When they call you name, will you walk right up, with a smile on your face?

No ladies and gentlemen, it's a rhetorical question. A beautiful song, albeit a mildly saddening one. That perhaps is a description of the weeks thus gone - beautiful, with mild saddening imbued.

First things first - I'm now officially five eighths through medical school. I ran the gauntlet of the OSCE, as mentioned in the post previous couples therapy los angeles , had a day of light study and confusing dinner invitations, then sat two written papers over two days, which made me wonder if I was going to *be* five eighths through medical school. Dear GSM, when you eventually find this, as I'm sure you will, please note: that was a *absolute piece of shit exam* - even if, as it turned out, I did pass it all. That said - I'm getting ahead of myself in the story, so let's deal with the aforementioned events one at a time, then do some philosophical meandering. I mean - I know why you're all here, right?

OSCE. Objective, Structured, Clinical, Explosion. That's how it felt by the third station. The day dawned bright and warm, I dressed in a nice stripy shirt, went into Wollongong and had a latte at Swell, then had a satay chicken early lunch at Mylan, all the while cramming Paeds & ObGyn notes (for... nothing as it turned out!) and then wandered to the uni, where I hung about for a little while with a few friends before we were tagged, given stickers, and then... quarantined for an hour and a half. Literally, I sat in a lecture theatre for an hour and a half without any phone/outside access (mobiles confiscated) and didn't remember to take a novel. I did make a study playlist though! On my iPhone. Sigh.

Anyway, after the quarantine we were escorted to the med school and I went upstairs, sat down, buzzers began and off we went for two and a half hours. My first station was a bitch (muscular/neuro lower limb shit crap) but... I walked in, my hands were still, my stomach was calm, and I just played the game. That almost fell apart on my third station which was apparently a peripheral vascular disease (although I did examine the nerves, muscles, chest, lymph nodes and lungs!) but... after that it was mostly smooth apart from some cockups, but not fuckups. Anyway. Walked out feeling crap but okay, and went over each station and thought "ah, can't actually find any I fucked over totally" so that was nice. I then got a phone call saying "hey, let's go see X-Men!" and so a gang of ten med students watched a hilariously awesome film and just chilled. Great end to the day, I must admit.

Sunday following was... confusingly indecisively enjoyably odd, I must admit. I did a half a day of study, and was randomly asked to dinner by a friend and (hey, let's be honest) I'm still unsure what the hell she meant by it. That said, dinner was lovely and made me wonder - and since my brain was insanely complexly wrapped up in issues involving acute renal failure and schizophrenic medications, and as such my reasoning was not perhaps working well... but hey. Anyway, that plus a few other things have led to a relatively amusing extended conversation about the 'X-Girls' (which I will no, not elaborate on here), but apart from that, and a few flutterbies, well... I'm derailing from my narrative.

Curse you, Miss Butterfly.

The written exams followed on the Monday (oh god, that was so bad) and the Tuesday (if not multiple choice, it would have been even worse) and I was not confident at all precious, not confident at all. I then spent a week trying to relax but basically evolved into a check-online-marks-repository-every-fifteen-minutes machine instead. There was some creativity though, when Jessie semi-volunteered me to work on the script for this year's MedRevue, and which I didn't take much persuading to do, and so we've done that a few times since and have put together something that is kinda fun and kinda hilarious, if I do say so myself. It's been **ages** since I've written script, and it's been a hell of a good time - and now it appears I'm singing and acting in it as well as helping write the show. Creative team ahoy!Read more: http://knockyourhealth.com/lipolaser/machines/contourlight.php

Anyway, after that, marks did eventually come out - thank you, dear Kylie, for calling me in the middle of the fail call times to congratulate me, but seriously, thanks! - and I passed... hence the 5/8ths I mentioned earlier. And that's nice... and climactically anticlimactic. This means that in four weeks, I'll move to Bowral for a year (apart from some of summer) and then after that I'll be effectively qualified, electives pending... and that's scary.

Lots of elipses in that paragraph there. Just saying. But yes - not long now until it's over and done with, and I can get on with the real world issue of finishing a novel and becoming Rich and Famous. Watch this space.

Finally, a few thoughts to round this out - I've finished the *conversations, with you*** poetry sequence I posted a few of a while back - 25 pieces in length in total. To be truthful, it was becoming too hard to keep writing, and the X-Girls issues as mentioned earlier have fried my brain to the point that the Girl Known As ConversationsGirl needed to be removed, and so I wrapped it five poems earlier than the initial plan. I may pick it back up again - who knows when I'll run into her again - but right now, I can't think like that.

There comes a time when the empath and the emotional engager needs to turn off. There's a thought that says you can close your ears but you can't close your heart, and it's mostly true, except when you bottle it all down and refuse to let any of the emotion leave and just pray that it distills itself away and is gone - either that, or it explodes in your face. Until recently, I've been bottling a lot of things away, and it's only through *conversations* and through talking with a few friends (and one in particular) that that has at all changed - and for that, we can thank my Psychiatry rotation for basically running along in the background and uncorking all my stored bottles.

Ah, metaphor. Regardless - I'm feeling more emotional and yet more stable than I have in a long time, right now. There's butterfly potential, there's relaxation, there's a new movement in the doctorin', and health is looking a bit better (physio + orthotic + maybe-no-surgery = awesome news)Plantar Fasciitis cure so at the moment, fingers crossed... life is good.

Let's see how long this time lasts. :)

-Andiyar