I started my few days in medschool. I enrolled at Cebu Institute of Medicine (CIM), THE NUMBER ONE MEDICINE SCHOOL IN THE PHILIPPINES in terms of the board exam performance since 2007. Haha. Do the research.
Anyway, we had one week full of orientations and basically that week was the last few days where we could have “normal” sleep. Yes. Medschool is a very big adjustment for me in terms of study habits and sleeping pattern. The first week has been hectic. I’ve been sleeping four hours everyday and studying more or less 10 HOURS everyday LITERALLY, NO JOKE.
In order to survive medschool, they say you should study everyday. READ. READ. READ. So basically, I wake up, take a bath, eat breakfast, then study, eat lunch, then go to school to discuss what we’ve studied, then after classes study again, take a nap for an hour, eat dinner, then study way past 12MN, sleep, then wake up at 5AM and the cycle repeats everyday. I’m still adjusting and I hope this won’t make me crazy. I post things on Twitter or in Facebook during my 10 min study breaks as my leisure time.
Back to CIM. CIM has this curriculum called PBL (Problem Based Learning). They give you a schedule, and some documents containing a problem and topics to be studied or in our case, discussed. Basically, we come to class everyday and discuss a topic 8:30 to 11:30 with a small group. Then that’s it. There are times when there are activities in the afternoon but that only happens sometimes like a lab activity or whatever. At the end of every session, a doctor would give us a short lecture about the points that are difficult to understand about the topic. Basically, WE DO IT OURSELVES. WE LEARN IT BY OURSELVES. NO SPOON FEEDING. It’s comparable to some mammals in the animal kingdom when babies are born, the parents just leave them alone to survive.Survival of the fittest? I feel that way. We are left alone to study topics and then we test ourselves if we understood anything about the topic by taking an exam EVERY WEEK (every Tuesday). There is an exam every week. There is an exam every month. There is an exam every 2 months called a bimonthly exam. And after four months, there is another exam, Midterms. And then there is the dreaded FINALS at the end of 8 months for the first semester. How many exams were those again? I’ve never read a lot of pages in my life in one day. Haha. YOU WILL BE FORCED TO READ. READ OR DIE. That is the case. I think medschool is far more difficult than my stay in UP Manila. Biology in UP was quite a ride but I think medschool’s gonna be a tough one. I look forward to Friday nights since this is the only day where I can be free. I relax and not think about medschool. And yeah, I go back to studying during the weekends. I’m doing my best to adjust though. Haha.
I mentioned that they leave us a topic to be discussed with a small group. A group contains 12 individuals. They would be discussing topics, helping each other, teaching other for the rest of the year. To simplify things, we basically teach each other. We are the teachers ourselves. I am very happy with my group. 11 new personalities. 11 knew friends. As you can see in the photo above, it looks like we know each other. We all look so happy. Haha. This was the first time we saw each other and we took a picture. I thought this was just cute. We all look happy in the picture but as the days pass in medschool, PEOPLE PANIC. Hahahaha.
(Source: keevolution)
