The Waiting Game

I'm kind of sick of waiting for things after all the stuff that has happened this year. Had to wait for UMAT results, had to wait for HSC results, then had to wait for ATAR's and then finally I am now waiting for offers.

I should have my first acceptance or rejection by tomorrow afternoon... It's a bit strange to think that after waiting for a year to know if I would get into med school or not will be partially over tomorrow. The thing is that if I find out I don't get in then I still have to wait until January for offers from some other uni's.

There of course is still the possibility I won't get in anywhere, which will be frustrating and depressing as I never even thought I would get interviews, and I suppose to get this close and fail would be irritating.

But anyway hopefully tomorrow I'll get some good news, if not then there will be some more waiting to be done.

A post-interview and results post...

Hello there,

I haven't posted in quite sometime I know. I'm not even going to make the excuse that I was busy because I wasn't. Since the HSC finished I've pretty much done nothing, except work and go do these interviews, haven't even caught up with any friends and I have had a lot of stuff on my mind.

But anyway, all my interviews are now done. I think they all went somewhat ok, UNSW was good, JMP was so-so with a few hard questions and JCU was pretty good (Despite it being very very hot in Townsville). After all the traveling around the place I can well and truly say I am sick of travel, and commercial flights for the time being (And this comes from a person who loves traveling and flying...)

In addition to that, results for the HSC came out today. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about them to be honest. On the one hand I will most likely get an atar over my minimum level that I said I would be happy with. But on the other hand I won't get one above the mark which I wanted, and will probably not be enough to be extremely competitive when getting into med school (Except the places with the thresholds). I suppose I can't really complain about them, I'm just heading more towards a bonded rather than unbonded place.

That's really all I have to post at the moment, now it comes to playing the waiting game. I will find out in the days directly before or after christmas if I have a place at JCU and find out midway through next month about the others. I think I have a pretty good chance... 3 chances isn't bad, and hopefully one of those 3 will turn out good....

Doubts and questions about studying medicine.

Since the HSC finished I have had a lot of time to spend in my own thoughts, too much time in fact. And all this time has led me to come to the conclusion that I have absolutely no idea what the hell I'm doing. I have no idea why I want to do medicine, I mean sure there is the interest factor, the desire - no - the need for a challenging career, and the desire to do some good in my life. Yes this explains why, but it doesn't really explain why I want to do medicine. That sounds crazy I know, but to me it makes sense.

What on Earth is driving me to do medicine? The above reasons are all good but there are a billion other careers which would satisfy those requirements. All this free time has led me to seriously think about why I want to do medicine. And I think I've put it down to the fact that I need to do it for myself more than anyone. I'm not talking about the challenging career aspect here which I want/need. I've put it down to the fact that I need to prove to myself I can actually do something so challenging to feel a sense of worth. Put it this way, apart from doing well in school I don't really have anything to be happy about in my life. Everything I do I do for myself. I can count the amount of times I've seen friends outside of school this past year on my fingers. I don't know why it is but people don't like me when they know me for a long time, I've lost count of the amount of times I've met someone new, started to be really good friends and then over a matter of weeks I get completely phased out of their life, maybe to only get a pity text 6 months later along the lines of "omg haven't talked to you in ages". Maybe thats what happens when you completely ignore me for 6 weeks. No shit.

This puzzles me. For the life of me I cannot work out why, I consider myself a socially balanced person and don't see how I manage to scare people off. It has gotten so bad that I'm scared to meet new people because I know it's just going to end in rejection. Don't even get me started on the fact that I'm 18 and never had a proper relationship...

Well anyway this rambling is going somewhere. I think that this is the reason I want to do medicine. This constant alienation (Argh, flashbacks to HSC Belonging....) is driving me. I think that it is what is pushing me into medicine, to prove something to myself. I think I need to prove that I can do something which I will be valued for, to make up for how little I am valued by my friends. Something that will take up my whole life because I have nothing else to spend it doing. No one is pushing me to do medicine, not my friends, or my parents.

Now clearly I am not going to mention this in any interviews, because I probably won't get a place because they will think I am insane.

This leads me to think to myself, if I can't even manage to have decent friends then how in the heck am I going to cope in medicine. Clearly I am not the most socially adept person around. I think that not having a deep relationship with patients on a friendship level will make up for it, no one will get close enough for me to magically scare them off. I'm good at communicating with strangers, I even manage to get compliments from customers at work because of my 'great interpersonal skills'. So this is where the doubt comes from, not to mention the fact that I'm terrified of the workload as I feel I am a terrible studier, I have never felt ready for an exam the entire HSC but magically it has all worked out and I have ended up with better results than people I know who are relentless studiers and also who want to study medicine.. I'm also terrified of the pressure not to make mistakes.

Well that's a deep insight to the mind of me at the moment. Feel free to suggest good psychiatrists if you wish :P

Well that's it.

For me, the HSC ended yesterday. Only this morning has it really sunk in. I have nothing. No commitments. Nothing forcing me to do anything else. I just have, life. There is absolutely nothing stopping me from withdrawing all my uni applications and backpacking around the world for the next 10 years. Now that's a scary thought.

The past 13 years it has always been the same, the commitment has always been there. School was always there to go back to. Now it's not. It is really quite a weird feeling, not really happiness, kind of relief mixed with a slight sense of "WTF DO I DO NOW?!?!"...

Now of course I'm not going to backpack around the world, although I would really like to travel before I'm old and grey. For me, the past 13 years of education are coming to an end, and the next 13 (Probably more) are beginning.

On that topic. I finally had some good news in regards to getting into medicine, even with my UMAT I managed to get an interview for the Joint Medical Program!! I'm pretty damned happy about it, seeing as it was always my number 1 choice for medicine. UNSW interviews come out on Monday and I'm still confident I should get an interview for JCU. If I had more than one offer for medicine and had a choice I would be absolutely ecstatic.

In a couple of months the Uni life will begin for me. I don't really know what to expect. I've heard so many mixed opinions, some say it is easier than the HSC and others say that because I'm planning on Medicine it will be harder than the HSC. I'm just hoping I can stay motivated. Throughout year 12 motivation for me ranged so much. At the start I was telling myself that it's only a year and if I do well here it will all be better. Didn't work. Somehow I managed to scrape through and still have an estimated ATAR of 96, which with the amount of effort I put in is utterly unbelievable. I don't think there was one Assessment throughout the year that I thought I was completely prepared for, it always felt like it wasn't good enough and I could have done so much more. Somehow I managed. For example the physics HSC exam yesterday, I felt horridly underprepared and was expecting to do poorly, however I got in there and have never felt so confident about an exam in my life.... My mind works in mysterious ways...

Anyway here is a graph I made because I was bored to illustrate my motivation to do well in the HSC over the past year:

I think that gets my point across. The part where the rate of falling motivation starts to decrease represents the wake up call trials gave me.

Anyway, now I'm free. Kind of. I expect I will be able to write more interesting things up here more often now, so follow me! Tell other people to do so as well and make sure you check back regularly. I may delve into the realm of writing about my opinions on topical issues soon, not sure how that will go.

Thanks for reading :)

Rejection

I found out today that I will not have a chance at MBBS at Adelaide Uni today.

This is kind of becoming routine now, getting so excited that interview offers are finally being released then feeling defeated to find that you didn't get one. Even though I have expected it every time it has happened, it hasn't made it any less disheartening.

As it stands now, 50% of my chances at medicine are gone. I should find out about the JMP soon and UNSW soon too, and JCU at the end of next month. I still have this paranoia that I wont get an interview at JCU because there will be some tiny mistake with my application...

All I really want is an interview. I think I could do well, because I truly want to do medicine. It still sickens me to think that medical schools accept people who are either doing it because their parents want them to, or for the money or the ever so illusive 'prestige'. What is even worse is that some of these people are so good they manage to make it through the interviews to become Doctors.

Although I don't really think of these people as real doctors. Yes they have the title, and their medical knowledge may be second to none, but they aren't really a 'doctor'. I prefer to refer to these people as Medically trained robots, perfect in their knowledge, and often perfect in their treatment, but with the personality and empathy of well, a robot.

Anyway thats my thoughts for the night, must go force myself to study for the last 3 HSC exams, even though it's the last thing I want to do.

Another Setback.

Just got an email then telling me I didn't get an interview for Monash. Also my UMAT was too low to be able to apply for their Dean's Rural List as well.

So that's 2/6 chances at Medicine gone, and I'm expecting similar outcomes for 3/4 of the chances that remain.

One of the most useless things in my life is over.

English.

The bane of any HSC student, or any year 12 student for that matter. Having completed Paper 2 of the HSC today it now means that this useless part of my schooling is now done. Finished. Finis. Klaar. Završen.
You get the picture.


And so what does this mean? Never again will I have to read things into a text that just aren't there. Never will I need to collect related material. Never will I have to analyse the ways in which perspectives are represented within texts. Or to take a leaf out of paper 2 today, never will I have to answer questions like "In the context of your critical study, to what extent does your response to the closing scenes of Hamlet inform your judgement of this play as a whole?". Ergh.


The past 6 years of doing English as a formal subject does not really seem to have taught me anything useful. At least the useful stuff probably could have been compressed into one semester....

I will however, concede that English has taught me one thing, and that is to not accept everything the media would have us belive. Recently, after studying the conflicting perspectives module I have picked up on so much bias in the media it's not funny. Is there any news source in Australia that doesn't sit firmly on the right wing?

As you can tell I am running out of things to post about at the moment. Nothing interesting has happened in relation to medicine recently, still waiting on interview notifications which may or may not come.

Bye for now.

4360 Minutes

Doesn't seem like long does it, thats how long it is until the first HSC exam for me starts - English Paper 1.

It is a strange time right now, I've never been very good at studying for English, it's just such a hard thing to do. I've exhausted all possible practices I can do and so all I can really do now is know the content, which essentially means being able to drag random quotes out of the depths of my brain.
It still doesn't feel like it, but in 4357 minutes the past 13 year chapter of my life begins to come to an end. 13 years of knowing school was always still there to go back to, knowing that holidays were only short lived, that familiar daily routine, is finally coming to it's ultimate end.

And so at 12:30pm on November 4th, it will end. I will wake up on November 5th, and know that there is nothing. This isn't a short lived holiday. The routine is over.

But even so, this isn't the final chapter of course. If I start medicine next year, it will only be the beginning. 6 years at Uni, followed by internship then attempting to specialise, could easily lead me to another 13 years before I am fully qualified. Does this worry me? Not at all.

A while ago when I was still tossing up between doing med or something shorter, I thought of a lot of the pros and cons for each. You only get one life (At this stage anyway.....) and lets say for argument's sake that I live 85 years. Also for arguments sake, lets say that I spend 15 years studying medicine and specialising to be fully qualified (In reality it would probably be longer). Add that onto the 13 years of schooling and that is 28 years of straight learning (Granted some of it is paid though). So that makes up 34% of my life (Once again assuming I live to 85).

It was when I worked out this statistic some time ago that I started to have doubts about medicine. I could just as easily do a 4 year undergrad degree and go straight into some job and be fully qualified for it, so to speak, and this would be around 20% of my life. A big difference.

But then I realised that seeing as I've somehow become set on Medicine, I don't think I could manage another field. My biggest fear would be going into a path not in the medical field, and someday, 40 years down the track I sit down and it hits me "I really should have done Medicine". By then it would probably be too late.

What I'm really trying to get at is we only get one life, and you're doing it wrong if you look back on your life as it's coming to a close and regret what you have spent your life doing.


Well anyway thats my attempt at being inspirational for the morning. I don't actually have much to post about now, as nothing interesting has really been happening. I did however receive an email from UWS saying that I would not be getting an interview. So that is one chance at Med that I can cross off the list.

I probably should go and get into a fun filled day of English study now. 4338 Minutes....

Bye for now.

The HSC grows closer....

I've come to realise that at the moment I don't actually have many things to post about, nothing interesting relating to Uni has eventuated at the moment, apart from JCU receiving my application...
There is a bit over a week to English Paper 1, and somehow motivation has hit rock bottom. I'm so close to finishing I can almost taste it, and I know that with my ATAR estimates I have a half decent chance at JCU med. But somehow that still doesn't shock me into being motivated, and instead I sit around and procrastinate, doing things like updating this blog, and looking at the course info for my backup plan and mentally telling myself I would still enjoy it.....

I guess it is hard to be motivated to study something you don't enjoy, or which is so far removed from the real world E.G. English.. My Physics teacher has a saying, everything must obey the laws of Physics.... Except the HSC Physics syllabus.....

So what has happened recently that is of any worth.... This leads me to one thing in particular, the untimely death of Steve Jobs. It is quite hard to believe that one businessman could be so influential in the Western World today. Steve apparently lost his fight with a rare form of pancreatic cancer on Wednesday this week. The saddest part of it is seeing how it tore him to pieces, before ultimately killing him. You only have to look at recent photos of him to see how unwell he really was.

This comic sums it up:

Eternal flame: There's always the hope that if you sit and watch for long enough, the beachball will vanish and the thing it interrupted will return.

Source: xkcd

This can just show how cancer can absolutely tear someone apart and destroy them. I have to say that seeing people having to live with cancer is one of the things that have pushed me to want to study medicine. While personally no one in my family has been affected by it, I have seen people I know suffer. One example, the assistant year advisor at my year 10 school. I left that school in year 10, and then she was 100% ok, a lovely person, just going about her life with no worries. Then, at relay for life this year I saw her again for the first time since year 10, I was shocked into being speechless. She was barely recognizable. It is terrible to see how in just 2 short years someones life can be absolutely turned upside down and changed forever.

So anyway, thats all I can think of to post at the moment. If anyone has some insanely motivating statements feel free to leave them in the comments :)

Bye for now.

Time for a post I suppose

Hi there,

I decided to create this blog to post (whinge) about my life, and more particularly my journeys through the HSC and into University.

A little bit about myself, I'm 18, Male, from New South Wales, Australia and currently am in year 12. The most terrifying thing is that there is less than a month till the HSC exams start and a bit over a month until I'm finished school. Forever.

I want to study Medicine at University after this little thing called the HSC is done. I can't even remember the exact moment I realised this was what I wanted to do but I think I started to consider Med in year 9 after my science teacher decided to bring in his old anatomy textbooks and teach us that in favour of teaching the actual course... It wasn't until year 11 that I made up my mind after finding out that anything to do with IT or Business was certainly not for me...

This blog will likely mainly focus on my attempts to get into medicine, and if I miss out this year it will focus on my attempts at getting in next year, and so on. If I do get in, then this blog (or a new one) will focus on my journeys through medicine.

As it stands at the moment, my chances at getting into Medicine are not as good as they could be. I sat the dreaded UMAT in July of this year and only recently got my results back, which was a pretty terrifying experience. I downloaded the PDF and before I looked set an expectation of the mark I would be happy with in my head, which in hindsight was not a good idea because I just ended up disappointed.

I didn't go terribly with 56th percentile, but then again I didn't go well. These results totally discounted any chance I had at two of the Uni's which offer Undergraduate Medicine. For another two I have a chance, but I am at the absolute bottom of the pile of applicants and if I get an interview it will be nothing short of a miracle.

That leaves me with one good chance, the only University in Australia which does not use UMAT to judge it's Medicine applicants, James Cook Uni (JCU). Now unfortunately to go there I need to move myself 1200km's North into the tropics, which is a bit of a stretch but manageable. It would also be a massive change for me. But you what they say, a change is as good as a holiday (Whoever they are).

Unlike many of the people in my situation now, I actually didn't wait until I got my disappointing UMAT results to apply there, I always intended to apply there as I have applied to every Undergraduate Medicine course in Australia for the best chance at getting a place.

So as it stands now, I'm on STUVAC studying for the HSC, the applications are sent and so are the ATAR predictions. 

All I need to do now is wait and hope for either a letter or a phone call telling me I have an interview.

Anyway so thats what my blog will focus on, at the least I will try to update it with thoughts, ramblings or generally just things I find interesting every week. I am tying to keep it somewhat anonymous but lets just see how that goes.

Bye for now,

J.