day, its ALWAYS a competition, but they assess you and if you get in its because they can see you as a doctor of the future.
Sooo, when we turned up to Comms today I was wondering what we could possibly learn...
Everything. is the answer. how to introduce yourself, how to initiate conversation, how to direct the conversation, how to close the conversation. how to ask a persons age, how to sit. how to refuse a cup of tea. how to convince a person you arent going to blog about their medical problems. how to get them out of the waiting room and into the fire. sorry, the surgery...Oh my lord, i'll never open my mouth again without thinking first. i managed to introduce myself right and that was about it....


by the way, my name's lucy williams, im a first year medical student at Manchester University, im just here to tell you about my life, you dont mind do you? how should i address you? are you comfortable with that? everything said here will be kept confidential, dont you worry...its not like its on the internet or anything.....

Year1, Semester 1: Lucy 0

soooooooooooooooooooooo, im about 4 weeks in and its 8 minutes past midnight and im not doing the work that will be discussed at 9am tomorrow morning. thats because i cant be bothered and as a group we havent nailed the ILO Extraction Technique yet...thats something Learning Objective to all those who dont have the PBL Dictionary of incredibly pretentious acronyms handy. so instead of having a few basic things to look up I.E this week were doing cystic fibrosis, so
-what is it
-how does it do the bad things it does...?
etcetc
ive got about a billion little nitty gritty bits that i cba to investigate. gotta love last years notes though. deffo worth the 3 grand i paid for them!

'I'm going to Indonesia, to take the air..'

SO i got 18 whoooooooole weeks off this summer. did i get some valuable work experience? no.
did i get some cash together? no. did i complete many selfless acts to benefit humankind? helllsno. i went on holiday for 2 months. woooooooooop! good old overdraft!
I went with my flat mate, Reptile Lady (aka ELla) for 5 weeks we trawled our way around, getting tanned and becoming culturally and alcoholically enlightened. then my ma came out and ellabella went home and i did the same with less alcohol and a larger budget! getin.
it was AMAZING

Time flies when youre................so busy you don't know what day it is...

Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa, so its almost a year since I last wrote, and yes...i'm still here.
Pre med was not by any means a breeze, and i learned a lot, (even if it was more about wheres good to get a kebab or cheesy garlic bread at 4am and which bus stop to get off at when youre running late in the morning)....Kidding.
I dont understand how the 18year olds come straight from school and have to make friends, wash, cook, do all the work thats expected of them, plus be well rounded (preferably playing sport for a uni team and helping underprivalaged children with their maths homework) as well as just staying ALIVE.
I'm lucky this year, because i can already do PBL (problem based learning- that is were given weekly, a medical case and work together to get objectives from it which we go and learn and come back and discuss..) theres quite an art to knowing how little is needed and were certainly never spoon fed..in fact were lucky if the lecturers manage to keep us awake when discussing 'genetic population screening blablablahhhhhhhhh'.
im also lucky because i live with some very very cool people. This weekend we went to the peak district walking. thats how cool we are. we planned a walk and found the pub and got back to the cars all on our ownsomes. apart from that we basically never disagree (unless some untoward showering occurs) and noone steals peanut butter from the jar...(REX)