How the hell did I end up here? I stand by the idea that I bullshitted my way into here ... literally. That GAMSAT result was pretty average for the science and humanities questions. The overall score was brought up by a decently high score on that essay section aka. how-long-can-you-write-for-without-your-hand-exploding section. Two essays worth of prime grade A bullshit in sixty minutes, and voila! here's your invitation to an interview. Of course, the rest is history. I'm sure the bullshitting resurfaced again for those ten or so mini-interviews I had to do. All I remember from that day, was explaining to one of the interviewers that it was ok for some lady to breastfeed a baby that was not hers. I don't know about you, but if I knew my doctor said that, I'd be hightailing it for the exit door even if I was bleeding profusely from all four of my limbs at the time.
So here I am, in what is one of the happiest stretches of my life, living in a house with eight other insane people doing the same med course with me. I say insane with great affection, but quite frankly, we're all exactly that - insane. The mere acceptance into med school has given me the greatest sense of accomplishment and satisfaction, and I have never been more excited about the future than I am now. Yet if you just pause for a second and take a closer look, I, along with the eight others under this roof and seventy or so others in the entire cohort, can be described in two words:
F*#@ing NUTS!!!
Don't get me wrong. There's plenty of good to be had here. But the logic of the here and now is as goes....
- Hi there. Would you like to give up your steady income and embark on a journey of poverty for the next half a decade or so?
- Would you like to be part of a university course that will destroy all the other aspects of your life?
- Would you like to go through another life of exams that cause you to freak out just because everyone else is freaking out too, even if the exam is about as worthless as a five cent coin in the pocket of a man walking into a Ferrari dealership?
- Would you like to go through another decade or so of scrutiny, judgement, inferiority to superiors, and more stress than a blind snail without its shell crossing ten lanes of peak-hour freeway?
- Would you like to be rewarded for your efforts on completing this course with a job that requires you to develop the sleeping patterns of a retarded, narcoleptic owl?
- Would you like to earn a job that promises great pay, only for you to realise in twenty years that, for the time, effort, and stress you put in, you'd get paid more by working the corporate ladder at Ernst and Young or working St. Kilda's streets?
- Would you like to have a career where innocently misreading '6.0' for '60' means you accidentally killed the poor little seven year old girl in bed 2A because you gave her ten times the amount of painkillers, and as a result you have to explain to her parents that their daughter is dead not because of your idiocy, but rather because your optometrist is crap? (or in my case, because I refuse to go see one in the first place!)
If, like me, you answered 'yes' to all of the above, you are probably here with me in Gippsland, doing the same uni course, procrastinating from the same exam that's going on tomorrow.
Yet the fact that you haven't snapped and decided to quit already means that, like me, you actually quite liked saying 'yes' to all of the above .......... you crazy weirdo.
