Spring Break

Spring Break

This is the time of year when I think many of us become a little more positive about our oppressed existence as lowly students. Difficult to see, it is the slightest suggestion of a spec of a light that feverishly emits from the long tunnel of the tough grind.    

It is in my mind of no coincidence that these delicate strands of positivity that begin to pass though us coincide with two delightful events. The first being the bitter sweet occurrence of daylight saving; the event in which the blatant atrocities of robbing each an every one of us of a full hour of blissful sleep is soon forgotten by the splendid experience of an hour later sunset (and with that the tentative notion that winter is now behind us). The second of course is spring break, that little island of recovery were we can take a breather from our academic obligations and reacquaint ourselves with a little fun.

As a non-American I have never (until recently) experienced spring break, in fact my expectations of the whole event has been completely molded by the MTV camera lens. The image MTV portrays (or at least the one I decided to adopt) is that for one week, the whole of America dons bikinis and surfer shorts and proceeds to descend into a frenzy of party and inebriation. You can therefore perhaps appreciate my sense of betrayal with the severe lack of carefree scantily clad women on the snow kissed streets of Cleveland last year. Of course I now therefore understand that this perception is just one of the possibilities that one can engage in with their 7 day allocation.      

Whether you plan to spend time with family, the classic debaucherous week at the beach or something completely different, I think we can all agree that a week away from the books will do us 1^st and 2^nd years the world of good. Have fun!

Back to Work (Andrew Franklin)

Back to work

 

Welcome back everyone, and I hope we all had a wonderful break and a quality rest from the hardships of study, I know I certainly did. I find it is a strange experience however when we are blessed with such a long break. In the midst of the exam week, all of our attentions and efforts are squarely placed on the objective of doing well in the exams. Our priorities, (as hard as it is at the time) are simplified and tuned into this one task. I, as I’m sure others do during these times, dream of our post-exam life, the simple notion of say watching a day-time TV or going for an idle walk become a coveted future reward for our current predicament. Yet when all the hard work is over it is invariably difficult to initially deal with the new found freedom and lack of focus. As we progressively train ourselves for the tortuous efforts of exam taking we temporarily lose the ability of essentially being lazy.

 

Dedication and hard work is required in large volumes to achieve good results in our exams, mindless procrastination must equally be worked on and nurtured (although maybe not to the same degree); it is an art form that takes time and effort to perfect. However in a sinister manner, by the time New years day rolls around and we become accustomed and comfortable in our new form of existence we start back up for a new semester and expectations of work are thrust upon us.  This sine wave of productivity is an inevitable consequence of the stark contrast of the presence and abrupt absence of the academic demands imposed on us at medical school. As we begin our first few classes the mind cogs again slowly begin to turn as they break from our freshly constructed inertia and before you know it were back in the swing of things dreaming of future procrastinations.   

For me right now as a second year those mind cogs are refusing to budge! Our schedule resembles many remnants of last semester, continuing with the heavy subjects of Pathology and Pharmacology, however we are now starting to be exposed to more clinical aspects of the course with podiatric medicine skills and surgery. For me this marks the beginning of the exciting transition from book based core foundation academia to the more podiatry directed learning. A transition that I greatly welcome as we get that little bit closer to becoming podiatrists.